@Ditchdigger: so they have not figured out that it is during periods of low arousal that people's minds (and sometimes their bodies too) drift away?
They must be as myopic as the stupid EASA for thinking that regulations can change how biology works. Evolution takes thousands of years, not a regulation change.
There's one school of thought that holds that management's ranks are composed of individuals who couldn't cut it doing the actual work, and that resentment towards those who can cut it plays a greater role in policy making than any actual concern for safety. I'll leave it up to everybody to judge the validity of that for themselves.
I bet that it will eventually become accepted like the catnaps in the cockpit; ...
I hadn't mentioned it earlier, but the FAA also prohibits such catnaps by controllers, at
any time. Even when the facility is fully staffed and a controller has a full hour of break time, 15 minutes of sleeping is a forbidden activity.
...there must be lots of controlers already doing other stuff just to stay awake, and as a pilot I feel safer for it. I trust professionals to know where to draw the line between a distraction and an aid.
And I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment that knowledge and with it, common sense has been lost in regulators and management.
Any comments I make about controllers and the FAA are based strictly on second hand information. These are the things I'm told by Mrs. Ditchdigger when she gets home from work.
That having been said, I have my own opinion, which is that, as a human being, in any field of endeavor, stupid and onerous regulations breed contempt for regulations in general.