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Saw a couple posts about neglect and dangerous behavior and thought I'd add a couple stories of my own. We had two crews that worked at the air traffic control facility, gold crew (mine) and blue crew. For some reason it seemed like blue crew inherited all the morons, and despite a string of incidents and a crew shake-up that basically turned into a sort of NFL draft of air traffic controllers to try and spread out the more skilled guys, things remained along the same lines. A couple blue crew highlights: The blue crews newest qualified controller had a plane contact him asking to land on runway 45. I dont really remember what number runway the pilot asked for because it wasn't one of our runways, and apparently Vivi (name changed) was too busy reading magazines and watching the hidden tv in the tower to realize the pilot's mistake. The mix-up of a pilot contacting the wrong tower frequency might have been caught had Vivi followed atleast one rule specific to Navy air traffic controllers, repeating the runway number to the pilot before issuing landing clearance. Vivi goes back to watching tv and reading his magazines and after about 10 minutes when there was no sight of a plane landing on the runway it dawned on him something might have gone wrong. Maybe it was because the other airport's Chief calling asking why we gave landing clearance to a plane to a runway he didnt own? So they launch an investigation into the incident and management learns about the magazines and the TV that they had always known was there but 'forgot'. What they couldn't figure out is why the tower supervisor didn't catch the error either. Maybe it was because he had broken the 12 hour sobriety rule and was passed out under the table. Of course nobody reported that part. Mikey (name changed) was from the fake-it-til-you-make-it school of air traffic control. One day he was working ground control which is the guy in charge of the taxiways where the local controller was in charge of the runways. There are only two ways a helo can be airborne while on the taxiways and both require getting permission from the local controller because theres a potential for interference with runway operations. Mikey was in a pickle because he just pointed two helos at each other on the taxiway going opposite directions, something he'd been mocked for before since its such a rookie mistake. Mikey had a brilliant idea to get out of the situation though, he granted takeoff clearance to one of the helos and sidestepped it to the active runway... without asking for permission from local. Luckily there wasn't a plane landing at the time, but the supervisor and local controller were not happy about it. When they asked him why he thought it'd be okay to 1) give take off clearance and 2) land an aircraft on a surface he did not control he said 'I've seen other people do it before'. Blue crew's supervisor was sober though and just swept the whole thing under the rug. One from deployment: We had a guy we called LyinLopez. This guy was the kind of controller who was scared of controlling, but rather than admitting he shouldn't be controlling he did what many controllers do... he hid behind others. He was up for orders and thought he was getting a slot at the school house and nearly poo poo himself when he found out he was being sent to one of the busiest facilities instead. I've never seen anyone so upset and afraid 8 months before transferring. Anyways he was on position with a trainee during work-ups and trying to act cool since this was his first time as the LPO and would be our only e-6 on the deployment. Ships have traffic patterns just like runways do where planes can do donuts until they are ready to land, but aboard ship these patterns are controlled by different agencies on the boat and the one I'm talking about falls under the Air Boss and mini-boss. LL had a couple more planes than he was comfortable with (more than 2) and decided he'd tuck one of them away in the pattern. Um, ok passing the buck is fine whatever. So he instructs this plane to enter the pattern but instead of coordinating with anyone he just sends him in... into the holding pattern of another ship. Luckily the other ship wasn't flying anything at the time, but its still a huge violation. Even luckier is that nobody has seen what hes done and the pilot wisely decides to break off and do his own thing instead. LL spends the rest of his shift threatening his trainee never to tell anyone, which he didn't do cause he told me and couple other guys. From then on we watched LL like a hawk. This same guy got lit up by our XO for letting 2 harriers break territorial airspace and do donuts over a sub from a country thats name rhymes with My-ran. Same guy authorizes an aircraft we didn't own (not part of our group) to ride the border of territorial airspace of a country thats name sounds like Nemen. Basically if the helo had violated the airspace it would have been the pilots fault, but wanting to be mr cool controller he stuck his neck out and made it so if there was a violation it would be our/the ship's fault. Blackchamber fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Dec 26, 2012 |
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Dec 26, 2012 14:41
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| # ¿ May 7, 2024 11:51 |
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Apparently in the Navy thread people are proud to be NFOs so I figured I'd share my love of them too. My last command in the Navy was staffed by 99% NFOs and 1% pilots (the pilots were always marines billeted to us as marine liaison). The command enlisted was 70/30 split of air traffic controllers and operation specialists. On the shore side of things thing were fine, the only real work was admin type stuff. Let me tell you what its like getting ready to and deploying with these idiots. One of the ships we're doing circles with wants to fly their UAV in Saudi Arabian airspace along a published route, but they can't get permission because the Saudi's are worried if the UAV loses comms and starts circling it might hit something since this is one of their most used. Our CO being the NFO that he is doesn't have a clue how the NOTAM system work, he just knows whenever theres a short change to airspace and so on they use it to put up a notice for other pilots. So he asks me and another controller if we could please find a way to force one through that will make the Saudi's let us use their airspace how we want. For those not aviation inclined, itd be like asking if I can find a way to throw you out of your own house so I can sit on the couch for a few hours. Its their airspace they can deny whatever they want. Our CO figured one day that since he used to sit at a scope as an NFO he could jump on our only radarscope and tinker with the settings and make things better. That led to panic when we could no longer pick up primary targets at all and we couldn't pick up anyone's transponders either during flightops (our job at the time was working with FADIZ to do modes and codes, FOF crap. Someone point out that is the CICs job please, those guys tried to interrogate a UAV doing airstrikes.) Getting ready for deployment was interesting. During workups they (an OS chief and 3 or 4 NFO officers) decide that since our brothers the Operation Specialists had to work 12 hour shifts we controllers should to. I pointed out to them that 80T-114 strictly forbids that, we are only allowed to be scheduled for 8 hour shifts not to exceed 10 (except in emergencies) and this is based on a code of federal regulation. I'm quickly labeled the lazy sea-lawyer and over-ruled. Further, I'm told, the 80T-114 only applies to SHORE based facilities. Fine, whatever. A couple days later the guy doing our checks sees the schedule and flips his poo poo. This is one of a couple times during workups I've seen a senior chief kick the enlisted out so he could 'correct' a bunch of officers. After that I was told specifically to come forward with any regulations being broken in regards to controllers. At one point they wanted me to be a supervisor, to which I point out that our guiding document requires supervisors be E5 or have a waiver. A waiver is legal document. For example I had a waiver to do final radar approaches below the weather minimums, a legal document that in the event of an incident they could show big Navy and the FAA that yeah I was trained for/allowed to do it. It also protects me because I can turn around and go 'well yall said it was legally ok for me to do this stuff!'. The NFO in charge says 'I'll waive you then!' and waves his hand like hes using the goddamn force. I was never made a supervisor because nobody ever figured out how to get a real waiver done. Which brings up my biggest issue with the whole system set up. I asked them following the scheduling issue why if they were in charge of a primarily air traffic control unit none of them had ever even read the governing publications we use. They aren't even pilots. So lets say theres an issue brewing, controller asks the supervisor (a controller) what to do. The supervisor has to ask their supervisor what they want us to do, a person who has no knowledge of air traffic control and unable to offer a true 'pilots point of view'. Thank god it never came to that. In training we did have a scenario that was pretty telling though. We were leading an f-18 to a tanker for refueling on a tanker track. I called traffic between them because the f-18 hadn't reported them in sight. I kept on issuing traffic information, because I'm basically pointing a plane at another one with the intent to lose separation. The OS chief starts barking at me to stop issuing him traffic because in all his ATC knowledge he thinks by giving the pilot this info I am directing him away from the tanker, "thats not how air intercept control works!". I kindly tell him this isn't an air intercept operation. Cue a room full of NFOs jumping in telling me to stop and the one pilot in the room telling me to ignore them. After the scenario ended the previously mentioned senior chief put us on break and we get back he gives us official guidance that yes we should call traffic. In short: NFOs would be cool with me pointing planes at each other and just assuming at some point they'll see each other in a good way while I watch in silence. NFOs sent a bunch of air traffic controllers to a radio operator's course so we could learn how to talk on the radio to planes. Have to learn proper radio etiquette! NFOs figured training for controllers who might be sent to work in a captured airfield/improvised airfield should be 10% learning to set them up and 90% how to eat an MRE and how to set up a tent. Blackchamber fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Jan 29, 2013 |
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Jan 29, 2013 19:10
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iceslice posted:You honestly sound like that guy who is a pain in the rear end to supervise. I genuinely hope people like you work for the FAA on the civilian side, because attention to detail in your line of work is far more important that being an "easy employee." No I understand how that looks on the outside. Air Traffic Control is full of people who obsess over the details and fine print and in our small community nobody calls people sea-lawyers or thinks its about being difficult. Like I said, being tossed in with a bunch of controllers who never controlled before and rates that aren't familiar with how our job is done look at as being nit-picky. The bigger picture is that air traffic control is all rules, legality, and technicality. Lets say something bad happens to a plane and its not your fault, you still aren't in the free and clear. There is always an investigation of some kind and its their job to assign blame. So if you forgot one tiny little detail you can be found to a % (yes a percentage) of fault. For example few years back a c-130 plowed into 2 cobras outside our airspace. They were both in a warning area where they are supposed to check in with the controlling entity when passing through. They had been out of our airspace like 1 or 2 hours that they never contacted who they were supposed to, but as part of the investigation they found one of our guys at fault for telling him a frequency change was approved (to contact the controlling entity for that airspace) but didn't implicitly state to contact them by name. We had a F-18 that was using vfr (see and avoid) and he decided he wanted to see how close he could get to another plane that was on final, and stated that. One of ours got busted for not telling him to 'maintain visual separation'. Again should be covered under VFR rules, he still got a piece of the blame. And its not a small matter usually. Incident reports are required to be reported to both the FAA and to Big Navy, are available to every air traffic control facility that cares to read about it, etc. At that point in my time of the Navy I was looking to get out and the last thing I wanted was to lose my 'ticket' and get revocated (legal blackballing by the Navy and FAA to never be allowed to control again) because I chose to go along with the ignorant crowd cause I know how well 'I ignored the rules cause someone told me it'd be ok' works at Navy legal. And sadly no, they weren't O-1s. They all took this billet as part of some check-in-the-box for promotion to get their own commands someday the way they tell it. One was an O-2, the rest were 0-3 and the CO was an 0-4. It was a conclave of NFOs and it was crazy watching them tackle problems. The solution they came up with eventually was to make sure our Marine pilot was always on watch for the busy stuff, or to constantly call him for his opinion. He was always right there with us though rolling his eyes and standing up for common sense. EDIT: Just remembered another idiot story that further illustrates this junk. We had a H-60 in the fuel pit at the end of the taxiway. One of the ET's is going out to the LSO cart to do some techno-thing, and decides to cross next to the refueling helo. She calls up the guy on ground and he just says 'approved'. The ET then turns off all the lights on her vehicle (this is at night) and heads straight for the 60. The line guys doing the fueling are waving their arms like crazy and she came within feet of having her truck become a convertible according to the pilots and crew. She has her airfield drivers license suspended. The controller's ground qualification was taken away because he didn't tell her to 'utilize caution', in other words 'dont plow into the helo in front of you and kill yourself'. And legally speaking and as a controller I agree he did the wrong thing... but who the hell shuts off their lights at night and does that? The controller was given 'the opportunity to re-classify' and last I saw he works at the chapel. Blackchamber fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Jan 29, 2013 |
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Jan 29, 2013 21:28
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We had a ET that needed to drive onto the airfield and to the LSO shack at night. The ground controller who was busy watching Stargate or something isn't paying attention and just blindly approves the request. To get where the tech needed to go she had to cut close to the Helo hot-fueling site and decides that it'd be a good idea to turn off all the lights on the truck and the orange strobe and head straight for the 60 in the pit. One of the linemen sees her coming and waves her away and from their account she was inches away from driving a chop-top. Lost her airfield license for that (guy on ground got his qual pulled too). I still cant figure out why the hell you'd turn off all your lights before trying to cross next to a helo. Still makes me scratch my head. This isn't about one person specifically. We had a guy get drunk pier-side at the beer tent and dragged to his rack. He gets naked and sneaks out of the berthing and its forcibly returned and someone is assigned to watch the door so it doesnt happen again. We leave port in the morning and about a day after that people come looking for him because he's missed his watch. Manoverboard is called and guy is nowhere to be found. The ship is searched top to bottom and its suggested that his chief had ripped his rear end open the day we left for his drunken naked antics and the dude might of jumped off the back of the ship. The ship is turned around and we are about 2 days into a search and rescue operation now, and guy hasnt been seen in over 3 days. This isn't about him either, dude had problems and what happened is sad and there is nothing good to be said for suicide. Skipper gets on the 1MC and offers head of the line privileges for anyone who finds him. First in chow line, first off the boat at every port, first in line for EVERYTHING and anything you want. Again this is 3 days into dude missing, the chiefs have already inventoried and carted all his stuff from his locker and his rack. The search goes on for like a week before we are forced to give up (the water is warm enough that survival time was based on sharks, not hypothermia). I swear there was at least 10 people an hour til about when the search ended knocking on our berthing door asking if they could search there and check his rack. I get it, its a very nice reward if you find him. Seriously though, after 3 or 4 days of looking for this guy did people really think that everyone had been just too lazy to throw back the curtains on his rack? Like they'd find him curled up in there playing the ships best game of hide-n-seek?
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May 31, 2013 20:39
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Scratch Monkey posted:I guess they never found him, huh? Sadly no. We ran an extremely thorough search and rescue operation but out there was a ton of garbage, a fridge for example, and lots of livestock. Apparently if cows die while being shipped as cargo they just dump the carcasses off the side, thus the shark thing I mentioned... warm water and free food. His rack was checked like 10 times before we started just slamming the door shut in people's faces. At first we let people check and acted like we were surprised nobody had thought to check there and welcomed them in, then we got sick of it because half of us were directly involved in the search effort and working long shifts and they were just waking us up at all hours.
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May 31, 2013 22:20
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DinosaurWarfare posted:Are all overboards pretty much suicides or are there duties which might regularly entail a good chance of falling into the drink? Manoverboard is a common thing. Usually its a chemlight some marine tossed off the side or floating trash that someone thinks looks like a body. Once in a great while its a float coat that got wet and sets off the signal beacon thing. I suspect the most common is the 'im awake and miserable im going to ruin everyone elses night too' false alarm. Genuine 'oops I fell' is hard to do though since theres a safety net of sorts in place on ships with flight decks and helopads. You'd have to be working on a plane with a wing really hanging out there.
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May 31, 2013 23:34
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We had one guy not come back from holiday leave and the command kept trying to get a hold of him. His cell phone had been shut off but I guess at some point he had contacted a friend or two at the command and assured them he'd be back. A few days later he shows up and he tells everyone that his car had broken down on the trip back and since his car was a piece of crap most everyone bought it. Something wasn't right though, I guess the command was still hassling him for not contacting them and being basically awol for a bit so were in the process of drumming up charges against him. Well he wasn't liking that prospect and decided to use the CO's open door policy to admit that while on leave he decided to go do "heavy drugs" (his words) and the real reason he was late coming back and dodging their calls was he was afraid that after the holiday they were going to do a command sweep urinalysis and he figured that he'd get out of it by not being there and by the time the next time he'd have to piss again they'd of been out of his system. Ballsy. Of course the CO's open door policy isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card or something and they basically shift gears and start nailing this dude to the wall to set an example. While he's waiting for his discharge he still has to come to work under heavy supervision and he tells us can't believe that he got in trouble when he turned himself in.
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Jun 1, 2013 18:40
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I don't even remember seeing any portholes on the ship I did my deployment on. And the officer's mess, chief's mess, and the regular galley were all pretty much middle of the ship with the berthings being the closest things to the skin. There were tiny windows in some of the outermost hatches but that was about it. What kind of ship was this guy on you figure?
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May 31, 2015 03:16
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I'm going to go against the grain and say the kid should be fine going MP or whatever. There are tons of bright (and stupid) people in the rates that require high ASVAB scores, and thats a ton of competition especially when the advancement rate is low. I never would have cut it as a Marine myself on account of I was/am a lazy fat rear end but I often thought after meeting Marines that even if I had done the same job I did in the Navy for the Marines I'd of been some sort of super genius in comparison and got promoted by merely not being a huge gently caress-up. Tell him don't get brainwashed, get in and enjoy the view as a guy passing through, and get out and use the GI bill to do something.
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May 23, 2016 15:59
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Internet Wizard posted:No, because not only will you be surrounded by idiots, your chain of command are idiots. They're the type of idiot that loved being surrounded by fellow morons they kept signing up for more of it, so they could pass down their hallowed traditions of treating junior Marines like crap and rigid adherence to regulations that do not now nor have ever actually existed. Thump! posted:I agree, joining the military in general is a poor life decision. yeah show me a command that isn't this way.
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May 23, 2016 16:31
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The Navy has its share of people too invested in uniform regs. There was an rear end in a top hat who gave me a uniform inspection everyday. And it wasn't because I came to work like a bag of rear end it was just his power trip and ocd thing, he spent almost the entire day at work shining his boots, again everyday. I got fed up with it and started playing to the regs too. Air Traffic Controllers are by regulation allowed to wear aviator style sunglasses at all times except for in formation, including indoors. So I bought the cheapest ugly pair I could. I also stole his seat and refused to move whenever he left the room because there's another reg for saving seats called 'swiping' where your seat is saved only if you brush your hand along the chair and say swipe. Eventually he just left me alone.
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May 24, 2016 01:47
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Kung Fu Fist gently caress posted:wanna read that reg evil_bunnY posted:The hero we need I went looking for it last night, but I haven't been in the Navy in a few years and I don't have the benefit of having the pub library down the hall anymore. I know the sunglasses thing is covered in the 80T-114 and I think the swiping thing is another atc or amphib atc pub. The 114 also states that ACs work hours are limited to 8 hour shifts not to exceed 10 which actually became an issue on our deployment because they want us to match the 12 hour OS work shifts. When someone first showed me the swipe reg I laughed because it meant at some point someone got butthurt enough about losing their seat all the time that they submitted something official about it. The idiot was me (as per the usual) eventually because if any of you recall Navy medical put something out about the amount of caffeinated coffee you could drink if you had a flight status and at the time I had a huge energy drinking habit that was 5 or 6 times the dose limit and they became killjoys.
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May 24, 2016 13:03
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not caring here posted:Basically it probably never happened to a significant degree, and if it did it was probably an isolated incident and someone got in trouble for it. Trotting my story out, didn't get my rear end kicked but my RDC slapped me in the hallway as I was walking out of the berthing/compartment. I was kind of 'wtf' about it because it was totally unexpected and not done as a punishment, I think he was just being an rear end and it went a bit farther than he intended. He and the other RDC got their ropes pulled and they got sent back to whatever training they get because the next division they got they got even more physically abusive and got reported or whatever. So yeah I guess that poo poo doesn't fly if you are willing to speak up.
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Sep 17, 2016 23:56
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Wait... Is this electro shock therapy being done by the actual quacks that are military doctors? This isn't outsourced at all?
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Apr 28, 2017 23:46
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| # ¿ May 7, 2024 11:51 |
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Viva Miriya posted:Do you think people might reconsider at all if they knew the scene of pain they'd be leaving behind in their wake. Been wondering that for 6 coming onto 7 years now. My gut says no but one could hope. No. I usually explain suicide is like a scale and one side is whatever mental issue you have and depression, pain, etc. and the other side is knowing all the people who care about you that would miss you. Sometimes one side weighs heavier. When I was on deployment I paid off all my debts and started setting money aside to pay for my own funeral because I didn't want my parents to have to. Luckily it swung back the other way. LingcodKilla posted:It’s a selfish act to the core so no. Really loving ignorant. at the date posted:A whole lot of suicide notes explicitly weigh the pain they know their suicide will cause, so you're absolutely wrong. Also gently caress off with this "suicide is selfish" poo poo, if you think for 10 seconds straight about it you'll probably come up with half a dozen common reasons for suicide that only an idiot would characterize as "selfish."
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Jan 11, 2018 20:38
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