Joe,

You take offense at the failure to contact you about air traffic controllers going off duty at 11 p.m. at the Island Airport, and you impute bad motives to people who were alarmed and said so.

I pay a lot of attention to your posts, and I appreciate your educating us on technical parts of airport operations.

But I live very near that airport, and I often worry about what sometimes looks like pilots acting like cowboys in a rodeo. It probably looks very different to you. You have told us in the past, if I am remembering right, that having a control tower down here benefits air safety along the waterfront. So you can imagine how worried some of us get when flights in and out after hours don't have that benefit.

With your experience (and probably nerves of steel, considering your stressful occupation), you may judge that it's perfectly safe not to have an air traffic controller at some hours, but some of us are much less trusting in this crowded air space, and we're worried about an accident.

Joe, it's those worries that make me concerned, not bad motives. And others share the same worries. (As I write this, four jets are flying very fast overhead, practicing tricks for the air show, and one just screamed low over my building! Pigeons and gulls are flocked and flying in scared circles, and the starlings are massed in a couple of trees,sounding like they're having nervous breakdowns. Oh, shit, all four jets just screamed over my building! There's no ducking these guys. I have to sign off.)

A Bathurst Quay Resident