Iain Maciver writes …

IN AIR traffic control in the RAF, I heard some interesting exchanges between controllers on the ground and pilots over the years.

Most were not suitable to repeat in a family newspaper. There is always that constant rivalry between the professions, a tradition which we in “air tragic” always did our utmost to maintain.

Some of the stories, particularly from civil airports, are the stuff of legend. One famous tale concerns Frankfurt Airport in the early-1970s, where the controllers had a reputation for being just a tad grumpy and impatient.

A British Airways 747 had just landed. As it was taxiing back to the terminal, it suddenly stopped. Asked why, the pilot replied he just needed to check where the gate he should be heading for was. The irked German controller barked: “Speedbird 206, have you not been to Frankfurt before?” The pilot snapped back: “Oh yes, twice in 1944. But we didn’t land.”

At RAF Kinloss, when we saw a Nimrod make a bit of a bumpy landing, it was not unusual for the controller in the tower to ask the pilot: “Now, sir, which one of these touchdowns would you like me to put in the record?” Ooh, they hated that.

So to hear that a controller at JFK Airport let his two twin children, aged seven, talk to planes was fascinating. People are outraged. Planes with hundreds of people on board were in danger, they say. The guy has been suspended. He may yet lose his job. Serve him right, says America’s equivalent of Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells.

The whole thing has been blown up out of all proportion. Yeah yeah, it shouldn’t have happened. It was just ground control, the children were not controlling aircraft in the air. Dad was in charge. Ground instructions to aircraft are simple and fixed. You watch a plane moving slowly on the ground and soon afterwards tell it to call someone else.

The best comment was from a pilot of a Jumbo jet that day. After the wee fellow told him to call departures, he said: “Wish I could bring my kid to work.” A child at the controls of a Jumbo? That would really have given Middle America something to complain about.

And I would just like to point out that no children were ever at the controls of a Nimrod. Not in my time. Not that I know of, anyway. Glad to have cleared that up.

Also up in the air was the success of the visit by Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa. But it went well. He gave the Queen a chess set – just like the one Nelson Mandela had given her. Oh well.

Zoom Zoom, aged 67, is married to the delightful Gertrude Sizakele Khumalo, who is 66. That’s nice, isn’t it. He also happens to be in holy wedlock with Thobeka Madiba, 38, who came to London with him. Oh, another trouble and strife is Nompumelelo Ntuli, 35. And he has proposed to another wee smasher, Bongi.

It was nice to see Zulu Boy, as he also calls himself, on such good form. And why wouldn’t he be? Three wives and another in the wings so it is not as if he ever has any kind of row at home.

“Wanna go out for a wee noggin tonight, Gertrude?”

“Sorry, Zoom Zoom. I have a headache.”

“Next.”

An absolutely practical arrangement.

It’s OK because Zuma is religious and he says he knows what God wants for South Africa. God wanted him to be president and have many wives. So that’s all right then. He is so chuffed with getting the green light from on high that he is now a pastor himself. Now that he is a regular churchgoer, some of the sceptics have changed their minds about him and they hang on to every word he says.

Handy to have someone like that with the ear of the Almighty. I’d better write to him myself to find out what God thinks about the sports centre at Stornoway being open seven days. I have asked various people in our local free churches to make inquiries but they’ve not got back to me. Maybe they didn’t get through. I don’t know why.

Like I don’t know who caused that pile-up out near Western Isles Hospital a while back.

My man at the bus stop tells me the driver in question was distracted by the sight of a leggy lady strolling along Boulevard Macaulay. He did seem very taken with the lines of her tight-fitting skirt.

I say skirt but it was more of a pelmet, really. He had a sneaky glance then ogled for a second or two as he glided by.

In that fleeting moment, the Transit van ahead of him braked. Before our friend, the rubber-necking motorist, could take his eye off the rear of the year, he had careered his sizeable car straight into the rear of the Transit.

Oops. Wait, there’s more. The rear-ended van then leapt forward and stowed in the back end of another car.

Both owners of the vehicles which had been given the unplanned remodelling, I am told, bore down on our unlucky motorist and demanded recompense for their bent back ends, boots and bumpers. So, sadly, his sly look at the heavenly body wiggling along on the pavement brought him a hefty bill for bodywork of an altogether different kind.

But who was this careless piler-up? My informant could not tell me. The only clue he could give was that his registration number was very distinctive. The letters on the numberplate, he reckons, were MDA.

Now I happen to know someone who has exactly these letters in his number. It can’t be him, though, because he is an accountant. He spends all his waking hours looking at figures so he’s hardly likely to be eyeing up any more of them on Macaulay Road.

It’s such a mystery.