A not very close call over Long Island got tense on Tuesday when a controller at New York Center had to repeatedly request a Spirit Airlines flight heading to Boston to turn off a converging course with Air Force One, which had the president and first lady aboard. The controller seemed to have trouble getting the Spirit crew’s attention after ordering them to change course by 20 degrees to maintain a generous clearance with the 747. After getting an acknowledgment on the fourth of the increasingly strident calls, the controller calls attention to the traffic 8 miles to the Spirit A321’s left, adding “I’m sure you can see who it is.” He further admonished the pilot monitoring to “pay attention” and “get off the iPad.”
If the Air Force One crew had any concerns they didn’t express them as they pulled the Jumbo Jet to cruising altitude for the transatlantic flight to the U.K., where the Trumps were guests of King Charles and Prime Minister Kier Starmer. That 8-mile separation was maintained and both aircraft got to their destinations safely. Spirit later issued a statement saying safe separation was maintained at all times.
Is this controller an aspiring FAA administrator nominee? In normal times this controller’s gambit would be ludicrous. These days? Truth is stranger than fiction.
Any time AF 1 is being worked by ATC, the controller working it is supposed to have a supervisor plugged in and monitoring. Sups, wishing to avoid any criticism of the handling of AF 1, will occasionally go with the , “if a little bit is good, more is better”, choice. Might have been a sup making the decision. In any case, Spirit needed to listen up.