After a string of incidents highlighting air traffic controllers sleeping on the job, a Congressional hearing took place last week to tackle the issue of fatigue among controllers working around the clock.
Since March, nine separate incidents have been revealed by the FAA, highlighting controllers sleeping on the job. In January, controllers in Texas and California were found falling asleep even while monitoring aircraft.
While some say sleeping controllers should be punished, others say sleep is necessary in order for them to work productively.
“The science is very clear,” said Bill Voss, CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit organization working to improve global aviation safety.
“Anyone who works on a night shift risks fatigue. They have fairly high cognitive demands particularly at the end of the shift [so] it is important that several things happen,” Voss said.
“One, there has to be adequate opportunity for rest which is what you do by scheduling properly. Secondly, there has to be a commitment to get rest from the employee. Lastly, there has to be some level of mitigations where if you are really run down you need to have the opportunity to sleep, to take a rest. This has been done across the world for pilots in the cockpit and it really should be adopted as well in air traffic control.”
In April, the Federal Aviation Association made some changes to controller scheduling practices to avoid fatigue and give them more time between shifts.
Paul Takemoto, a spokesman for the FAA said, “Controllers now have a minimum of nine hours off between shifts. Previously, they had as few as eight.”
Further changes state that controllers are no longer allowed to swap shifts unless they have a minimum of nine hours off between the last shift they worked and the one they want to begin. Also, controllers are no longer able to switch to an unscheduled midnight shift following a day off.
However, one change the FAA is unwilling to make is for air traffic controllers to sleep on the job.
“The FAA has zero tolerance for sleeping on the job,” Takemoto said, “Controllers are expected to come to work rested and ready to work – they must take personal responsibility for safety in air traffic control towers.”
Although Voss says sleep is vital, he says politics makes it a hard case to sell.
“I think it’s kind of a long shot because of the extreme reaction we received from the politicians. This is just not something politicians want to spend political capital on. It’s a joke on the Tonight Show. Even though it’s very practical and very cheap, it just isn’t politically accessible.”
Because of recent incidents, the reputations of air traffic controllers have suffered.
“To some degree, some of it is deserved,” Voss said. “[But] they’re still the same people that landed all the airplanes in 40 minutes during 9/11 and I think you’ll see them try to redeem their reputation.”
