Fury as air traffic controller in 2009 crash back on the job

An air-traffic controller who was joking on his cellphone about grilling a cat when he could have been preventing a deadly, midair collision off Manhattan is back on the job — and now he’s routing planes around coastal Virginia, an area teeming with military jets.

Carlyle Turner, 42, is in a control tower again despite a federal investigation that faulted him in a 2009 accident in which a private single-engine plane crashed into a helicopter full of tourists over the Hudson River. All nine people aboard both aircraft were killed. After a paid suspension, Turner was transferred to the Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport, WPIX-11 reported. The victims’ families were seething.

“It’s awful. It’s reprehensible,” said Pamela Altman, 65, of Upper Dublin, Pa., whose husband, Steven, was piloting the plane.

“He should have been fired, he should have been prosecuted and he should have gone to jail.”

The New Zealand family of the helicopter’s pilot, Jeremy Clarke, were “outraged,” said their lawyer, Justin Green. An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found Turner was on the phone with a co-worker on Aug. 8, 2009, when he was supposed to be monitoring traffic from the tower at New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport. During the call, he joked about barbecuing a dead cat that had been found at the airport

“Fire up the cat,” he said, according to the NTSB probe.

Adding a racial slur, he said, “Chinese people do it, so why can’t we?” transcripts revealed.

While gabbing, Turner missed hearing Steven Altman read back the wrong frequency for contacting Newark Airport, where a controller wanted to warn the pilot about the helicopter in his path. Turner and his union successfully appealed a recommendation that he be fired, Green said. Steven Altman’s brother and nephew died with him. Sister-in-law Jaclyn Altman won an $18.7 million negligence settlement from the federal government, the National Law Journal reported.

The feds also paid $14.5 million to relatives of the Italian tourists in the helicopter, while Clarke’s parents and sister got $1.5 million. Pamela Altman said she settled with the feds and the Liberty Helicopter tour company. She wouldn’t reveal the amounts. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said he was shocked to learn Turner was working again, because “even if this gentleman was totally rehabilitated, it sends such a bad signal to others that he’s back on the job in such an important air safety position.”

The Newport News airport is about 10 miles from Joint Base Langley-Eustis, called “the home of East Coast tactical air power.”

A Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman said only, “Controllers have the same due-process rights as other federal employees and are also covered by the provisions of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association contract.”

Turner, who lives in Chesapeake, Va., wasn’t home Sunday. Neighbors said he and his wife moved in about three years ago. WPIX reported last week that Turner is one of 12 controllers nationwide who have been reinstated despite being faulted in deadly crashes since 1998.