Grieving family speaks out about air traffic controllers - New York News | NYC Breaking News

Grieving family speaks out about air traffic controllers

Jeremy Clarke and Danielle Granahan knew they would get married from the moment they met in April 2006, and so did Jeremey's mom, Bea Clarke.
 
"We were over the moon," said Mrs. Clarke. "We were so excited, and of course when we met Danielle, we couldn't wait for them to get married."
 
Jeremy, however, who had moved to the states from New Zealand, wanted to get his career in order before getting hitched.
 
"He always wanted to go flying," said Clarke. " He always wanted to pursue his flying career."
 
Aside from being next to Danielle, it was flying over the Hudson, where Jeremy felt most comfortable, giving New York City visitors a tour they'd never forget. But Jeremy, always worried about one thing.
 
"Jeremy was concerned about flying in that area being so congested," Granahan said .
 
Jeremey's fear became reality, and Bea Clarke received the worse news of her life.
 
"It was 4:15 in the morning," Clarke said. "I was asleep and my daughter rang me and told me that Jeremy had gone down."

On August 8, 2009, Jeremy's tour helicopter, carrying 5 passengers, collided with a small airplane, over the Hudson River. The plane took off from Tetterboro airport, and carried the pilot and three other passengers. All nine people aboard both aircrafts died.
 
"His chief pilot said 'Jeremy was a really great pilot and a really great man', " Granahan said. "And I said Jeremy is. And he said 'I'm so sorry, but I don't think that anyone could have survived'."

Jeremy's fiancee and mother have never spoken publicly about the crash until they saw Fox 5's news report about sleeping controllers inside the Westchester County Airport.
 
"Seeing the footage of the air traffic controllers sleeping, on their computers, texting, playing games, I think it just shocked me so much," Granahan said.
 
Fox 5 News uncovered allegations about Westchester Air Traffic Controllers sleeping on the job and other unprofessional conduct, when one of their co-workers came forward to expose it all.
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"It poses a extreme threat to public safety," said the informant. "If someone's not paying attention, 100% attention, between separating arriving and departing air traffic, you could have a near miss, or worse."
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The information uncovered at Westchester tower had nothing to do with the fatal Hudson crash, but Jeremy's fiancee and mother worry about another fatal accident happening in this area.
 
"Something has got to be done for the safety of those other pilots and passengers," Clarke said. "It just made me, as a parent, very angry," Clarke said.
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Mrs. Clark's anger heightened after an extensive N-T-S-B report from Jeremey's 2009 Hudson, mid-air crash, concluded that FAA controllers at New Jersey's Teterboro airport were also heavily distracted at the time of Jeremy's accident. The report stated that "The local controller's non pertinent telephone conversations distracted him from his air traffic control duties."
 
The NTSB also put some of the blame for the crash on the pilots, but attorneys Joseph Augustine and Justin Green still sued and recently settled with the federal government and other defendants on behalf of Jeremy's family.
 
"The NTSB took to task the air traffic controller in large part because of the personal phone call that the controller was having at the time that he should have been assisting the fixed wing aircraft," said Augustine.
 
Just moments before the crash the Teterboro controller was talking on the phone to a female friend who also works at the airport about a cat that was hit and killed on the run way.
 
"I don't know if you would call it, just joking around, but that's what he was doing when he was supposed to be controlling the piper airplane," Attorney Green said.
 
The NTSB report also cited the control tower supervisor for leaving the airport while on duty to "run a personal errand". Two others were on a break. Only two of five FAA controllers were actually inside the Teterboro tower at the time of the crash and one of them was on a personal phone call.
 
"He's unsupervised, and taking his attention away from controlling airplanes," Green said.
 
Both the Teterboro supervisor running personal errands and the controller on a personal call, kept their jobs, though the FAA transferred the controller to another airport in Newport News, Virginia.
 
"I don't understand how nine people can die and he can still be allowed to keep his job, because my whole life has changed," Granahan said. "We're never going to get married. We're never going to have the family we talked about. We're never going to spend our lives together.
 
The FAA sent Fox 5 News the following statement "... immediately after the Hudson mid-air collision in August 2009, the FAA began working on airspace changes to separate low-altitude local flights from flights transiting the river airspace...the FAA also initiated disciplinary actions against several air traffic employees and reassigned two employees to positions in smaller facilities."
Fox 5 News reached out to the controller on the personal call that day, but has not received a return phone call. The supervisor on duty the day of the accident says he can not comment.
 
On a separate note, it has been over four months since Fox 5 News exposed the problem of sleeping controllers at Westchester airport and the FAA has not yet released the results of their investigation.