Did you hear about this? In an incident that may set take-your-child-to-work days back a ways, an air-traffic controller at JFK let his young child (we're not sure if it was a boy or girl) "direct" traffic a handful of times. The Federal Aviation Administration and the air traffic controllers' union are predictably not amused. But they seem to be the only ones. If the reactions of the pilots involved are any indication, most of the main players were downright tickled by the whole thing, with one of the pilots even remarking that the kid did an "awesome job."
Look, we're all for airplane safety, and, yeah, what this ATC guy did was, shall we say, ill-advised. But anyone who's getting into high dudgeon--or even low dudgeon--needs to relax. It's not as if the father handed his five-year-old a headset, plopped him into a much-too-big chair, and told him to keep an eye on things while he, the father, went out for a cigarette. The dad--and the dad's supervisor, we should note--were standing right there. And when you hear an obviously extremely young child say something like, "AMX 403, contact departure. Adios amigos," you can safely assume that the father has been listening to the conversation and telling the kid exactly what to say--either that or the kid is some kind of air-traffic savant--either way, the planes were in capable hands.
Now, if we can only interest some kindergartners in teaching composition. . . .
Composition is already being taught by Kindergarteners. Have you READ Dan Brown?
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