Commentators have begun to notice a recent trend among the nation’s air traffic controllers.  In a recent Associated Press (AP) piece, Joan Lowy reported on a number of recent rule-bending incidents by air traffic controllers.

Just this week, tapes reportedly revealing that a controller had a child give instructions to pilots over the radio at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.  Both the controller and the supervisor reportedly have been suspended by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for the incident that occurred last month.

In October, Minneapolis controllers could not raise a Northwest Airlines jet on the radio, and contrary to policy, failed to follow rules for alerting a national security communication network to the problem.  According to reports, the Minneapolis controllers also passed responsibility for the flight to another controller without disclosing that they were unsuccessful in making radio contact.  This was the same Northwest Airlines flight that flew over 100 miles beyond its destination.

Also, this past August a plane crashed into a tour helicopter over the Hudson River.  The air traffic controller at New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport reportedly passed responsibility for the small plane on to another airport and did not correct the pilot after he read back the wrong radio frequency.  Subsequently, the pilot could not be reached and seconds later crashed into the helicopter.  The Teterboro air traffic control supervisor was reportedly away from the airport on a personal errand and the controller was on a personal telephone call just before the crash.

The AP article succinctly sums up the obvious safety concerns.

The incidents suggest a casualness about rules that undermines safety, said Carol Carmody, a former National Transportation Safety Board member and former FAA official.
"If they don't follow fairly rigid procedures, they're going to make mistakes," Carmody said. "If you are in the safety business, you make a big deal out of anything like this because random events cause accidents."
Even more serious is that the controllers in the Teterboro and Kennedy incidents appear to have felt free to break rules, which suggests supervisors tolerated such lapses, said Michael Barr, who teaches aviation safety at the University of Southern California.