Warbird Information Exchange

Falling asleep on the job is never a good thing especially in a field such as aviation where the margin for error is extremely small. A high profile event such as this puts all controllers in a bad light. As a controller who has worked my share of mids throughout my career, I completely agree with Mustangdriver when he said " those who have never worked night shift have no idea just how rough night shift can be. You are fighting your body." When I'm done with a set of mids, I feel as if someone has pulled me through a chainlink fence. I am a complete zombie and it takes me at least 2 days to feel normal again.

At my facility everybody is scheduled a set of mids about every other month. We have one guy who works straight mids all the time at his request. He seems to have adjusted to them pretty well and is still alert at the end of his shift. Other people look as if they are asleep on their feet. It's easy to say, well he shouldn't have fallen asleep and they're right, he shouldn't have. But it's not that simple.

The FAA has been working on eliminating as many distractions as possible for quite some time now. We're not allowed to read while working position. No paperback books, news papers, magazines etc , no crossword puzzles, no cell phones, no listening to music or talk radio or anything like that. That also applies to the mid shift. Now put yourself in the tower on a mid. All you can do now is sit there and wait for someone to call. In most places the traffic is extremely light after about 1am. But there you sit ...waiting. Don't get me wrong. I am in no way defending this person, we have a responsibility to the flying public and he failed to maintain it.

National's approach control was moved years ago along with Dulles, Baltimore and a few others to form the Potomac Tracon, so maybe putting another controller on duty might help. It's no guarantee that they both won't fall asleep. Remember back a year or so ago when 2 Northwest pilots went off line for 150 miles beyond their destination. Their claims of being so engrossed with their laptops that they missed numerous radio calls was a very weak excuse in my opinion. And there have been other claims involving other flights where a flight attendant gone into the cockpit to find the entire flight crew asleep.

This has never been an easy shift to work. Your body is constantly trying to sleep because that is what your body is preprogrammed to do. You can fight it all you want, drink as much coffee as you can stand but it won't change the fact that it's 3 am, you're tired and sleepy and you just want to go to bed. This will not be an easy problem to solve.

Scott

, All good points Scott. Something I hve just thought of is could that controller have been comming down with a short term bug that caused him to go to sleep, quite apart from the body's natural desire to sleep at night. although I'm not an air traffic controller, I work a fair share of nights, some shifts 8 hours and some 10 1/2 hours. I remember one night getting to work at 2030 hours for a 10 1/2 shift feeling quite alright and by 2300 I was sick as a dog. We weren't able to get anyone else to fill in for me so I just had to find a hidey hole somewhere close to the office and if something happened my other 2 colleagues came and woke me up to help them deal with the situation. Another thought is; what happens if the lone controller has had a heart attack; no one there to administer first aid, call the ambulance, get someone else in to replace him/her; the ill controller could die and this not be discovered till morning. How is that fair?

Some 12 years or so ago there was an incident involving a young second year ambulance officer here in a rural NSW ambulance station where he was the single night duty officer and had a serious asthma attack. He didn't have time to administer the salbutamol medication to himself so he got on the phone and dialed 000. The emergency operator at the other end of the line saw that the call was coming from that particular ambulance station and the person making the call was not talking to her. She then assumed that he was pulling a prank on her. Her thinking went something like this, "we reroute calls to ambulance stations not take calls from them, this bloke is obviously having a loan of me" and promptly hung up on him. When his colleagues arrived in the morning he was dead on the station office floor with the telephone receiver still in his hand. The 000 operater hadn't even had the presence of mind to call the local police and have them go around to see if he was ok. And what if someone in that area had needed an ambulance through the night? The next nearest ambulance station was about 50 miles away so that could have been 2 deaths just because an officer was left alone on duty and someone else didn't take his mute cry for help seriously. Oh, and by the way, there are still manning issues in rural ambulance stations to this day, so I say the more people on duty at night, within reasonable bounds, the better and at the very least 2 people at night because we have no idea what may happen to a loan officer, regardless of what his/her duties are.

Cheers,
Ross.