A Delta passenger who filmed a bird strike at JFK says he’s being targeted by the embarrassed feds just because he shot the footage with his iPad during takeoff.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous,” said Grant Cardone, an LA-based business consultant whose video of birds being sucked into an engine of LA-bound Delta Flight 1063 on April 19 has become a TV and Internet sensation. The plane turned back and landed safely.
Among those who saw his video were FAA inspectors, who slapped him with an official letter complaining he took the video illegally because portable electronic devices must be turned off during “critical” phases of a flight, such as takeoffs, and can’t be used during an in-flight emergency.
“Your failure to comply with flight attendant instructions during a critical phase of flight and an aircraft emergency could have affected the safe outcome of the flight,” the letter says.
Cardone doesn’t buy that.
“If there is even a minute chance that an iPad could take a plane down then it is the FAA’s obligation to ban the devices from flights or require the airlines to confiscate them when you check in,” he said.
The FAA said Cardone, 54, won’t be fined — but the letter “will be made a matter of record for a period of two years.”
“A record with whom?” asked Cardone, a frequent flier who is worried that he’s on some no-fly list. He said the letter “has a lot of Big Brother in it.”