A Lufthansa jet nearly collided with another plane at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Monday evening after an EgyptAir flight apparently veered into its path just as the plane headed down the runway.
The near miss was captured on audio recordings, revealing an air traffic controller communicating with the Lufthansa pilot, yelling “Cancel takeoff! Cancel takeoff plans!” as the two planes moved toward each other.
The pilot of the Lufthansa jet acknowledged as the plane rolled to a halt.
Lufthansa Flight 411, an Airbus 340 packed with 286 passengers and crew, was cleared for takeoff by air traffic control shortly before 7 p.m. Monday, according to a statement from Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen.
EgyptAir Flight 986, a Boeing 777, was issued instructions to taxi from the ramp area to the airfield for departure, but made a wrong turn, the statement said.
One of my all time favorite songs…and a great history lesson for people of all ages.
Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” was the subject of a final exam when I was in school. The test: to explain each historical reference in the song (in one sentence each). Good thing I know my history 🙂
Check out the video below…
For your reference, here are the lyrics:
Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnny Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, Television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe
Rosenbergs, H Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, The King And I, and The Catcher In The Rye
Eisenhower, Vaccine, England’s got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiov
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc
Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dacron
Dien Bien Phu Falls, Rock Around the Clock
Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn’s got a winning team
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland
Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev
Princess Grace, Peyton Place, Trouble in the Suez
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, Bridge On The River Kwai
Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball
Starkweather, Homicide, Children of Thalidomide
Buddy Holly, Ben Hur, Space Monkey, Mafia
Hula Hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go
U2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
Hemingway, Eichmann, Stranger in a Strange Land
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion
Lawrence of Arabia, British Beatle mania
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson
Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British Politician sex
J.F.K. blown away, what else do I have to say
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, Terror on the airline
Ayatollah’s in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan
Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal suicide
Foreign debts, homeless Vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shores, China’s under martial law
Rock and Roller cola wars, I can’t take it anymore
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning since the world’s been turning.
We didn’t start the fire
But when we are gone
It will still burn on, and on, and on, and on…
It appears that two men who were arrested at a JFK airport in New York planned to travel to Somalia to wage violent jihad, and also had expressed a willingness to commit violent acts in the United States.
Mohamed Mahmoud Alessa, 20, of North Bergen, New Jersey, and Carlos Eduardo Almonte, 24, of Elmwood Park, New Jersey, were taken into custody Saturday at John F. Kennedy International Airport. The two intended to take separate flights to Egypt on their way to Somalia “to join designated foreign terrorist organization al-Shabaab and wage violent jihad,” federal prosecutors said in a statement.
The two are charged with conspiring to kill, maim and kidnap people outside the United States, according to court documents.
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating five transmissions from the control tower at JFK Airport where tapes demonstrate that the child of an air traffic controller directed planes on a runway.
I understand that it was just in fun and that the kids only said a few words, but seriously? This definitely gets a WTF?!?!
An air traffic controller at one of the nation’s busiest airport was suspended after his young son was permitted to give radio instructions to pilots. NBC News has learned the controller at Kennedy Airport brought his daughter into the tower the next night.
The man’s daughter communicated with pilots twice, NBC News’ Tom Costello reports.
His young son had several quick exchanges with pilots. The recorded clips were played repeatedly across a variety of news outlets on Wednesday.
“This lapse in judgment not only violated FAA’s own policies, but common sense standards for professional conduct. These kinds of distractions are totally unacceptable,” FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt said in a statement. “This kind of behavior does not reflect the true caliber of our work force.”
Very sad day today as legendary news broadcaster Walter Cronkite has died at the age of 92.
In all that he did, he truly lived up to the title of”the most trusted man in America”.
I am too young to remember the great moments in history that he covered, but I have seen the video and can only imagine what it was like to hear him live. There may never be another like him.
If you have any memories of Walter Cronkite, please feel free to share.
Walter Cronkite, an iconic CBS News journalist who defined the role of anchorman for a generation of television viewers, died Friday at the age of 92, his family said.
Mr. Cronkite anchored the “CBS Evening News” from 1962 to 1981, at a time when television became the dominant medium of the United States. He figuratively held the hand of the American public during the civil rights movement, the space race, the Vietnam war, and the impeachment of Richard Nixon. During his tenure, network newscasts were expanded to 30 minutes from 15.
In a review of Mr. Cronkite’s autobiography in 1997, the former New York Times columnist Tom Wicker wrote:
When John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas in 1963, Walter Cronkite stayed on the air for the Columbia Broadcasting System for countless hours. His performance that weekend helped pull together a nation stricken with grief and was a signal event in television’s evolution into the national nervous system.
When Mr. Cronkite came back from Vietnam after the Tet offensive of 1968, he concluded on national television that the war had become no better than a stalemate. Hearing that, President Lyndon Johnson told associates, ”If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” And he had. When Mr. Cronkite asked Robert Kennedy, then a senator from New York, whether he would run for President in 1968, Kennedy turned the tables: he proposed that Mr. Cronkite should run for the Senate. Mr. Cronkite refused, but the idea reflected polls showing that a journalist — a television journalist at that — had become the most trusted man in America.
Like him or not, Michael Jackson was a major force in the music industry and pop culture for nearly 50 years.
He was probably one of the main influencers of the musicians who have created their music to, and that we’ve listened to, over the past 30+ years.
Some people in my generation…well I’m already hearing that this is their JFK Assassination moment, or Pearl Harbor, or for those younger, their 9/11. Yes, these events were much larger in scale and importance, but it demonstrates the stature Michael Jackson had. At his peak, you could arguably say that he was the most famous person on the planet and many wouldn’t dispute this. He was “The King of Pop”.
Jackson has been accused of some terrible things and frankly, has been a “freak” for much of the past two decades. And I’ll admit, I didn’t personally care for him, his persona, the things he was accused of doing or his music (after Thriller) but this is a MAJOR news story worldwide.
We’ll see how the media covers this over the next week or two. Eventually, Kim Jong Il, Afghanistan and Iran will be back as the top stories. For now, RIP Michael Jackson.
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