American Morning
Have things become lax with air traffic safety?
(CNN) – There have been a number of eyebrow raising events involving air traffic controllers and pilots in the last year.
The most recent, an air traffic controller let his two kids direct planes at New York City's JFK. That air traffic controller and his supervisor have been suspended with pay while the FAA completes its investigation.
So what's going on here?
For reaction, on Friday's American Morning we spoke with Bob Richards, a retired air traffic controller, and Captain Jack Casey, a former airline pilot.
Read more: Controller blasted over 'kids' incident
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We have a lot of good and responsible air traffic controllers out of work. Fire who was involved and lets move on.
I don't see what the problem is. All the kids did was repeat verbatim what was told to them by their dad...just like the co-workers of my dad had done with my brother when he was in third grade. My Mom had stopped in to the FAA to get some grocery money from the bread winner, and my Dad's co-workers gave my brother the ultimate tour of what it would be like to control a plane. Although, in my family's case, the facility where my Dad, Jack Hayes (a/k/a "Spider") worked was in Nashua, NH and not the control tower at Logan Airport (some 50 miles away), each of which controlled the entire Northeast Corridor of air traffic. By the time my brother got the headphones, the plane was well into cruising altitude.
Would you rather have the plane on auto-pilot, or being controlled by someone with a pulse?
I think it was a boneheaded move by the the father, and public safety is paramount . Who really thinks that the kids were unsupervised .