Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood LaHood's announcement that additional personnel will be added follows the latest in a series of controllers found sleeping on the job in recent months.
Just this week, a medical flight with at least three people aboard was forced to land at Reno-Tahoe International Airport in Nevada with no assistance, due to the pilot's inability to communicate with a controller in the airport tower, who had fallen asleep. The incident occurred at 2 a.m. The controller was suspended.
Incredibly, another controller - who'd already been disciplined for falling asleep two other times - was just suspended for falling asleep again on his shift earlier this week. He works at the Boeing Field-King County International in Seattle.
In still another instance, two controllers at the Lubbock, Texas airport were suspended for sleeping on the job. On March 29th, in the early hours of the morning, a controller in Fort Worth tried repeatedly to raise the Lubbock controllers so as to hand off control of an inbound aircraft. Additionally, the controllers failed to hand off a plane departing Lubbock to the Fort Worth radar center, the FAA said, according to the April 13th seattletimes.nwsource.com article, ''FAA suspends more sleeping controllers''.
In the same article, LaHood said in a statement, ''I am totally outraged by these incidents. This is absolutely unacceptable. The American public trusts us to run a safe system. Safety is our No. 1 priority and I am committed to working 24/7 until these problems are corrected.''
Perhaps the 'outrage' should lie not merely with the incidents - although in and of themselves they might well be called unconscionable, especially after 9/11 - but with the inequity of the punishment versus the crime.
How ironic, or incomprehensible, as the case may be, is it that, in a society where people are fired for everything from insubordination to sexual harassment, that someone who holds hundreds, even thousands of lives in his hands at any one given moment should be merely suspended, and not fired on the spot - union representation aside.
Clearly, the field isn't lacking for qualified job candidates. Positions are very competitive, and the majority is with the Federal Aviation Administration. Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment was expected to grow 13 percent for the period from 2008 through 2018.
According to the same seattletimes.nwsource.com article, FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt recently told a congressional panel the FAA is looking to fire a controller in Knoxville, Tennessee who slept for five hours intentionally, instead of manning a radar facility for handling aircraft approaches for the Knoxville airport and several of the region's smaller airports. As a result, the one controller who remained awake did double duty.
Per the same article, Babbitt was quoted as saying in a statement on Wednesday that: ''Air traffic controllers are responsible for making sure aircraft safely reach their destinations. We absolutely cannot and will not tolerate sleeping on the job.''
Hear! Hear!
Additionally, Babbitt and Paul Rinaldi, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the union that represents FAA's more than 15,000 controllers, plan to visit airports around the country ''to reinforce the need for all air traffic personnel to adhere to the highest professional standards.''
Perhaps common sense, and a union sized helping of 'tough love', versus lofty statements and house calls would go a lot further in 'terminating' this seeming epidemic of sleeping on the job - in more ways than one. Perhaps by considering that, by their action, or rather, inaction, these 'air traffic controllers' are endangering the very lives with which they've been entrusted, and that they might well be increasing our nation's vulnerability to terrorism, not to mention exposure to legal liability, this chilling trend of complacency might be nipped in the bud.
