Air traffic controller keeps licence despite ‘having sex with woman while on duty’

An air traffic controller (ATC) has kept his licence despite allegations that he had sex with a married woman while handcuffed to a chair in the control tower.

The unnamed New Zealand man previously had his licence revoked in 2019 following an investigation.

However, that decision was repealed after a three-day hearing in the Wellington District Court in December 2021.

Judge Chris Tuohy has now ruled that, although he believed the woman’s claim that the pair had sex while the ATC was on duty was inherently plausible, he didn’t think her allegation that he was handcuffed at the time was “sufficiently proven”.

“The appellant voluntarily engaged in distracting behaviour which must have impinged on his capacity to react but, in my judgment, it is not sufficiently proven that he engaged in the even more risky and irresponsible behaviour of allowing himself to be physically prevented from doing so,” said Judge Tuohy, reports Open Justice.

The ATC admitted to starting an affair with the woman in early 2017 – while both were still married to other people – after meeting on a dating app.

But, while he said he had been alone with the woman on three separate occasions in the control tower, he denied her claim that they had engaged in sexual activities there, only admitting to having had sex in hotels and motels.

After the relationship ended, the woman messaged the ATC’s wife claiming that she had performed a sex act on him while he was handcuffed to a chair in the control tower.

“He acknowledged that [a sex act] while he was in handcuffs had occurred during the sexual relationship but in a hotel room, not in the control tower,” according to an interview undertaken in February 2019 during the original investigation.

The man also alleged that the woman had tried to blackmail him, saying she would ruin his life if he didn’t pay her NZ$50,000 (£26,427).

The CAA director recorded at the time that “on the balance of probabilities” he believed the woman’s account.

“He categorised this behaviour as highly irresponsible, intolerable and demonstrating extremely poor judgment,” according to the investigation.

However, after the most recent hearing, Judge Tuohy reversed the decision strip the ATC of his licence, taking into account the short duration of the man’s behaviour within a long, blemish-free career and concluding that, being out of character, such an incident was unlikely to happen again.

The judge ruled it had not been established that the man was not a fit and proper person to exercise the privileges of his ATC licence.

He said: “I have reached that conclusion despite my finding that he did undertake risky behaviour while on duty, although not quite as risky as that which the director relied upon.”