Nothing against furries, but this doesn’t strike me as the time or place…
Pilots frustrate ATC at Washington National Airport
Audio has been posted online from recent air traffic control interactions at Washington National Airport (DCA). The claim is that this involves pilots of two separate planes, both regional jets (flying on behalf of American Eagle and Delta Connection). In the roughly 20-second clip posted online:
- You can hear one voice say “meow meow”
- Then you hear another voice (presumably the air traffic controller?) say “you guys need to be professional pilots”
- The cat person then starts saying “meow meow meow meow,” and then another voice is heard saying “ruff ruff ruff ruff”
- That same voice as above is then heard saying “this is why you still fly an RJ”
- There’s then another “meow meow”
- Then that person says “it was funny the first five minutes, thank you very much”
You can listen to the air traffic control audio for yourself below.
What on earth is actually going on in this interaction?!
There’s not much context for this incident, since it’s just a short clip. So while the claim is that it was pilots making those noises and that the other person is the controller, I obviously can’t personally vouch for that, since voices are “anonymous.”
Air traffic controllers and pilots do sometimes have fun on frequency, and it’s nice to see that. However, if these pilots were actually doing this for an extended period of time on frequency, then that’s problematic. After all, even if we take distractions out of the equation, it uses up the frequency, and could step on transmissions from other pilots.
Furthermore, not to be too much of a party pooper, but I also feel like it’s in bad taste to do this in DCA of all places, where a regional jet crashed early last year on final, killing everyone onboard. It’s just concerning that even after the pilots were told to be professional, they kept going with it.
Why these pilots were so interested in making animal noises remains a mystery…
Bottom line
Two pilots reportedly made some strange noises on an air traffic control frequency at DCA, as they “meowed” and “ruffed.” It’s one thing to be funny for a moment, but it sounds like this went on for some time, and even when they were asked to stop, they didn’t immediately do so. This seems really unprofessional to me, so I’m curious if there’s any context I’m missing…
What do you make of this strange ATC interaction?