Doubledown

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont....66189250.html




Whistleblower turns in controllers at DFW

ExperimentalAB

Gives me warm fuzzies.

the King

The first two incidents are very disturbing. The third seems less of a concern, but it is a media report and therefore must be taken with a grain of salt. How long is it going to be before the government realizes the FAA has been understaffing it's facilities and then encouraging them to hide mistakes?

One of the biggest problems I've noticed with the situation is that you can't punish the FAA very well. If you take away the funding (like in most other situations) the industry suffers, not the FAA. If you don't punish them, nothing changes. On top of that, the FAA is lacking money as is, and their solution is to pass it on to industry instead of fix their issues. That's just wrong.

MikeB525

Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.

RJ900

This is absolutely wrong!!! These controllers what have they been smokin'?

ToiletDuck

I thought a whistle blower was supposed to remain anonymous.

rustypilot

I guess you thought wrong

AV8ER

Climb, Climb!

fosters

How were the controllers at fault in the first two instances?

1) If you are on a 2 mile final and haven't been told to go to tower, for christs sakes just switch. If you really want to know if final wants you to tower, ask. Don't be a dumb@ss. You, as the pilot, are ultimately responsible for this type of stuff. Like we've never forgot something on a checklist, or to do one for that matter.

2) This was pilot error, they read back the incorrect altitude. It's been said time and time again that ATC isn't responsible for incorrect readbacks. Totally 100% pilot error.

3) This is the only one that was most likely a controller error. Although they did what was needed and fixed the problem.

rickair7777

This whole thing is less ominious than it sounds. The good news is that while errors are being blamed on pilots, at least no one is actually trying to violate the pilots (that would be really hard anyway, cuz it's all on tape).

For those of you who don't know, controllers are constantly monitored by their own computer system...if spacing gets violated the computer rats them out at which point management has to investigate. If the controller is at fault, retraining/disciplinary action must be taken which would be a huge nuisance if it happened daily.

Sounds like ATC mgt. is probably just making command decisions about what does and does not constitute a real problem. It is likely that the system (designed by a government bureaucracy) is too cumbersome for day-to-day operations.

How would you like it if your airplane emailed management everytime you missed an item on a flow?