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Airline passengers horrified that air traffic controller is back in tower

Airline passengers reacted with horror Monday upon learning they had landed at an airport where one of the air-traffic controllers was caught joking on his cellphone about grilling a cat when he should have been preventing a deadly, midair collision off Manhattan.

Travelers arriving at Virginia’s Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport were shocked by The Post’s report that Carlyle Turner was re-assigned there following the 2009 crash of a private plane and a sightseeing helicopter that killed all nine people onboard both aircraft.

“Oh my God! This is my first time flying! I wish you hadn’t said that!” said hairstylist Morgan Curry, 18, of Orlando, Fla.

“I don’t even want to think about it. I’m going to be so nervous thinking about every possible outcome when I go back.”

“If my family and friends knew, they’d say: Take the train,” she added.

Other freaked-out fliers called the situation “crazy,” “scary” and “horrible.”

“If he were a doctor charged with malpractice, he would be out of a job,” said Tina Sweet, 43, of Virginia Beach, who flew in from Daytona with daughter Janelle Thibodeau, 15.

“It’s a good thing we just got in, because I don’t think I’ll be flying out of here for a long time.”

WPIX-TV first reported that Turner, 42, was among 12 air-traffic controllers nationwide who kept their jobs despite being implicated in deadly crashes.

Turner was suspended after the Hudson River debacle and an investigation revealed he was on the phone with a co-worker while working in the control tower at New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport on Aug. 8, 2009.

During the call, Turner joked about cooking a dead cat that was cleaned up from a runway, saying: “Chinese people do it, so why can’t we.”

He also missed hearing pilot Steven Altman read back the wrong radio frequency for Newark Airport, where a controller was worried that Altman’s plane was headed toward the chopper.

He was recommended for firing, but successfully appealed that decision.

Other controllers at Newport News/Williamsburg said Monday they were aware of Turner’s checkered past, with one saying: “Everyone knows about the national news he made a couple years ago.”

A controller also shockingly said of Turner: “He trained me. Everyone around says he’s one of the best.”

Both the Federal Aviation Administration and Turner’s union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, declined to discuss his disciplinary history, citing privacy rules.

Turner didn’t return a message left with his brother at Turner’s Chesapeake, Va., home.

Additional reporting by Christine Stoddard.