Two minutes after an air traffic controller cleared a private plane for takeoff and a fateful flight over the Hudson River, he was joking on the phone with a woman at New Jersey's Teterboro Airport about barbecuing a dead cat, the Associated Press reports.
"We got plenty of gas in the grill?" the controller asked, according to a transcript of the tape. "Fire up the cat."
"Ooh, disgusting, augh, that thing was disgusting," the woman, who worked in the airport operations center, responded.
The draft transcript obtained by the AP showed that the two continued to chat until seconds before the private plane collided with a tour helicopter over the Hudson River on Aug. 8, leaving nine people dead.
The AP says it obtained the transcripts from a source familiar with the investigation who wasn't authorized to release them and asked not to be identified.
The bantering had begun in an earlier phone call, during which the woman discussed how she and another worker had picked up the cat from airport property. That call ended 12 minutes before the ill-fated Piper's pilot told the tower he was ready for takeoff. The controller directed the Piper toward the Hudson, handed off responsibility for the plane to nearby Newark Liberty International Airport and gave the pilot the radio frequency to contact Newark.
The Teterboro controller then called the woman back and resumed the bantering until he was contacted by radio by a Newark controller who was concerned about aircraft in the path of the Piper.
From the transcript:
"Hey, Teodoro, Newark. Would you switch that guy, maybe put him on a two-twenty heading to get away from that other traffic please?" the Newark controller said.
"Say again, Newark," the Teterboro controller responded
"Can you switch that PA-32 (the Piper)?" the Newark controller said.
"I ... did keep an eye on him, though," the Teterboro controller said.
"I'm not talking to him, so ..." responded the Newark controller.
The Teterboro controller then tried unsuccessfully to radio the Piper.
"One mike charlie, Newark is (on frequency) twenty-seven eighty-five," the Teterboro controller told the plane. And then he reported to Newark: "He's lost in the hertz, try him again."
The Newark controller tried unsuccessfully to raise the Piper: "One mike charlie, Newark."
Shortly after that the controller explained to the woman on the phone that the Piper pilot probably had the wrong radio frequency.
Eight seconds later, the controller said, "Damn ... Let me straighten stuff out," and ended the call.
The Federal Aviation Administration said last week that it has placed the controller and his supervisor, who was out of the building at the time, on administrative leave pending an investigation. The agency said the controller's actions were inappropriate and unacceptable, but didn't appear to have contributed to the accident.
That prompted a rebuke from the NTSB, which said it was up to the board to determine what role the controller's actions may have played in the accident, the AP says.
A spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association said the nature of the phone conversation wasn't relevant to the accident investigation.
(Photo of the plane's wreckage by Mel Evans, AP)