FAA Administrator Marion Blakey is fond of reiterating how controller staffing levels are sufficient. Yet something tells me this guy might disagree with her.
It seems to me that anytime a controller tells a bunch of pilots “you guys really should come up here and see this”, things can’t be going too well. Viva la JFK!
This audio clip is hysterical – it’s been making the rounds of my crowd for a couple of weeks. You should post the airport diagram to go along with it. It’s hard to really understand the scale of the problem until you can see the intersection of Bravo and Victor in relation to the rest of it – really shows you how things can get snarled up! I particularly liked the part where he closes down 13L in order to undo the mess.
All kidding aside though, when I used to be able to beg space on the flight deck (back before 9/11 you could still do that), we almost always had a shorter rendition of this dance. The airport is very confusing and even pilots who fly in there regularly can get lost. I was on the deck of a Speedbird 747 that got lost trying to follow taxiway Alpha all the way around the field. They were embarrassed, but how can you not be sympathetic?
wow
Cracking! I must commend the chap for not jumping out the window. It was definitely a day he should have reported in “Tech” and gone fishing!