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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| FAA bans NOAA weather radios in airport control towers |
| 2007-02-03 |
The Federal Aviation Administration has forbidden air-traffic controllers at the Daytona Beach International Airport from listening to emergency weather band radios, which the controllers say would have alerted them to a tornado touching down nearby on Christmas Day. "We now have no way of knowing if there is any tornadic activity in the area," [said Kelly Raulerson, Daytona controller and representative for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association] Controllers are able to pick up precipitation on radar, but not tornadoes in the storms. This is mind-boggling stupidity by the FAA. |
| Posted by:Anguper Hupomosing9418 |
| #4 It has more to do with the FAA management winning a union busting review last spring. Now they're enforcing a lot of nitpicking rules that don't contribute to the flying public's safety. |
| Posted by: Almost Anonymous5839 2007-02-03 23:11 |
| #3 To me this smells like a turf war and the controllers and the traveling public are caought in the middle of it. The FAA has weather guessers, but since their charter has to do w/ airplanes and over at the NOAA they also have weather guessers, but their charter speaks to the weather; methinks that the NOAA guys have a better batting average than the FAA boys. I agee that any disruptive radio transmissions in the tracon would not be good, I can hardly think that alerting the tower crew to a major event would be classed as disruptive; unless the tracon took it upon themselves to divert incoming due to the NOAA, then the FAA would have some 'splainin' to do. |
| Posted by: USN, ret. 2007-02-03 22:20 |
| #2 Oh fer Crissakes! The global co. I work for has weather feeds built into our network and communication operation centers. We use them to minimize disruptions to our networks. HINT TO FAA You may want to investigate if bad weather can adversely affect airline ops. Justa thought. |
| Posted by: GORT 2007-02-03 14:07 |
| #1 "Tornadic activity", sounds like something other than what it means. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-02-03 09:54 |