An enormous to-do is being made over the granting of administrative leave to an air traffic controller who was making a personal call, having an “inappropriate conversation”, and a supervisor who wasn’t present when there was a mid-air collision over the Hudson River last week:
WASHINGTON (AP) – A personal phone call and the absence of a supervisor during last week’s collision over New York’s Hudson River has led to two air traffic controllers being removed from duty, although officials said the actions probably had no impact on the tragedy.
The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement Thursday that a controller at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey and his supervisor have been placed on administrative leave after the controller was found to be involved in “apparently inappropriate conversations” at the time of the crash between a small plane and a tour helicopter that killed nine people.
The agency said while there was no reason to believe thus far that the employees’ actions contributed to the accident, such “conduct is unacceptable.” The controller had handed off the monitoring of the small plane involved in the collision to another airport shortly before the plane collided with a tour helicopter.
The two employees, who were not identified, were placed on administrative leave with pay. The FAA said it has begun disciplinary proceedings against the pair. Three members of a Pennsylvania family on the plane and five Italian tourists and a pilot on the helicopter were killed when the two stricken aircraft plunged into the river.
Administrative leave with pay isn’t a disciplinary action; it’s a paid vacation, a way of getting the two out from underfoot during the investigation. Perhaps it’s a mandatory step in the termination procedures.
It seems to me that termination procedures would be manifestly unfair. Personal calls are either out-of-bounds in an air traffic controller’s workplace or they aren’t. If they’re not actually prohibited I’d bet that every controller in the room had made a personal call at one time or another. The idea that they’re only out-of-bounds if somebody ends up getting killed is absurd.
In my view there are some circumstances in which making personal calls is always inappropriate and air traffic control is one of them. If I were king mere possession of a cellphone on the job would be grounds for termination but you should only enforce the rules that are in place not the rules that should have been in place.
