Another Controller Sleeping - Fired

What management stooges.

So if a lone controller falls asleep on the job then the solution is to put two controllers in the tower.

If there are two controllers in the tower and they agree that one can take a nap while the other stays on watch, then the solution is to put a lone controller in the tower.

WTF?

How about this? Grow a leadership spine, pick a numberof controllers, and stick with that number. If someone falls asleep then flip the media the bird like Bunning did.

People fall asleep at night. Only in America can that be monetized into a story.
 
What a way to lose a good career and and retire @ 55....

I'm sure that in the wake of the DCA incident, there is a witchunt on for scapegoats...
 
You have forgotten: DOT is run by a congressman.
Think about that.
 
ebacon said:
What management stooges.

So if a lone controller falls asleep on the job then the solution is to put two controllers in the tower.

If there are two controllers in the tower and they agree that one can take a nap while the other stays on watch, then the solution is to put a lone controller in the tower.

WTF?
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There weren't two controllers in the tower, there was one controller in the tower cab and one controller in the radar room below.
 
One was here, one was there, or both were there, or both were here, or . . . matters not.

What matters is that one controller did all the work while the supervisor slept. That tells me that one person can do the job.

If the genuine concern is sleeping then the working controller, when he gets tired, can rattle his partner and say, dude, it's your turn and vice-versa. But having someone awake during a totally lame and boring night shift doesn't appear to be teh real issue here.

The real issue here appears to be greed and jealousy. OMG someone fell asleep and got a lousy hundred bucks or whatever. That's enough to rent a wet C172 for about an hour. Big whoop-de-friggin-doo. Bailed out Wall Street CEOs sleep good at night at taxpayers expense and for some reason some of the same attackers of sleeping ATC workers cheer for the sleeping bailed-out CEOs.

Something is askew in a portion of the American psyche.
 
ebacon said:
One was here, one was there, or both were there, or both were here, or . . . matters not.

What matters is that one controller did all the work while the supervisor slept. That tells me that one person can do the job.
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Of course one person can do the job, it's a one-person job. A few years ago there was probably just one person assigned to do the job, but then it was decided that approach and tower functions could no longer be combined to one position. So now two people are required to do a one-person job, even if there isn't enough activity to keep one person occupied.
 
What's your point? Are you arguing that Class Delta zombie shift only needs one dude in the tower? That's fine, but when that dude falls asleep then would you fire him, reserve taxpayer money for the potential lawsuit, pay more taxpayer money to retrain a replacement, and then, when the replacement falls asleep because he's human and not a robot, repeat the cycle of sillyness? If so, why?
 
ebacon said:
What's your point? Are you arguing that Class Delta zombie shift only needs one dude in the tower? That's fine, but when that dude falls asleep then would you fire him, reserve taxpayer money for the potential lawsuit, pay more taxpayer money to retrain a replacement, and then, when the replacement falls asleep because he's human and not a robot, repeat the cycle of sillyness? If so, why?
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Just stating facts. If there isn't enough activity to keep the dude awake there isn't enough activity to justify the tower being open.
 
Fine. Write a letter to the FAA and ask them to close the Knoxville tower during the zombie shift.

Why did you reply to my post if that's all you wanted? You could have saved a lot of typing. Hope you do better with taxpayer dollars. Sheesh.
 
ebacon said:
Fine. Write a letter to the FAA and ask them to close the Knoxville tower during the zombie shift.

Why did you reply to my post if that's all you wanted? You could have saved a lot of typing. Hope you do better with taxpayer dollars. Sheesh.
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I replied to correct your understanding of the situation.
 
Then we're done.

You want to reduce aviation employment in Knoxville and I want, at best, to keep it the same.
 
My impression was that he meant "required," as in "someone higher up said we have to have two controllers;" not as in "there's actually some sort of practical reason why we need to have two controllers."

For what it's worth, I'm a little unclear as to the "intentional" sleeping part. The article's not very clear. Did he decide to take a nap on the job because he was tired and nothing was happening, or was it some sort of dopey protest?

Either way, most employers take offense at employees sleeping on the job (unless they're, say, mattress testers). But I do think there's a difference between someone nodding off accidentally because of poor scheduling or boredom, and someone who just decides to grab a few Z's on "company" time.

-Rich
 
On July 1st 2002, two controllers were on duty for the graveyard shift at the route control center in Zurich Switzerland. Once the evening traffic had calmed down, one of them retreated to the crew-rest area to take a nap. Through a chain of events that night, the lone controller on duty did not notice that he had two aircraft crossing a VOR at the same altitude at the same time. 71 people died in the resulting midair collision (the controller himself was later murdered by a relative of one of the accident victims).

That is why it is a bad idea to take a nap if you are supposed to be the second set of eyes on the job.
 
weilke said:
On July 1st 2002, two controllers were on duty for the graveyard shift at the route control center in Zurich Switzerland. Once the evening traffic had calmed down, one of them retreated to the crew-rest area to take a nap. Through a chain of events that night, the lone controller on duty did not notice that he had two aircraft crossing a VOR at the same altitude at the same time. 71 people died in the resulting midair collision (the controller himself was later murdered by a relative of one of the accident victims).

That is why it is a bad idea to take a nap if you are supposed to be the second set of eyes on the job.
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And like every other accident, the cause was multifactorial. Had the flight crew obeyed the TCAS instructions properly they'd most likely be alive.
 
ebacon said:
People fall asleep at night. Only in America can that be monetized into a story.
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The apartment building my mom lives in in New York has a doorman. Third shift, it's not uncommon for the guy to be snoozing in the 2-4 AM segment, after he's done his work cleaning the floor and shining the brass in the lobby, and people have stopped coming home from late nights out. I don't care, so long as he wakes up and lets me in, since the doorman needs to let anyone coming or going in or out (the door is locked).

An air traffic controller is different. It's not an unusual occurrence for me to be flying when the sane people are sleeping, so I know what it's like. Do I really need a controller then? No, probably not. But the system in this country is set up such that my IFR flight dictates I'm supposed to talk to a controller. If the controller simply wasn't supposed to be there, that'd be one thing. However, the controller is supposed to be there, awake, and performing his duties.

Boring? Yes, horribly. Too bad. Suck it up, drink some coffee, Red Bull, or (my personal favorite) Dr. Pepper like I do. I can't sleep while I'm flying the plane, and neither can the controller.
 
Doggtyred said:
And like every other accident, the cause was multifactorial. Had the flight crew obeyed the TCAS instructions properly they'd most likely be alive.
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That is what the skyguide managers said in their manslaughter trial ;)



The crew followed the (faulty) training and manuals they had received. TCAS and visual avoidance are backstops if the IFR system fails. I would interpret the fact that two planes got routed into each other as a failure of the IFR system.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
Boring? Yes, horribly. Too bad. Suck it up, drink some coffee, Red Bull, or (my personal favorite) Dr. Pepper like I do. I can't sleep while I'm flying the plane, and neither can the controller.
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Fatigue and decreased vigilance are biological events, to just say 'suck it up' wont fix the problem.

After the DCA incident I was actually suprised to find out that the FAA doesn't use a vigilance control or 'deadmans switch' type system for controllers on overnight shifts. Trains have this for about 100 years at this point, other industrial facilities like chemical and nuclear reactors require the same.
 
RJM62 said:
My impression was that he meant "required," as in "someone higher up said we have to have two controllers;" not as in "there's actually some sort of practical reason why we need to have two controllers."

For what it's worth, I'm a little unclear as to the "intentional" sleeping part. The article's not very clear. Did he decide to take a nap on the job because he was tired and nothing was happening, or was it some sort of dopey protest?

Either way, most employers take offense at employees sleeping on the job (unless they're, say, mattress testers). But I do think there's a difference between someone nodding off accidentally because of poor scheduling or boredom, and someone who just decides to grab a few Z's on "company" time.

-Rich
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUwJ17zKfhM

Years ago, I worked at a plant with a large water treatment facility for the boiler feed water. A big building. Lots of pumps running. And one guy sitting at the control desk waiting for an alarm to go off.

I walk in during the middle of the night and the operator had dozed off in the chair - big surprise. I walk up exactly behind him and gave the char a little nudge. That wakes him up and he quickly looks to the left and right to see if he got caught sleeping - he doesn't see me behind him. He settles back down in the chair just a little - and I tap him on the shoulder. The poor SOB purd near jumped out of his skin. :rofl:
 
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Boring?

So give them something to do during their down time.

Like process aircraft re-registration applications.
 
weilke said:
The crew followed the (faulty) training and manuals they had received. TCAS and visual avoidance are backstops if the IFR system fails. I would interpret the fact that two planes got routed into each other as a failure of the IFR system.
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ok, so don't blame the crew. Blame the idiots that created the training materials and manuals.

Note that I'm NOT [edit: missing "not"] saying the controller or the rest of the IFR system was blameless. But let's not make the mistake of thinking that, for example, the pilot has no responsibility for see-and-avoid in VMC while in Class A airspace.
 
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Bob Noel said:
ok, so don't blame the crew. Blame the idiots that created the training materials and manuals.

Note that I'm saying the controller or the rest of the IFR system was blameless. But let's not make the mistake of thinking that, for example, the pilot has no responsibility for see-and-avoid in VMC while in Class A airspace.
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At those kind of velocities it's hard to believe they would have any time to see and avoid.
 
weilke said:
Fatigue and decreased vigilance are biological events, to just say 'suck it up' wont fix the problem.
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There is a difference between fatigue/decreased vigilance and falling asleep.

Everyone who flies a plane late at night, drives a truck late at night, etc., has to deal with it. I see no reason why the controllers should be told any different. No, third shift is not fun. I've had to deal with late night driving/flying for years, and I don't even have the benefit of being able to adjust myself to a third shift life. If I fall asleep while driving or flying, I'll end up in a morgue (if enough of me is left to go there). So I have to make accommodations to prevent that from happening. That does include naps at the appropriate times, but that means pulling over or landing (or letting someone else fly), not just taking a nap at my station.

The controller has a much, much lower personal bar, because he won't die if he falls asleep. If he falls asleep, then I'll be wondering what happened to my controller. Most likely, it will be a benign event. But then again, he might fail to move me or someone else to prevent us from colliding. In that case, he fails at his duty, and I still end up in the morgue.

Yes, I can say "suck it up," because I have to deal with it, so does everyone else who drives or flies, and so should they.
 
I think one of the differences may be the length of time they slept.
- fell asleep for about 30 minutes
- Went to sleep for 5 hours

Which one would you want to pay to sleep? I have no problem with an intentional nap, but it's a streach to call 5 hours a nap.
 
Missa said:
Which one would you want to pay to sleep? I have no problem with an intentional nap, but it's a streach to call 5 hours a nap.
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Do you have a problem with your bus driver taking an intentional nap while driving? 30 minutes or 5 hours are both unacceptable in that case.

I don't have an issue with one pilot out of a two-pilot crew taking a nap. Or, if you have two controllers switching off, I don't have a problem with one taking a nap while the other controls (assuming 1-controller duties). However, this is different.
 
How is this different from two controllers switching off? Is the argument now that they didn't switch off fast enough?
 
ebacon said:
How is this different from two controllers switching off? Is the argument now that they didn't switch off fast enough?
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Because a switch-off is seamless to the pilot, and someone (if not two people) are awake at the helm the whole time. In this case, you had someone asleep at the wheel.
 
When I worked at Comcast, there was an unwritten and unofficial acceptance that we could sleep on graveyard shift. The only time I ever got in trouble was when I got caught sleeping on a makeshift bed. Apparently being comfortable crossed the line.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
Because a switch-off is seamless to the pilot, and someone (if not two people) are awake at the helm the whole time. In this case, you had someone asleep at the wheel.
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There's something here that I'm missing.

If one guy was awake and running the show, then what "wheel" was the other controller asleep on?
 
Bob Noel said:
ok, so don't blame the crew. Blame the idiots that created the training materials and manuals.

Note that I'm saying the controller or the rest of the IFR system was blameless.
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Brasil is prosecuting a US aircrew for 'negligent interference in air traffic', in part because they can't proove that their TCAS was in operation when they clipped a 737 ATC had put on a collision course with them contrary to hemispheric rules. If you believe that the fact that Zurich ATC steered those two planes into each other is not to blame for the Ueberlingen accident, you would have to agree with that brasilian prosecutors allegation that the Legacys crew not getting out of the opposing traffics way was negligent on their part.

But let's not make the mistake of thinking that, for example, the pilot has no responsibility for see-and-avoid in VMC while in Class A airspace.
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The Bashkirian crew had a visual on the 757 minutes before the impact.
 
This is really simple. In each of the cases, the airplanes landed safely without the help of the tower controller. Zwounds. Get rid of all tower controllers and save the money. :)
 
weilke said:
Brasil is prosecuting a US aircrew for 'negligent interference in air traffic', in part because they can't proove that their TCAS was in operation when they clipped a 737 ATC had put on a collision course with them contrary to hemispheric rules. If you believe that the fact that Zurich ATC steered those two planes into each other is not to blame for the Ueberlingen accident, you would have to agree with that brasilian prosecutors allegation that the Legacys crew not getting out of the opposing traffics way was negligent on their part.



The Bashkirian crew had a visual on the 757 minutes before the impact.
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Is it unclear that I believe the crew (or rather the people who trained the crew) and ATC shared blame for the accident? Note that I didn't say what I believe is the blame ratio.
 
Bob Noel said:
Is it unclear that I believe the crew (or rather the people who trained the crew) and ATC shared blame for the accident? Note that I didn't say what I believe is the blame ratio.
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You may have typed something that you didn't mean to say then:

Note that I'm saying the controller or the rest of the IFR system was blameless.

I agree, there was a chain of events that led to the outcome, but the failure of TCAS procedures was the very last link in that chain and the one easiest to chalk up to 'stuff happens'. The systemic causes that came up during the investigation (****ty training of east-bloc pilots terrorizing the skies over europe, the ideology of cheap and sloppy procedures at privatized ATC facilities) are harder to fix but have wider consequences than an individual crews decision not to follow a (to them) nonsensical RA.
 
weilke said:
You may have typed something that you didn't mean to say then:

Note that I'm saying the controller or the rest of the IFR system was blameless.

I agree, there was a chain of events that led to the outcome, but the failure of TCAS procedures was the very last link in that chain and the one easiest to chalk up to 'stuff happens'. The systemic causes that came up during the investigation (****ty training of east-bloc pilots terrorizing the skies over europe, the ideology of cheap and sloppy procedures at privatized ATC facilities) are harder to fix but have wider consequences than an individual crews decision not to follow a (to them) nonsensical RA.
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aw nuts. Yep, there was a missing "not" in that sentence. It should have read "Note that I'm not saying the controller or the rest of the IFR was blameless."

Sorry about the confusion.
 
jnmeade said:
Are all the ATC people tested for sleep apnea?
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They require class 2 medicals. So they have the same sort of screening as commercial pilots. Flying magazine had an article on sleep apnea last month that contends,IIRC, that there are a lot of undiagnosed pilots out there, so it stands to reason that the same would apply to controllers.
 
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