Air traffic controllers won’t be allowed to schedule naps into their work shifts to mitigate fatigue, even though their union floated that option.
“We don’t pay people to sleep at work at the FAA,” the agency’s top administrator, Randy Babbitt, told Atlanta controllers Monday, echoing words Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood used earlier in the day. “I don’t know anybody that pays people to sleep at work.”
Wale Abdul arrived at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on Monday from Chicago; he said he was more apprehensive about flying after five episodes of air traffic controllers suspected of sleeping on duty.
"It can be frightening at times," Abdul said. "Those guys have a heck of a responsibility on their hands. But there's no excuse for falling asleep on the job."
Babbitt echoed that theme, telling several dozen controllers at the FAA’s Terminal Radar Approach Control center in Peachtree City that, even if the rules allowed controllers to schedule naps during shifts, professionalism would not.
“It’s one thing to have a sleep option. But do you use it?” Babbitt asked them. “What is professional behavior? Someone who shows up well-rested. A professional does the right thing when no one is looking.”
At the same time, Babbitt introduced new work rules designed to address the problem of fatigue. One change: Controllers will get what officials called recuperative breaks, in which they will be allowed to step away from their work stations, stretch their legs, grab some coffee or get some fresh air.
“They’re away from the operation position, clearing their minds, resting their eyes,” said Paul Rinaldi, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, which worked with the FAA to create the new rules.
The breaks are designed particularly to help controllers working overnight at facilities staffed by three or fewer people, he said. “It’s really hard, especially in the tower environment when you don’t have a lot of traffic, and it’s quiet and it’s dark and your body clock wants you fall asleep.”
Other rule changes include adding an additional mandatory hour of rest time between scheduled shifts, prohibiting schedule swapping that may cut into that required nine hours between shifts, and prohibiting controllers from starting midnight shifts after a day off.
The focus on professionalism was spurred by a month in which four air traffic controllers -- in Reno, Nev., Washington, Seattle, and Miami -- were caught sleeping on the job. Two others remain under investigation for suspicion of falling asleep.
All have been suspended from work, pending investigation, FAA officials said.
At Hartsfield-Jackson, passengers carried with them a mixed bag of nonchalance, fear and acceptance.
"I'm not nervous to fly," said Synnove Edvardsen, who was returning to her native Norway. "Of course, it makes sense with all the hours they work, they would be tired."
Traveling from Santa Fe, New Mexico, Bob Fitzmaurice said it was past time that someone fix controllers' schedules.
"I'm sure it's been going on for years," Fitzmaurice said. "But they have shift restrictions for pilots and flight attendants. Why not for air traffic controllers?"
The schedules controllers work can compress a 40-hour work week into fewer than five full days, noted controller Derek Bittman, of Senoia, who was made available to the media by the union.
He said his typical week has the following shifts: 3 p.m. to 11 p.m.; 2 p.m. to 10 p.m.; 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.; 5:50 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.; and 10:30 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Toward the tail end, Bittman said. “I’ve just worked 16 hours within a day-and-a-half. This is how it works.”
Controller fatigue has been recognized as a problem at least since 2006, when it contributed to a crash in Lexington, Ky., that killed 49 people. A panel of union and FAA officials worked together on the new rules; a draft was released in December and was under review when the spate of sleep incidents came to light.
“We’ll just have to roll them out quicker,” Rinaldi said.
Babbitt, who will take his message to the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City and to facilities in Dallas and Chicago this week, said he is concerned about repairing the FAA’s reputation.
“When a person gets onto an airplane, the last thing I want them to worry about is that the air traffic controller might be asleep,” he told FAA staffers.
Bittman, too, said he flinches when controllers become talk-radio fodder. “I drive home and I hear [Mike] Huckabee on his show talking about how air traffic controllers are sleeping again, after I’ve been working my tail off and sweating," he said. “I take it a little personally.”
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