Latest news with #airtrafficcontroller
Daily Mail
31-07-2025
- Daily Mail
Parents 'abandon son, 10, and leave him at Barcelona Airport because his passport had expired'
A couple abandoned their 10-year-old son at a Spanish airport to go on holiday after realising his passport had expired. The parents reportedly left their child alone at Barcelona's El Prat international airport on Wednesday and arranged for a relative to pick him up so they wouldn't miss their flight. The incident was reported by an air traffic coordinator at the airport, who made a TikTok video condemning the schoolboy's parents. According to the woman, whose video has been watched over 300,000 times on the social platform, said the child was forbidden from flying because his passport had expired and also needed a visa. But the couple's plan to make their holiday backfired after airport staff found the minor on his own and alerted the police. 'He told them that his parents were on the plane on their way to their home country, going on vacation', the air traffic controller said. The couple were then located and taken to the airport's police station where their son was. It is unclear if they were arrested. 'I'm an air traffic controller, and as a controller, I've seen a lot of things, but this has been completely surreal', the TikToker went on to say. 'I'm amazed to think how parents could possibly leave their ten-year-old son at the terminal because he can't travel due to documentation issues. They call a relative, who might take half an hour, an hour, or three hours, and they calmly board the flight and leave the child behind', she added. 'As a mother, I'm amazed'. The incident comes after a couple abandoned their baby at the check-in desk in Israel's Ben-Gurion airport before trying to board a flight to Brussels back in 2023. The pair had arrived at the airport in Tel Aviv with Belgian passports and tickets for a Ryanair flight to the Belgian capital, but did not have a boarding pass for their child. When they were told by airport staff that they couldn't board without purchasing a separate ticket, they simply left the child in its pushchair at the check-in desk and proceeded to head for the security terminal. Shocking video footage showed the moment gobsmacked airport staff noticed the lone pushchair and pulled back a blanket, exposing the abandoned baby the clip, one member of staff peels back a cover that had been draped over the pushchair, which was sat on a conveyor belt at the check-in desk. Audible gasps of surprise are heard when the staff realise a baby has been left alone in the pushchair with its parents nowhere in sight. Staff at the security check-in refused to allow the pair through, forcing them to return to collect the infant before calling the police who descended on Terminal 1 and promptly arrested them. The pair were taken in for questioning.
Bloomberg
31-07-2025
- General
- Bloomberg
A Single Air Controller Oversaw Helicopters, Planes During Fatal DC Crash
A single air traffic controller was overseeing both planes and helicopters in the crowded airspace above Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport during the midair crash in January that killed 67 people, investigators said. The second day of an investigative hearing into the collision kicked off Thursday with the US National Transportation Safety Board focusing on how air traffic was managed and the control tower staffed at the busy hub serving the nation's capital.
Daily Mail
07-07-2025
- Daily Mail
The lies that got Erin Patterson sacked from her air traffic control job as ANOTHER tainted food claim emerges... and the insulting three-word nickname colleagues gave the 'weird' triple murderer
Erin Patterson was branded 'crazy' by colleagues before being fired from her job as an air traffic controller for lying about her working hours. Patterson, 50, was found guilty on three counts of murder and one of attempted murder on Monday after serving her in-laws beef Wellingtons poisoned with death cap mushrooms at her Leongatha home on July 29, 2023. In her late 20's, she had worked at Airservices Australia and trained with traffic control course number four in Melbourne between February and November 2001. The murderer, whose maiden name was Scutter before marrying Simon Patterson in 2007, was secretly nicknamed 'Scutter the Nutter' among her training group. 'Something was not quite right, she was a bit strange,' a coursemate who asked not to be named told The Herald Sun. The source described Patterson as 'super secretive' about her life, claimed she was also dubbed 'crazy Erin' by her peers and that 'she would say some weird off-the-cuff things … she wasn't a nice person, she just wasn't someone you connected to'. Another colleague, who had managed Patterson, said she was counselled about her disheveled appearance and that there had been concerns raised by a different workmate that she had placed a blade from a pencil sharpener in a banana. 'Again, no one could prove that, but she had a way about her that was off-putting,' the colleague told The Australian. Patterson worked in the Southern Flight Information Region, based in Melbourne, from February 12, 2001, until November 28, 2002. She was fired after Airservices Australia management began to suspect she was leaving work early while claiming the time. CCTV from the car park confirmed management's suspicions, but Patterson lied until she was showed the incriminating footage. The former colleague described Patterson as 'manipulative', 'aggressive' and branded her a 'pathological liar'. It's understood Patterson 'wrapped [men] around her little finger' and had been pursued by several staff members. Not long after Patterson left the job in 2002, she was slapped with a long-term licence ban after driving drunk and fleeing the scene of a car crash. On Monday, a jury found Patterson guilty to Ian Wilkinson's attempted murder, then his wife Heather's murder, followed by the murders of Gail and Don Patterson. The 50-year-old mother served death cap mushroom-laced beef Wellington parcels to her estranged in-laws. Within hours of the verdict, the Supreme Court released dozens of pieces of evidence that helped prosecutors secure the conviction. This included photos showing remnants of beef Wellington leftovers as they were tested by toxicologists, after police found them inside a bin at Patterson's home. A video of Patterson discharging herself from Leongatha Hospital, minutes after she had arrived, was also released and showed her speaking to hospital staff at the entrance. Images of Patterson at Leongatha Hospital, after she took herself there, revealed a pink phone police say they never recovered. Prosecutors said this was Patterson's primary phone in 2023 and claimed she had used it to find death cap mushrooms online. Photos of yellow mushrooms on scales were released, along with footage of Patterson getting rid of a food dehydrator at Koonwarra tip. The Sunbeam dehydrator, which she bought three months before the lunch, was found to contain death cap mushroom toxins. The jury's guilty verdicts came seven days after they had been sent away to deliberate and 11 weeks into the trial in Morwell, regional Victoria. Patterson faces a sentence of life in prison for the three murders and one attempted murder. The families of the murder victims, who died in hospital days after eating lunch at Patterson's home, were absent for the verdicts, as was sole lunch survivor Ian Wilkinson. Homicide Squad Detective Dean Thomas said the families had asked for privacy. 'It's very important that we remember ... that three people have died and we've had a person that nearly died and was seriously injured as a result and that has led to these charges,' he said outside court. 'I ask that we acknowledge those people and not forget them.'
ABC News
26-06-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Sussan Ley gets personal at the press club, government side-steps specifics on Iran
Welcome back to your weekly federal politics update, where Brett Worthington gets you up to speed on the happenings from Parliament House. Sussan Ley is an unlikely Liberal leader. A grandmother and a former aerial musterer from country Australia, she's hardly the kind of figure her party has turned to before. Given the state the party finds itself in — repudiated by voters at successive elections, having recorded a record low primary vote and been rejected by voters in the major cities — the fact she's not like those who came before her is an asset. But let's not suggest for a single second that she's not versed in handling old boys' clubs. "I was not taken seriously in pilot training. I was nearly always the only woman in the group," she told the National Press Club this week, speaking about her formative years after finishing school. "The privileged boys, whose parents bankrolled their lessons, attracted more street cred than me." Ley is no stranger to the Liberal Party or federal parliament, of which she's a two decade veteran. But she now faces the task of introducing herself to the broader public. Ley spoke of growing up the daughter of a British spy, of later living in a bedsit under a bridge and then later working as an air traffic controller before taking flight mustering livestock in small planes. "I was told I couldn't get a crop-dusting rating because the chemicals would damage my unborn children. I was yelled at, hit on, and then ignored," she said. As a mother raising a family, she started university at 30, obtained a masters and later worked for the Australian Tax Office. She spoke of understanding the pain that comes with coercion and control. "Because I have felt that pain too," she told the press club. "I understand what it is like when you blame yourself for the actions of others. Because I have blamed myself too." The whole point of sharing her story is to make plain the extent to which change has come to the Liberal Party. She argues her story is Australia's story. Ley discussed the former prime ministers that she'd spoken with since becoming leader. But she never mentioned Peter Dutton's name, instead only referring to him as "my predecessor". She offered a stark assessment of the party's failures in recent elections, having lost more than 40 seats across the parliament since 2019. Liberals now only hold two of 43 inner city seats and seven of 45 outer metro seats. "We didn't just lose. We got smashed. Totally smashed," she said of May's federal election. "What we as the Liberal Party presented to the Australian people was comprehensively rejected." When the parliament returns next month, the contrast will be stark. In the House of Representatives, just six of the 28 MPs in the Liberal ranks will be women. Insisting she was "agnostic" about the mechanism to boost female representation, she vowed she would be a "zealot" in seeking the outcome. "I'm the first woman in my position and I don't believe anyone in my position has had the resolve that I have right here, right now," she said. "Watch this space." The week started with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese facing criticism for his government's response to US strikes on Iran at the weekend. News broke around 10am on Sunday. Just shy of three hours later, the prime minister's office issued a statement from a government spokesperson, which did little more than note the events that had happened. By Monday morning, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong was blitzing breakfast TV and radio to offer a ringing endorsement of President Donald Trump's actions. Wong later appeared with Albanese after a meeting of the cabinet's National Security Committee (NSC), where the two faced questions about what Australia knew before the US dropped bombs on Iran's nuclear facilities. If you'd been taking a swig of something hard every time Albanese said it was a "unilateral action by the United States", well, you wouldn't be standing for very long. An at-times testy Albanese appeared frustrated when asked about intelligence that had been shared with his government, or what had been discussed at the NSC meeting. The press conference also highlighted the sensitivities around the perception of the prime minister's relationship with Trump. In the UK, a senior government minister confirmed his country was notified about the US strikes on Iran before they played out. Clearly, that wasn't extended to Australia — not that the prime minister was willing to admit that. It's worth noting, not even the Coalition was criticising Albanese for not knowing about the strike in advance, yet the PM seemed unwilling to concede his lack of awareness. The Coalition was quick to offer a ringing endorsement of the strikes at the weekend, and later welcomed the government offering its support. Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie also urged for greater transparency about US military operations on Australian shores. That came into focus after the government consistently brushed off questions over whether the highly sensitive military facilities at Pine Gap or North West Cape provided intelligence to the US for its bombing raids. Hastie argued that greater transparency would offer the public a better understanding of the US alliance. It's also the kind of comments parties like to make in opposition, only to completely disregard when in government. Albanese could have raised such matters directly with Trump had he decided to go to the NATO summit in The Hague. As Australia is not a NATO member, the government's plan had always been to send Defence Minister Richard Marles to the meeting. Albanese toyed with going after his planned meeting with Trump in Canada failed to eventuate. But the PM ultimately decided against it, with Marles going as originally planned. It was a classic damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. In not going, Albanese faced Coalition criticism that he was letting Australia down by not meeting with Trump. Yet if he'd gone, the words Airbus Albo would have been quick to slip off the lips of those who argue the prime minister spends too much time abroad. As for when he will meet Trump, the PM says that's still being worked out. Advocates of the AUKUS partnership want Albanese to get in a room with Trump to lock down his support of the military pact. It wasn't that long ago the Coalition was railing against what it dubbed a bloated bureaucracy. "You don't have to have a bigger team to have a better team," then-shadow treasurer Angus Taylor would often say. Having been delivered a electoral landslide, Albanese has found himself offering the Coalition a taste of its own medicine. Convention has dictated that an opposition has around 21 per cent of the staff that the government has. That meant Labor had around 500 staff in the last parliament and the opposition had around 100. But not anymore, with Albanese this week telling Ley he planned to cut back opposition staffing allocations, much like he did to the crossbench after the 2022 election. The Coalition says it was told it would be cut another 20 per cent (20 positions), with the PM also cutting 10 positions from his own side of politics. The opposition says it's a blatant attempt to limit accountability. You'll be shocked to hear there's been no mention about not needing bigger teams to have better teams.
Daily Mail
21-05-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
Air traffic controller raises safety concerns about Newark Airport
The air traffic controller at the heart of this alarming report works from the Philadelphia facility overseeing Newark Liberty International Airport. Her fears stem from a cascade of recent technical failures that have left planes unmonitored mid-flight. She was the only controller on duty during a May 9 radar blackout that lasted 90 seconds - an incident that left her unable to track four active aircraft. 'It's happening again,' she recalled thinking, describing the moment all flight tracking systems abruptly failed. The trauma of such events has pushed her to take leave and undergo a psychological evaluation. She recounted another disturbing episode on April 28, when a separate power outage lasted a minute and a half. These lapses are not isolated: she estimates there have been at least a dozen technology-related failures in the past ten months. 'Do I think it's safe to fly from or to the airport?' she wrote. 'Let me put it like this: I deliberately avoid my own airport when booking flights, even if the alternatives are more expensive and less convenient.' Her chilling personal decision underscores a deep distrust in the system she once helped operate. The controller attributes many of Newark's problems to a controversial move last summer, when operations were shifted from Long Island to Philadelphia's Terminal Radar Approach Control. This change, intended to streamline the region's air traffic management, backfired badly, she claims. 'The relocation... has jeopardized our ability to direct planes at America's second busiest airport,' she explained. Staffing levels plummeted from 30 to 24, while flight volumes remained unchanged. She believes at least 40 trained personnel are needed to safely manage the traffic. She also criticized the FAA for relying on outdated infrastructure instead of modernizing its systems. According to her, the agency installed underground wiring to feed data from Long Island to Philadelphia, creating 'one big feed relay' that frequently overloads. 'Since the move to Philadelphia, every single one of my coworkers has experienced a technical malfunction or communications failure.' The pattern has left her and her colleagues with little confidence in the reliability of their equipment. . Her account, published in The Times, suggests that systemic issues - not just isolated incidents - are threatening flight safety. Despite issuing repeated internal concerns, the controller said little has been done to address the risks. Her words were not intended simply to highlight poor working conditions, but to deliver a stark warning. 'If the authorities don't fix this mess immediately, people will pay with their lives.' The statement carries extra weight given her years of experience and her decision to avoid flying from Newark entirely. Her testimonial presents a rare and raw look into the psychological toll of safeguarding America's skies amid a failing system. Newark Liberty, once a trusted hub, now faces a crisis of confidence from within.
