Episode Report Card M. Giant: A- | 221 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT Class Reunion, Without the Class
By M. Giant | Season 7 | Episode 2 | Aired on 2009.01.11
The Sunrise International flight touches down at JFK. The Global Air/Skies flight does the same. Neither pilot sees anything amiss, like a big fucking plane getting closer through their side windows. Too foggy, I guess. The imminent collision is more than clear on the real-time radar screen in Tony's hideout, however. At the last second, Tony speaks into his headset: "GSA 117, pull up. Safety alert, pull up!" The Global Air/Skies pilot grabs at the controls just as the other plane becomes visible through the fog. The plane lifts back off the runway, passing over the taxiing Sunrise flight and missing it by mere feet, while scaring the crap out of his own helpless, innocent passengers. The Sunrise pilot, by the way, just looks up curiously as though he's in an automated car wash.
Watching from their bunker, the helpless air traffic controllers sigh in relief. Moments later, their screens all come back online, and Tony calls the supervisor back. "That was just a warning shot. Whatever we do next will not be a demonstration." The supervisor again asks, "What do you people want?" Tony's answer: "You'll find out soon enough." It's 9:10:32.
Fair point: that was quite a demonstration. And not to belittle the vital work that air traffic controllers do, but I would almost think it would be harder to purposely crash one plane into a specific other plane than to keep them apart. Wouldn't Tony and Masters have been more likely to have put GSA 117 into the path of another plane on approach if they didn't know what they were doing? At least they could count on the utter reliability of the DC-NY air corridor, along which I am sure flights are never cancelled or delayed.