A laugh for your Tuesday

I’ve heard other ATC traffic, and some aren’t so forgiving. I really like this ATC didn’t instantly become offended, but even complemented the pilot for his wit. I wouldn’t doubt others would have reported this for investigation. Cudos to this ‘normal’ ATC!

quote:

Originally posted by ftttu:
I’ve heard other ATC traffic, and some aren’t so forgiving. I really like this ATC didn’t instantly become offended, but even complemented the pilot for his wit. I wouldn’t doubt others would have reported this for investigation. Cudos to this ‘normal’ ATC!

Just yesterday I called Santa Barbara approach asking for VFR flight following to Santa Paula. Lady controller came back and asked me to repeat the call sign. I did. She came back again, said I got stepped on and asked me to repeat the call sign again. This happened a couple times. Then she said, “IF YOU ARE NOT GOING TO SANTA PAULA, THIS TRANSMISSION IS ***NOT*** for you. Say again the call sign.” After the few seconds it took to stop laughing, I said, “You just made my day. <call sign>”. She thanked me for my patience. I thanked her for hers. I hope she got as big a laugh out of it as I did.

ETA: Everybody has a bad day once in a while, but I’ve generally found controllers to be awfully forgiving as long as the offender is just dumb and not a jerk on top of it.

If he had a visual, I guess the stealthy shit wasn’t working.

One day many years ago we were enroute from Grand Junction, Colorado to Denver, at something like 23,000 ft. Center advised us of traffic at 12 o'clock, 20 miles, opposite direction flight of two B-1 bombers 1,000 feet above. Then shortly after that advised us the traffic was at 10 miles. My first officer pushed the mic button and said he had his camera ready, looking for traffic. Center replied, "In that case, turn 1 degree left, vectors". We split right down between the two bombers and had a great view!

Most controllers really are great.

^ That would be quite the sight

Back in the late 1990's I was working as a contract software developer at BellSouth in the Birmingham AL area. Worked late, one Christmas Eve, to get everything wrapped up so I could take a few extra days off.

Got a late start, heading home to Florida. 2:00am or so, Christmas morning, beautiful weather, the V-Tail was purring along, smooth ride at 7,000', very little traffic, radio was quiet most of the time, until I get a call from Jacksonville Center for a hand-off: "8824M, slow moving traffic at your eleven o'clock, 8,000', opposite direction. Looks like a sleigh and eight, no, make that nine, reindeer. Contact Tallahassee approach <frequency>, Merry Christmas."

Me: "Traffic in sight (I lied), Merry Christmas to you."

I wonder if the flight of F-35 were monitoring ATC and got a good laugh out of that too.

ATC got rhythm