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"Can't seem to get a hold of the tower here," the pilot of the LifeGuard flight says in an audiotape recording. "We will circle some more. We've got a pretty sick patient. We may have to just land."
The controller at the Reno-Tahoe airport is believed to have nodded off this morning and was out of communication for approximately 16 minutes. The controller, who was suspended while the Federal Aviation Administration investigates the incident, was the only one on duty handling the few overnight arrivals and departures.
The LifeGuard pilot was in communication with the Northern California Terminal Radar Approach Control and ultimately landed safely without assistance from the Reno tower.
Newsflash:
Air Traffic chief Hank Krakowski resigned Thursday as the Federal Aviation Administration deals with a growing controversy over air traffic controllers falling asleep on the job, which has occurred five times this year.
FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt said in a statement that Krakowski, who had overseen the U.S. traffic system since 2007, submitted his resignation Thursday morning and that he accepted it. FAA's chief counsel, David Grizzle, will take his place until a permanent successor can be found.
More: FoxNews.com - Breaking News | Latest News | Current News
Do you know why they are falling asleep? Because they are doing 16 hr shifts with 8 hrs off, that's why.
They are doing back to back shifts of 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. they get 8 hrs off and then they go back on from 3:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m..
The human body can't do this folks!
Reports of sleeping air traffic controllers highlight a long-known and often ignored hazard: Workers on night shifts can have trouble concentrating and even staying awake. "Government officials haven't recognized that people routinely fall asleep at night when they're doing shift work," said Dr. Charles Czeisler, chief of sleep medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Czeisler said studies show that 30 percent to 50 percent of night-shift workers report falling asleep at least once a week while on the job. So the notion that this has happened only a few times among the thousands of controllers "is preposterous," he said in a telephone interview.
In a sign of growing awareness of the problem, the Federal Aviation Administration said Saturday it was changing air traffic controllers' work schedules most likely to cause fatigue. The announcement comes after the agency disclosed another incident in which a controller fell asleep while on duty early Saturday morning at a busy Miami regional facility. According to a preliminary review, there was no impact to flight operations, the FAA said. Czeisler said the potential danger isn't limited to air traffic controllers, but can apply to truck and bus drivers, airline pilots and those in the maritime industry. Who else? Factory workers, police, firefighters, emergency workers, nurses and doctors, cooks, hotel employees, people in the media and others on night or changing shifts.
"We live in a very sleep-deprived society where many people are burning the candle at both ends," Czeisler said. He said that a half-century ago, just 2 percent of people slept six hours or less per night; today it's 28 percent. Dr. William Fishbein, a neuroscientist at the City University of New York, said that when people work odd shifts "it mucks up their biological rhythms." Hormones are synchronized with the wake-sleep cycle. When people change shifts, the brain never knows when it's supposed to be asleep, so this affects how people function.
People who change shifts every few days are going to have all kinds of problems related to memory and learning, Fishbein said. This kind of schedule especially affects what he called relational memories, which involve the ability to understand how one thing is related to another. In addition to drowsiness and inability to concentrate, people working night shifts are more subject to chronic intestinal and heart diseases and have been shown to have a higher incidence of some forms of cancer. The World Health Organization has classified shift work as a probable carcinogen.
More Odd work schedules pose risk to health - Health - Behavior - msnbc.com
The U.S. government said Sunday it is giving air traffic controllers an extra hour off between shifts so they don't doze off at work, a problem that stretches back decades. But officials rejected the remedy that sleep experts say would make a real difference: on-the-job napping. "On my watch, controllers will not be paid to take naps. We're not going to allow that," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said.
That's exactly the opposite of what scientists and the Federal Aviation Administration's own fatigue working group say is needed after the disclosure of five cases since late March of sleeping controllers. The latest one occurred just before 5 a.m. Saturday at a busy regional radar facility that handles high altitude air traffic for much of Florida, portions of the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. Several other countries, including Germany and Japan, permit controllers to take sleeping breaks and they provide quiet rooms with cots for that purpose.
"Given the body of scientific evidence, that decision clearly demonstrates that politics remain more important than public safety," said Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation of Alexandria, Virginia. "People are concerned about a political backlash if they allow controllers to have rest periods in their work shifts the same way firefighters and trauma physicians do." It has been an open secret in the FAA dating to at least the early 1990s that controllers sometimes sleep on the job. Toughest are the midnight shifts, which usually begin about 10 p.m. and end about 6 a.m.
Scientists say it would be surprising if controllers didn't doze sometimes because they are trying to stay awake during the time of day when the body naturally craves sleep. Studies show that 30 percent to 50 percent of night-shift workers report falling asleep at least once a week while on the job, according to Dr. Charles Czeisler, chief of sleep medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
More Air controllers to get more rest between shifts - Travel - News - msnbc.com
Asleep in the air tower...AGAIN!
Yep. Republicans cut everything to the bone and shit happens.Never happened when PATCO was in place.Asleep in the air tower...AGAIN!
They would not have allowed for one man to run the whole damned show.
Thank you very much, Mr Reagan.
I'm not worried. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was on CBS News yesterday and he said he's reminding all the Air Traffic Controllers that they have to stay awake.
Do you know why they are falling asleep? Because they are doing 16 hr shifts with 8 hrs off, that's why.
They are doing back to back shifts of 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. they get 8 hrs off and then they go back on from 3:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m..
The human body can't do this folks!
Asleep in the air tower...AGAIN!
Never happened when PATCO was in place.
They would not have allowed for one man to run the whole damned show.
Thank you very much, Mr Reagan.
Do you know why they are falling asleep? Because they are doing 16 hr shifts with 8 hrs off, that's why.
They are doing back to back shifts of 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. they get 8 hrs off and then they go back on from 3:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m..
The human body can't do this folks!
Bullshit.
I worked double shifts almost every day for months at a time and I never fell asleep at work.
If I has fallen asleep at work, I would have been fired but these slackers get to keep their jobs. That's why they're falling asleep; no consequences.
Do you know why they are falling asleep? Because they are doing 16 hr shifts with 8 hrs off, that's why.
They are doing back to back shifts of 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. they get 8 hrs off and then they go back on from 3:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m..
The human body can't do this folks!
Bullshit.
I worked double shifts almost every day for months at a time and I never fell asleep at work.
If I had fallen asleep at work, I would have been fired but these slackers get to keep their jobs. That's why they're falling asleep; no consequences.
Umm I thought getting rid of unions was to fix that problem?
Bullshit.
I worked double shifts almost every day for months at a time and I never fell asleep at work.
If I had fallen asleep at work, I would have been fired but these slackers get to keep their jobs. That's why they're falling asleep; no consequences.
Umm I thought getting rid of unions was to fix that problem?
So the Atcs don't belong to a union?
National Air Traffic Controllers Association - Homepage
sure sounds like a union to me
