By now you’ve heard that a medical plane flying into Reno Tahoe airport had a problem landing at 2 AM because the air traffic controller was apparently asleep. The government solution? Double the number of people with nothing to do.
This may come as a shock, but many airports have no controller. Planes fly using visual flight rules – meaning that pilots are responsible for looking out for each other and directly communicate their intentions to each other There are probably no commercial flights at all from 10 PM to 5 AM, so there is nothing for the person to do – which is why they fall asleep.
Since there was a controller on duty, the pilot can’t land without permission. If there was nobody on duty, the plane would have just landed.
I used to fly F-100’s for the TX ANG back in the medieval times and this was very, very common with small airports, especially with the touch-and-go military pilots.
But, of course our government will double the number of people with nothing to do. These might be the shovel-ready jobs Obama spoke about.
Those might even qualify as additional “green jobs that can’t be outsourced” — since no planes will be landing during their double duty shifts.
EXACTLY Art! Same thing I thought of when I heard the story.
So the govt. stance is they can sleep in shifts? OOO-KKK.
What if the 2 ATCs were drinking on the job? Would we need a third who was in AA to cover for them?
Priceless. You can’t BUY comic entertainment like our govt.!
Firemen sleep at night, but they are awakened when needed. Can the govt. figure out the same thing with the flight controllers since it has already been figured out for the firemen?
Probably not.
Or people who drive trains. Every minute or so an alarm goes off and the engineer has to shut it off. If the engineer fails to respond, the assumption is he fell asleep or had a heart attack and the train goes into automatic shutdown and there is a blizzard of paperwork to fill out.
Stories point out that ATC towers don’t usually have a bathroom or elevator, so sleeping isn’t the only issue, and not the only possible explanation.
Another question you shouldn’t ask is “Why was a medical plane flying into Reno at 2 AM, and is this related to why medical costs are out of control”? Could it have gone to Las Vegas instead?
Oh, and there is a related story about Senator Inhofe trying to land his plane on a closed runway – because his position as a US Senator gives him unlimited flying rights. The construction workers ran for the ditch and he bounced the plane over the construction equipment.
He’s unhappy this is in the news now, since he and the FAA had come to terms on hiding the incident from the public
Is this the Hawaiian Senator who always fell asleep in the Senate Chamber?
Priceless!
He had a deal on hiding the incident from the public?
Poor guy!
Maybe he was sleeping when he was flying. How can we let someone with narcolepsy fly a plane?
No ;) That was In-no-way.
Inhofe is the Republican from Oklahoma. He’s the one leading the charge against the global warming fraud.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2011/04/inhofes-bad-landing-audio-of-senators-brush-with-faa.html
Here is the information on the airport he was landing at.
http://www.airnav.com/airport/PIL
I’m not a pilot, but I sort of get the sense of it. This airport is in horrible condition. The main runway is the only one in decent shape – it’s 8000 feet and he was landing a twin prop plane – A cessna 340
http://futurshox.net/aeroview.php?level=image&id=7583
the Cessna needs only 1,850 feet to land, even less if it has STOL modifications
http://www.planeandpilotmag.com/aircraft/international-aircraft-directory/multi-engine-aircraft/cessna-340.html
Inhofe has a commercial pilot’s license – he isn’t a yahoo with 50 hours of flight time. He claims he had FAA clearance to land on the runway.