Air Traffic Controllers Continue To Sleep On the Job

The issue of sleeping air traffic controllers – a big national story just a year ago – hasn't completely gone away.

That's according to The Washington Post, which reports "new regulations intended to keep air traffic controllers from dozing off on duty have been violated nearly 4,000 times, according to internal Federal Aviation Administration documents."

THE WASHINGTON POST:  Air traffic controllers aren't keeping to no-doze schedule

The Post notes FAA officials pledged to address issue of sleeping controllers after a controller fell asleep in the tower last March at Washington's Reagan National Airport. That incident -- coupled with another in Knoxville a month later -- put the subject in headlines across the nation during the spring of 2011.

Scheduling was singled out as a primary cause, including options that allowed some controllers to fit a full work week into just four days, according to the Post.

ARCHIVES:  Government watchdog blasts the FAA over air safety (May 8, 2012)

In response to the high-profile fallout, the DOT and FAA pushed through new rules to address the problem. Among those were rules requiring controllers to have a minimum of nine hours off between shifts.

"A vast majority of employees are meeting the requirement for nine consecutive hours of rest between shifts," David Grizzle, chief operating office at the FAA, explains to the Post. "There are 12,000 shifts per month across the country, and in some cases, employees were [arriving] a few minutes early."

Grizzle tells the Post that the FAA is in the process of tweaking its timekeeping software to bar controllers from checking in if they've not hit the mandated nine-hour rest window.

Check out the full story in the Post for additional details and background.

Read more:   http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/post/2012/06/sleeping-air-traffic-controllers/718213/1