• 02
  • June
    2011

An alarming 53 percent increase in air traffic controller errors in the past year will not make air travelers any less worried about airplane accidents. In recent months, there has been a spate of air traffic controllers fired for sleeping on the job or watching movies, forcing commercial airline pilots to land aircrafts on their own and increasing the chances of plane crashes.

In April, at JFK Airport in New York, an Air France 380 jumbo jet clipped the wing of a Delta regional commuter jet, which officials refused to attribute to air traffic controller error despite the obvious indication. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said only that "human error" was to blame. His department has been embarrassed lately by the revelations of sleeping controllers. The incident in which First Lady Michelle Obama's plane came too close to another airplane was just another in a string of highly-publicized controller errors.

Government officials from the FAA and Inspector General Calvin Scovel feel that the increase in air traffic control errors is due to a number of factors, including increased reporting of controller errors under a new program that encourages reporting without sanctions imposed on the controllers.

One significant cause in the upswing of reported errors is inexperienced controllers. Inspector General Scovel reported that as many as 25 percent of the controllers working at airport towers and radar centers were in training as of March 2011, with as high as 43 percent at a Denver radar center and 39 percent at New York's LaGuardia Airport.

Some National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officials have suggested that controlled napping be permitted under certain conditions to increase the alertness of controllers who work late at night. Those officials cite studies indicating that short naps increase effectiveness. Secretary LaHood has expressed misgivings about the suggestion.

With as many as 11,000 controllers to be hired by 2019, the FAA would like to revise its method of recruiting new controllers by offering financial incentives to experienced controllers who transfer to larger airport towers and radar centers. It would also like to place higher-achieving graduates with more complex air-traffic facilities. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington noted, however, that the FAA's current method of graduate recruitment and placement has been an issue as far back as 2004.