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More air traffic controllers at night just a start

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[April 16, 2011]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- The solution to air traffic controllers dozing on the job will require changes beyond the Federal Aviation Administration's step of adding a second air traffic controller to overnight shifts at more than two dozen airports around the country, aviation safety experts say.

HardwareLarger safety issues involving the FAA's 15,700 controllers are still unaddressed.

Many of those controllers work schedules that allow no realistic opportunity for rest. And their record for errors on the job has grown sharply over the last several years.

FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt's decision to end the agency's practice of staffing some airport towers where traffic is light between midnight and 6 a.m. with a single controller was a response to at least four incidents in which controllers fell asleep on duty.

The most recent case occurred this week when the pilot of a plane transporting a critically ill passenger was unable to raise the sole controller working at 2 a.m. in the tower of the Reno-Tahoe International Airport in Nevada. The controller was out of communication for 16 minutes while the plane circled the airport before landing safely.

Thomas Anthony, director of the University of Southern California's Aviation Safety and Security Program, said he tells his students that for every aviation safety incident like the recent episodes of controllers dozing, there are likely hundreds of more minor incidents that go unnoticed or unreported.

"What you are seeing is the tip of the iceberg," Anthony, a former controller, said.

The incidents led to the resignation of the head of the FAA's air traffic operations and have left the agency shaken.

On Monday, Babbitt and National Air Traffic Controllers Association President Paul Rinaldi will kick off a nationwide tour of air traffic control facilities to hear what controllers have to say and to remind them that sleeping on the job won't be tolerated. Their first stop is Atlanta, home of the world's busiest airport.

"Air traffic controllers need to take personal responsibility to report for work rested so they can safely perform their duties," FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said in a statement.

The decision to add a second controller at night to 26 airports and a radar facility plugs a gaping hole in aviation safety, said Gregory McGuirk, an associate professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla.

"There is redundancy in every aspect of aviation, everything has a backup," said McGuirk, a former controller. "So why on the world's worst shift would you put the weakest link -- the human being -- into a control tower without any redundancy?"

Babbitt may not get a warm reception when he visits airports where controllers are being added to the overnight shift. Not only are controllers at those facilities likely to be working night shifts more often, they are also likely to be putting in more overtime since the FAA doesn't plan to increase the number of controllers assigned to the airports.

FAA officials are also working with the controllers association on several issues related to fatigue, including changes to scheduling practices and the development of fatigue training, Brown said.

It has been known for decades that fatigue is rampant among controllers. FAA rules forbid any sleeping on the job, even during breaks. Employees who violate those rules can be fired. But controllers told The Associated Press that unsanctioned napping at night where one controller works two jobs while the other sleeps, and then they swap, is an open secret within the agency.

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Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va., said he's hopeful that the attention generated by the recent sleeping incidents will cause the FAA to change its policies to allow controllers working at night to take extended nap breaks that can help them stay more alert when they go back to their tasks. That's something sleep scientists have long recommended and many other countries already permit.

"Before this recent public discussion, this was such a political nonstarter there was no one in the FAA who would even mention this publicly," Voss said. "Now an opening has been created to maybe do what they knew was the right thing along."

He pointed to the crash of a regional airliner near Buffalo, N.Y., two years ago that killed 50 people. The accident renewed concern about fatigue-causing pilot schedules, especially at regional airlines. As a result, the FAA is in the process of changing its regulations governing pilot work schedules.

"It's great we are managing to do this one without the body count," Voss said of controller schedules.

But Mary Schiavo, a former Transportation Department inspector general, said sanctioned napping is still a nonstarter.

"I just don't think Americans are going to buy that," she said. "If you come to work for an eight-hour day, you ought to be able to stay awake for it."

Schiavo also objected to putting two controllers on duty in airports when traffic is light.

"There are lots of places we need controllers more than on the graveyard shift where might be four flights the whole shift," Schiavo said. "We need those controllers (at facilities) where we have had the highest number of operational errors. We need those controllers at the busiest sectors."

In the 12 months ending on Sept. 30, 2010, the FAA recorded 1,889 operation errors -- which usually means aircraft coming too close together. That was nearly double the 947 such errors the year before and 1,008 the year before that. Before 2008 the FAA used a different counting method.

It is the job of controllers to keep aircraft separated.

Very few of the errors fall into the most serious category, which could result in pilots taking evasive action to prevent an accident. But those instances have also increased. In the year ending Sept. 30, there were 44 such events; 37 in the prior year and 28 in the year before that.

Babbitt has said the increase in known errors is due to better reporting, including technology the FAA has adopted that can determine more precisely how close planes are in the air.

[Associated Press; By JOAN LOWY]

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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