Originally Posted by
Ian W
There is a lot of pressure to reduce staffing in these 24 hour units and anyone who has worked in them knows the boredom of the 1am to 4am hours and it is tempting to let people officially or unofficially 'nap' somewhere..
Well it wasn't 02.30 in some secondary place, and Las Vegas has long had a substantial traffic peak, both in and out, at 23.00-23.59 Local, when this occurred. Just listen to how many different aircraft were being worked. A quick look up shows 20 departures and 17 arrivals, 37 runway movements scheduled in this hour, including several widebodies and let alone any exec jets, scheduled in that hour. Quite how the controller was working two positions and the only other staffer was on their break is surely a question for the management.
Just the same happened at the Air Canada SFO incident. It was midnight, but there were 4 widebodies queued at the hold point which had been unable to get away for up to 20 minutes due to constant inbounds. And yet that was just one controller covering two positions as well.