LaGuardia. Nightmare fuel.

Get out of your armchair and stop second guessing the controller before I rip the lips off yo’ face.

I’ve seen the video — I watched it once, and that was enough. Too much knowing that I just witnessed violent death.

This nearly happened to me once, except it wasn’t a Regional Jet; it was a Cessna. So seeing this hits home because, there but for the grace of the gods went I.

As a tower controller there is really only one zone that is completely holy, and that is the runway. Granted I worked at a smaller airport without the type of airspace that surrounds LaGuardia. We had a lot more leeway in terms of what happened in the air versus what happened on the runway.

All control towers and airports are not the same. When you're in an area with Class B or C airspace, the rules in the air are quite a bit different than airspace surrounding a smaller airport.

But what does not change is the fact that the runway is sanctified, and MUST remain clear for airplanes to land or take off. Thus, the reason we say, “cleared to land” and “cleared for takeoff”. It literally means that the path of the runway is safe for you to blast off into the sky, or to plant your flying-machine back on the ground.

They say any landing you can walk away from is a good one. The pilot and copilot of the regional jet made a good landing, but as my old trainer used to say, “Two objects cannot occupy the same space at same time.”

I'm not going to comment on whatever the hell was going on because it really isn't my place. I haven’t listened to the recordings and I will not. I am NOT going to delve into the possibilities of “what if…” and how it “could've been better,” or any bullshit like that because it's useless, and it only serves to fuel the fire of the idiots (and I mean that in any way shape or form) who will look for any reason why the controller was at fault.

What I will say is that this sort of accident is every controllers nightmare.

Any collision in the ATC system is a serious situation. The controllers as a whole working for the FAA have been under immense amounts of pressure due to stress and staffing in all of the time that I worked there. In this century — and before, even — the lack of controllers on the job has been a serious issue.Mandatory overtime created a monster that doesn't show any signs of going away anytime soon. Fatigued and overworked people make mistakes, and the FAAs own research bears that out.

I hope the controller can take a medical retirement from the stress of this incident, but for some reason I doubt that the agency will allow it. In any case my sympathies live with the families of the pilots and with the controller at LaGuardia Tower.

And unless you worked the job for 20+ years you've got absolutely nothing to say, so shut the fuck up!