The International Cessna^® 170 Association

I'd give anything to hear the backtracking if the controller in question turned out to be the same one who handled Flight 1549 last year....

NYC is probably very self-conscious as well as public-image-conscious...after the Piper/Helicopter crash in the west river last year ...and the controller was found to be on a personal-call on the telephone and was implicated as a contributing cause.
The public does not share our unique pilot-perspectives of air traffic and airplane safety.
It's an unfortunate kneejerk reaction to a relatively harmless, yet serious, workplace infraction. As a former union steward, perhaps he was already viewed as a "target" by management...perhaps not.... but he certainly should have realized the risk he took in violating his workplace rules in allowing a non-controller to have the microphone. (Remember when the captain of a US Navy ship allowed a foreign merchant-mariner to '"arrest" a defector aboard the US ship? In the public-eye, it's a similar situation...relinquishing control to an unauthorized person.)
It might now be a thing-of-the-past... a PIC allowing a non-pilot at the controls of an airplane. It's a Brave New World.

I want to say that I misspoke on this issue and after thinking about it some more, I see exactly what you guys are saying. There was no degradation of safety in what happened here and it is very unfortunate that it got in the media the way it did. Hopefully, the FAA will not let the attention influence whatever action is taken against the controllers. I tend to take aviation seriously due to my employment and I know you guys do too based on the input I read on this site. Thanks for setting me straight on this.

gahorn wrote:NYC is probably very self-conscious as well as public-image-conscious...after the Piper/Helicopter crash in the west river last year ...and the controller was found to be on a personal-call on the telephone and was implicated as a contributing cause.

The key word is IMPLICATED. And implicated by who, the news media. I could be wrong and not remember the latest split second evidence but I believe it was shown the controller could not have done anything to stop this event. Of course he and the system were already fried by the media with politicians calling for radar on the George Washington Bridge to control this "horrendous" traffic which despite all the cries of slack of safety, hadn't had an incident in nearly 30 years

gahorn wrote:t's an unfortunate kneejerk reaction to a relatively harmless, yet serious, workplace infraction. As a former union steward, perhaps he was already viewed as a "target" by management...perhaps not.... but he certainly should have realized the risk he took in violating his workplace rules in allowing a non-controller to have the microphone.

Did I miss something. Has it even been established that he broke any work place rules? Maybe I turned off the quality reporting before that fact was even established.

Whatever happened to "aviation is supposed to be fun!"??? Its serious, to be sure, but like any workplace there are acceptable moments of levity.

Small wonder that the pilot population is dwindling.