Watch the Skies, Not the TV

What the hell, man?! What is wrong with air traffic controllers these days? We had one of these beacons of life and death falling asleep at the helm earlier this week, and now we have one getting busted for watching a movie on the job. A movie?!

For the purpose of this article, I will now take a deep breath and put my anger aside. This is because at heart I’m a man of comedy, and it’s just too funny to consider what movie this air traffic controller was watching while he was supposed to be performing his supremely important duties.

Let’s get the easy jokes out of the way first: yes, it could have been porn. Since the job is so high stress, it’s even conceivable that it was kinky porn. Being of the utmost moral fibre, I’m not one to cast aspersions where there is no proof. But I’ve not seen or heard from any media outlet just what movie the guy was watching, which leads me to believe that some kind of anal Olympics may have been involved.

I like to think that he was watching a comedy. Maybe he’d just got into the point in The Hangover where they find a tiger in their hotel room and couldn’t turn away from the hijinx. Or maybe he was checking out a classic, guffawing at the “Puttin’ on the Ritz” scene of Young Frankenstein. I heard someone mention the possibility that he was watching Airplane!. That’s just silly.

It’s tough to imagine what kind of action film an air traffic controller might watch. Maybe he would go for the one that rings true to his life, Pushing Tin, which is of course about air traffic controllers (interesting factoid: the set of this bomb was where Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie met). Can I just say that it’s cool such a movie exists? Every occupation needs its own Cocktail.

Because such an occupation must be lonely, I’m inclined to believe he was watching a romance, and was so engrossed in an ideal world that he stopped paying attention and got busted. Poor guy. Maybe he was tearing up at the Shakespearesque death pact between Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams in The Notebook. Or maybe he was letting Eat, Pray, Love teach him how to let go of bad relationships without it hindering future relationships.

You never know what surprises people’s taste in film will provide you with. The most esteemed intellectual might call some Three Stooges romp their favourite film, and some stoners get off on the three hour snore that is Gandhi. That’s why this has been a fun article, if a little fanciful—we all know he was watching porn.