This in from Yahoo! News: Saudi Prince Abdullah doesn't want his plane controlled by women. Evidently the idea of women working bothers him so much that he requested that the FAA not allow women to control his flight, and requested that airports he stopped at not even have women on the tarmac.
Why we take this sort of thing from the Feudal Monarch of a country around the globe from us? He presumes to tell us, how to run our airports and airspace because of his personal views about women? Arrgghh! He's the article text from Yahoo!
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Air traffic controllers expressed outrage Sunday over a request that no women work a flight carrying Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. A spokesman for the prince, who met with President Bush in Texas last week, called the report ''pure fiction'' on Fox News Sunday. But officials with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association said the request was forwarded to a Waco, Texas, facility on a tape-recorded line Thursday morning before the prince's flight arrived. ''We're insulted and offended,'' said John Carr, president of the controller's union.
The incident occurred as the prince's jet approached the Texas State Technical College Waco Airport, said Mark Pallone, the union's southwest regional head. Someone from a privately operated tower at the airport telephoned the Federal Aviation Administration facility that handles flights in that region. The caller said that aides for the prince had requested that no women be allowed to control the flight. Ruben Gonzalez, a regional manager for RVA Inc., which manages the tower, told The Dallas Morning News that the request had come from an advance group of Saudis who spoke to the airport manager. They also requested that no women be allowed on the airport tarmac with the jet, Gonzalez said. -- Alan Levin