Courtesy Paramount
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This is your Captain speaking…
Two airliners landed at Reagan National Airport near Washington without control tower clearance because the air traffic supervisor was asleep, safety and aviation officials said Wednesday.
The supervisor — the only controller scheduled for duty in the tower around midnight Tuesday when incident occurred — had fallen asleep, said an aviation official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the incident.
The National Transportation Safety Board is gathering information on the occurrence to decide whether to open a formal investigation, board spokesman Peter Knudson said.
“I’m not sure that in all the years I’ve been flying airplanes that I can recall coming into a major airport and I couldn’t get hold of a controller in the airport tower,” said aviation safety consultant John Cox.
There’s nothing in the FARs (Federal aviation regulations) to cover this situation. Controllers at other facilities can advise but not provide landing clearance. The pilots were on their own. It’s a good bet they won’t be hassled for landing without clearance.
Anyone interested can listen to live Air Traffic Control anywhere in the world here.
Don’t all the crucial instruments on airplanes have two back-ups? But there’s only one controller in the tower. You can’t really fault the guy who fell asleep, they need to change the policy.
I know that when you are tired and it’s late it is real easy to drift off. I’ve almost gone to sleep while driving and I’ve taught kids who lost a parent for that very reason.
This could have gotten a lot of people killed and that’s about all there is to say on the topic.
I hope this person enjoys their new career what ever that may be.
I know the only reason this airport stays open is because of all the Congresspeople who fly in and out of it instead of going to Dulles, but come on. Only one controller scheduled for that shift at the tower? Sounds more like my local airport which has some regional, very regional, planes and the FBO.
If true, I think he should be shot.
At least he didn’t turn out the runway lights for a better nap.
“Neither the NTSB nor the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees the nation’s controllers, said Wednesday whether the supervisor on duty had fallen asleep, gotten locked out of the tower or suffered some other problem.”
We leave a key to the door under a brick at one of our terminals to prevent just this thing.
There are 100’s of airports where control towers shut down at a certain time. And 1000’s of airports that have no control tower at all. Aircraft at these airports land and take off all the time without controller intervention. Yet accidents very rarely occur. Pilots are trained how to handle this situation. It is unexcuseable for the controller to fall asleep. But no ones life was at threat.
The grave yard shift has more quality issues than does the day shift. Fatigue is the biggest cause.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shift_work#Health_consequences
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shift_work_sleep_disorder
Asleep’s not bad. I’ve had those SOBs try to kill me 3 times. The worst was being cleared to land at Dallas Love on 13R and then have the numb nut clear a Southwest 737 to land on 31L (same runway, opposite direction) 1 minute later. How exciting, two planes heading for each other on concrete at 300 kts. combined. The FAA thought so. I’ll never understand why the SW driver didn’t abort.
#9. If a plane crashes and hundreds of people die. I’m sure you’re links will suffice as a defense.
What is with you guys stop making excuses for the guy!He should be fired no second chance I don’t give a crap if he had 12 hr on his shift this is not pumping gas or the 7-11.This is what is wrong with this country no one wants to do there job!Oh it is ok Johnny you will do better next time….
“There’s nothing in the FARs (Federal aviation regulations) to cover this situation.” – not directly but if everything is done by the rules (as this time) end result is that pilots use rural/no air traffic control airport landing practices. When you eliminate everything scripted, there was only one unscripted solution left.
@ KD Martin – It’s called anticipated separation. And there IS instructions in Title 14, CFR (FARs)Part 91.185 in the event of no communications, which this falls under:
(a) General. Unless otherwise authorized by ATC, each pilot who has two-way radio communications failure when operating under IFR shall comply with the rules of this section.
(b) VFR conditions. If the failure occurs in VFR conditions, or if VFR conditions are encountered after the failure, each pilot shall continue the flight under VFR and land as soon as practicable.
(c) IFR conditions. If the failure occurs in IFR conditions, or if paragraph (b) of this section cannot be complied with, each pilot shall continue the flight according to the following:
I won’t go on, because it is pretty extensive, but it involves ATC assigned routings and other mess.
[Correct. Interestingly enough, nothing is said about clearance to land, which at a tower controlled airport can be given with a light gun, or in the case of cockpit transmitter failure, with an ident acknowledgement. KD]
Expect to see more scarcity of workers, fatigue, longer hours and less breaks. Politicians are turning over the nation to corporations motivated by one thing only.
The role of the American worker is reduced to one thing : be a good consumer of goods and services and STFU.
>Expect to see more scarcity of workers, fatigue, longer hours and less breaks. Politicians are turning over the nation to corporations motivated by one thing only.
The role of the American worker is reduced to one thing : be a good consumer of goods and services and STFU.
Pretty good summary of the health care bill.
So what is wrong with this We let doctors work 14 hours or more in Emergency departments all the time 😛
wasnt the reagan era air traffic controller busting just a grand idea?
There was a junior doctor just charged with causing death by dangerous driving – he had worked something like 48 hours with two breaks and more than 96 hours total in the last week.
Ironically if he had killed somewhere while at work he wouldn’t even have been reported.
# 17 Gasbag said, “So what is wrong with this We let doctors work 14 hours or more…”
Exactly right. I don’t understand the fuss. I take naps all the time at work. When a patient comes in, the nurse wakes me up. Why didn’t this poor guy’s nurse wake him up? She should be fired! Unless the nurse is unionized. Then, she should be suspended with pay for a few weeks so she can get a much needed vacation.
#18
Not only is it immensely satisfying that it happened at a place that bears his name but also that Reagan himself was asleep many times and left the country to have fly on its own.
Poetic really.
Cursor_
What resonates with me about this entire situation is the total ineptitude and incompetence of FAA leadership and management. On August 27, 2006, Delta Connection Flight 5191 attempted to depart Lexington, Kentucky. The aircraft was assigned the airport’s Runway 22 for the takeoff, but used Runway 26 instead. Runway 26 was too short for a safe takeoff, causing the aircraft to overrun the end of the runway before it could become airborne. It crashed just past the end of the runway, killing all 47 passengers and two of the three crew. At the time of the accident, the single controller in the tower was performing both tower and radar duties. On August 30, 2006, the FAA announced that Lexington, as well as other airports, would be staffed with two controllers in the tower around the clock effective immediately.
In April 2007, the NTSB made four recommendations, three measures to avoid fatigue affecting the performance of air traffic controllers, and one to prevent controllers from carrying out non-essential administrative tasks while aircraft are taxiing under their control. Although these recommendations were published during the course of the NTSB’s investigation into the accident to Comair Flight 5191, they were in part prompted by four earlier accidents, and the Board was unable to determine whether fatigue contributed to the Comair accident.
Having only one controller in an air traffic control tower in not a new offence by the FAA, but it is a repeatable one.
The FAA is only responsible to the extent it has funding from congress. You can’t make straw from gold, no matter how hard your supervisor makes you spin. Underfunding and poor regulatory oversight will start biting us in the ass as we go forward and multiple critical systems start failing from neglect, improper or overuse, and outright entropy.
This country is so amazingly incredibly screwed up that we cannot even agree on a baseline infrastructure in any area, from roads to rail to air travel to power generation and grid management. As these systems collapse there will be a lot of finger pointing.
Hmm, the FAA might be another opportunity for the Teabagger congress to slash funding to pay for corporate welfare tax cuts.
I mean, it looks like planes can indeed land without a tower.
The Pilots did what they were supposed to do.
The AT controller should be fired.
#23 – the obvious solution is to give the FAA role and budget to the TSA – they have no problems getting money tot protect us from terrorist noise hair clippers so perhaps can also look into the trivial matter of snoozing ATC
One reality about pilots: they suffer the consequences of their own decisions. Not true with just about everyone else. Pilots: dealing with reality and consequences all the time.
And Mickey–you bring up Obamacare. I was watching Lou Dobbs last night on that issue. One small business owner or advocate, hot chick so I couldn’t really concentrate, said she liked Obama care because she could join with other small businesses and get the same 20% discount that larger businesses could. The other experts continued lambasting the high cost of Obama care as if she had not spoken at all.
Very bad piloting.
And Animby–being overworked is exactly why I canceled by Mom’s Monday Morning surgery and had it reset to Wednesday Mid Morning. No weekend bashes and no end of the week wrung outs. No early morning jitters or rush because of a late start.
Did it help at all? Who can ever know but I’ve seen docs too sleepy to perform and like you they are all too proud of the abuse they think “they” can absorb–but we know who gets buried.
Very bad piloting.
Lets review. It was Ronald Reagan who fired the striking union air traffic controllers, safety be damned, just break the unions. Our New World Order overlords would rather pay TSA thugs to violate passengers constitutional rights than pay decent wages and give reasonably safe workloads to air traffic controllers.
Don’t you mean “This is your Captain sleeping … it off !!!”