Controllers Union Says FAA Worker Missed Trainee's Ground
Vehicle Mishap
One week ago -- in what the National Air Traffic Controllers
Association termed "a brazenly callous move" -- the Federal
Aviation Administration supervisor at the Flying Cloud Airport
(FCM) control tower turned his back on runway operations during an
on-the-job training exercise to take a call on his cell phone...
and missed his trainee mistakenly clear an airport vehicle to cross
the runway in front of a departing aircraft.
In the six-plus decades since the beginning of World War II, its
remnants, like the withering memories of those who lived it have
become the province of historians. For most of us, the past is
little more than a fading echo, muddled in the sensory overload of
a 21st Century world. Perhaps that is why a fighter plane, a
technological hero in its time, the North American P-51 Mustang has
achieved iconic status.
The flight of a military aircraft maintaining a constant AGL
altitude above the terrain or the highest obstruction. The altitude
of the aircraft will constantly change with the varying terrain
and/or obstruction.
"I think had I been in some tighty-whiteys it wouldn't
have happened, but it was boxers. I thought, 'It's not a big deal.
They send a sales paper out every week that has some guy standing
there in his boxers, no one is offended by that.' But that airport
was. I thought it was going to shut down. People started yelling.
It was a huge scene. Police were running through the airport, and
TSA officers were running toward me and I'm like,
'What?'"
Source: Country music singer Jimmy Wayne, who
says he misinterpreted instructions from a TSA screener at an
unnamed California airport to remove items from his shorts... by
instead, removing his shorts.
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