ATC feeling sleepy?
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Nah. No way.
Well, maybe just the odd micro sleep. Like 30 minutes or so.
ASA were considering double manning on night shifts after Uberlingen but it`s on the back burner until another........
Well, maybe just the odd micro sleep. Like 30 minutes or so.
ASA were considering double manning on night shifts after Uberlingen but it`s on the back burner until another........
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Fatigue :Aviation's Dirty Little Secret
WASHINGTON – Reports of sleeping air traffic controllers highlight a long-known and often ignored hazard: Workers on night shifts can have trouble concentrating and even staying awake.
"Government officials haven't recognized that people routinely fall asleep at night when they're doing shift work," said Dr. Charles Czeisler, chief of sleep medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
Czeisler said studies show that 30 percent to 50 percent of night-shift workers report falling asleep at least once a week while on the job.
So the notion that this has happened only a few times among the thousands of controllers "is preposterous," he said in a telephone interview.
In a sign of growing awareness of the problem, the Federal Aviation Administration said Saturday it was changing air traffic controllers' work schedules most likely to cause fatigue. The announcement comes after the agency disclosed another incident in which a controller fell asleep while on duty early Saturday morning at a busy Miami regional facility. According to a preliminary review, there was no impact to flight operations, the FAA said.
Czeisler said the potential danger isn't limited to air traffic controllers, but can apply to truck and bus drivers, airline pilots and those in the maritime industry. Who else? Factory workers, police, firefighters, emergency workers, nurses and doctors, cooks, hotel employees, people in the media and others on night or changing shifts.
"We live in a very sleep-deprived society where many people are burning the candle at both ends," Czeisler said. He said that a half-century ago, just 2 percent of people slept six hours or less per night; today it's 28 percent.
Dr. William Fishbein, a neuroscientist at the City University of New York, said that when people work odd shifts "it mucks up their biological rhythms."
Hormones are synchronized with the wake-sleep cycle. When people change shifts, the brain never knows when it's supposed to be asleep, so this affects how people function.
People who change shifts every few days are going to have all kinds of problems related to memory and learning, Fishbein said. This kind of schedule especially affects what he called relational memories, which involve the ability to understand how one thing is related to another.
In addition to drowsiness and inability to concentrate, people working night shifts are more subject to chronic intestinal and heart diseases and have been shown to have a higher incidence of some forms of cancer. The World Health Organization has classified shift work as a probable carcinogen.
"We have 500 cable channels, we take work home with us on our Blackberrys and computers, both work and entertainment options are available 24 hours a day seven days a week and there is much more and brighter light exposure in our homes in evenings, which affects hormones involved in sleep, Czeisler said.
"And we are still trying to get up with the chickens because our work hours are starting earlier and earlier," he said.
Today, controllers are at the center of the firestorm, with recent reports that several planes couldn't contact airport towers for assistance in landing. Members of Congress are responding to a worried public, controllers have been suspended and the head of the government's air traffic control system has resigned.
President Barack Obama told ABC News that controllers must stay alert and do their jobs.
One old solution back in the news is allowing night workers to nap.
"There should be sanctioned on-shift napping. That's the way to handle night shift work," said Gregory Belenky, a sleep expert at Washington State University in Spokane.
A NASA study suggested that pilots on long-distance flights would perform much better if given a chance to take a scheduled nap, as long the rest was planned and the both pilots didn't sleep at the same time.
"But even though that's been known for decades, it's never been allowed because we prefer to pretend that these things are not happening," instead of managing the problem, Czeisler said. "We have a bury-our-head-in-the-sand attitude."
Controllers are often scheduled for a week of midnight shifts followed by a week of morning shifts and then a week on swing shifts. This pattern, sleep scientists say, interrupts the body's natural sleep cycles.
Many of the Federal Aviation Administration's 15,700 controllers work schedules that allow no realistic opportunity for rest. Their record for errors on the job has grown sharply over the past several years.
FAA rules prohibit sleeping on the job, even during breaks. Employees who violate them can be fired. But controllers told The Associated Press that napping at night where one controller works two jobs while the other sleeps, and then they swap, is an open secret within the agency.
Czeisler also is urging screening of truck drivers for sleep apnea, a breathing problem they can be prone to because many are obese. He estimates that as many as 250,000 people in the U.S. doze off while driving every day, mostly in the daytime.
Studies have shown that a sleep-deprived driver is as impaired as someone with enough alcohol in his blood to be considered a drunken driver.
Even a drunk has some reflexes. "If you fall asleep, your performance is much worse," he said.
___
Online:
Brigham and Women's Hospital's Division of Sleep Medicine: BWH Sleep Medicine - Sleep Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital
National Sleep Foundation: National Sleep Foundation - Information on Sleep Health and Safety | Information on Sleep Health and Safety
Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook
......
"Government officials haven't recognized that people routinely fall asleep at night when they're doing shift work," said Dr. Charles Czeisler, chief of sleep medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
Czeisler said studies show that 30 percent to 50 percent of night-shift workers report falling asleep at least once a week while on the job.
So the notion that this has happened only a few times among the thousands of controllers "is preposterous," he said in a telephone interview.
In a sign of growing awareness of the problem, the Federal Aviation Administration said Saturday it was changing air traffic controllers' work schedules most likely to cause fatigue. The announcement comes after the agency disclosed another incident in which a controller fell asleep while on duty early Saturday morning at a busy Miami regional facility. According to a preliminary review, there was no impact to flight operations, the FAA said.
Czeisler said the potential danger isn't limited to air traffic controllers, but can apply to truck and bus drivers, airline pilots and those in the maritime industry. Who else? Factory workers, police, firefighters, emergency workers, nurses and doctors, cooks, hotel employees, people in the media and others on night or changing shifts.
"We live in a very sleep-deprived society where many people are burning the candle at both ends," Czeisler said. He said that a half-century ago, just 2 percent of people slept six hours or less per night; today it's 28 percent.
Dr. William Fishbein, a neuroscientist at the City University of New York, said that when people work odd shifts "it mucks up their biological rhythms."
Hormones are synchronized with the wake-sleep cycle. When people change shifts, the brain never knows when it's supposed to be asleep, so this affects how people function.
People who change shifts every few days are going to have all kinds of problems related to memory and learning, Fishbein said. This kind of schedule especially affects what he called relational memories, which involve the ability to understand how one thing is related to another.
In addition to drowsiness and inability to concentrate, people working night shifts are more subject to chronic intestinal and heart diseases and have been shown to have a higher incidence of some forms of cancer. The World Health Organization has classified shift work as a probable carcinogen.
"We have 500 cable channels, we take work home with us on our Blackberrys and computers, both work and entertainment options are available 24 hours a day seven days a week and there is much more and brighter light exposure in our homes in evenings, which affects hormones involved in sleep, Czeisler said.
"And we are still trying to get up with the chickens because our work hours are starting earlier and earlier," he said.
Today, controllers are at the center of the firestorm, with recent reports that several planes couldn't contact airport towers for assistance in landing. Members of Congress are responding to a worried public, controllers have been suspended and the head of the government's air traffic control system has resigned.
President Barack Obama told ABC News that controllers must stay alert and do their jobs.
One old solution back in the news is allowing night workers to nap.
"There should be sanctioned on-shift napping. That's the way to handle night shift work," said Gregory Belenky, a sleep expert at Washington State University in Spokane.
A NASA study suggested that pilots on long-distance flights would perform much better if given a chance to take a scheduled nap, as long the rest was planned and the both pilots didn't sleep at the same time.
"But even though that's been known for decades, it's never been allowed because we prefer to pretend that these things are not happening," instead of managing the problem, Czeisler said. "We have a bury-our-head-in-the-sand attitude."
Controllers are often scheduled for a week of midnight shifts followed by a week of morning shifts and then a week on swing shifts. This pattern, sleep scientists say, interrupts the body's natural sleep cycles.
Many of the Federal Aviation Administration's 15,700 controllers work schedules that allow no realistic opportunity for rest. Their record for errors on the job has grown sharply over the past several years.
FAA rules prohibit sleeping on the job, even during breaks. Employees who violate them can be fired. But controllers told The Associated Press that napping at night where one controller works two jobs while the other sleeps, and then they swap, is an open secret within the agency.
Czeisler also is urging screening of truck drivers for sleep apnea, a breathing problem they can be prone to because many are obese. He estimates that as many as 250,000 people in the U.S. doze off while driving every day, mostly in the daytime.
Studies have shown that a sleep-deprived driver is as impaired as someone with enough alcohol in his blood to be considered a drunken driver.
Even a drunk has some reflexes. "If you fall asleep, your performance is much worse," he said.
___
Online:
Brigham and Women's Hospital's Division of Sleep Medicine: BWH Sleep Medicine - Sleep Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital
National Sleep Foundation: National Sleep Foundation - Information on Sleep Health and Safety | Information on Sleep Health and Safety
Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook
......
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airsupport, I couldn't agree more, and as it turns out we aren't the only ones. It was announced last week by the powers that be in the US that there will no longer be single person doggos. Will Airservices follow suite? Hmmm
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airsupport, I couldn't agree more, and as it turns out we aren't the only ones. It was announced last week by the powers that be in the US that there will no longer be single person doggos. Will Airservices follow suite? Hmmm
IF a tower does not need to be open, okay it is closed, but if it NEEDS to be open it should have at least 2 people manning it, just common sense.
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FAA Announces Changes to Controller Scheduling
FAA takes action.
Press Release – FAA Announces Changes to Controller Scheduling
Press Release – FAA Announces Changes to Controller Scheduling
For Immediate Release
April 17, 2011
Contact: Laura Brown ([email protected])//Sasha Johnson ([email protected])
FAA – NATCA Call to Action on Professionalism Begins Monday in Atlanta
WASHINGTON – Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood and Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Randy Babbitt today announced changes to air traffic controller scheduling practices that will allow controllers more time for rest between shifts.
“We expect controllers to come to work rested and ready to work and take personal responsibility for safety in the control towers. We have zero tolerance for sleeping on the job,” said Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. “Safety is our top priority and we will continue to make whatever changes are necessary.”
“Research shows us that giving people the chance for even an additional one hour of rest during critical periods in a schedule can improve work performance and reduce the potential for fatigue,” said FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt. “Taking advantage of the time you have to rest is also a professional responsibility.”
The new scheduling rules have already been put in place and will be fully in effect by the end of the week:
Over the course of this week, they will visit air traffic facilities in and around the following cities: Atlanta; Dallas- Ft. Worth;Kansas City; Chicago;New York; and Washington,DC. The two will also visit the air traffic control training academy at the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center inOklahoma City.
Senior members of both FAA and NATCA leadership teams will also be visiting additional FAA facilities nationwide over the next few weeks.
In addition to changes in scheduling practices, the Call to Action effort will include the development of a fatigue education program to teach controllers the risks of fatigue and how to avoid it.
The FAA will also commission an independent review of the air traffic control training curriculum and qualifications to make sure new controllers are properly prepared.
NATCA will expand its own Professional Standards program nationwide which focuses on peer-to-peer education for controllers on how to maintain the highest degree of professional conduct.
Press Release – FAA Announces Changes to Controller Scheduling
Press Release – FAA Announces Changes to Controller Scheduling
For Immediate Release
April 17, 2011
Contact: Laura Brown ([email protected])//Sasha Johnson ([email protected])
FAA – NATCA Call to Action on Professionalism Begins Monday in Atlanta
WASHINGTON – Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood and Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Randy Babbitt today announced changes to air traffic controller scheduling practices that will allow controllers more time for rest between shifts.
“We expect controllers to come to work rested and ready to work and take personal responsibility for safety in the control towers. We have zero tolerance for sleeping on the job,” said Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. “Safety is our top priority and we will continue to make whatever changes are necessary.”
“Research shows us that giving people the chance for even an additional one hour of rest during critical periods in a schedule can improve work performance and reduce the potential for fatigue,” said FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt. “Taking advantage of the time you have to rest is also a professional responsibility.”
The new scheduling rules have already been put in place and will be fully in effect by the end of the week:
- Controllers will now have a minimum of nine hours off between shifts. Currently they may have as few as eight.
- Controllers will no longer be able to swap shifts unless they have a minimum of 9 hours off between the last shift they worked and the one they want to begin.
- Controllers will no longer be able to switch to an unscheduled midnight shift following a day off.
- FAA managers will schedule their own shifts in a way to ensure greater coverage in the early morning and late night hours.
Over the course of this week, they will visit air traffic facilities in and around the following cities: Atlanta; Dallas- Ft. Worth;Kansas City; Chicago;New York; and Washington,DC. The two will also visit the air traffic control training academy at the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center inOklahoma City.
Senior members of both FAA and NATCA leadership teams will also be visiting additional FAA facilities nationwide over the next few weeks.
In addition to changes in scheduling practices, the Call to Action effort will include the development of a fatigue education program to teach controllers the risks of fatigue and how to avoid it.
The FAA will also commission an independent review of the air traffic control training curriculum and qualifications to make sure new controllers are properly prepared.
NATCA will expand its own Professional Standards program nationwide which focuses on peer-to-peer education for controllers on how to maintain the highest degree of professional conduct.
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What if the single controller becomes I'll? Has a heart attack, stroke or some other debilitating illness with little or no notice? What if they just need a toilet break?
How can occupational health and safety allow a single person to operate such a critical and crucial job solo?
I worked for a number of years for the government in 24/7 computer system and for that very reason we always has 3 on shift. 1 could be on break leaving behind to operate the system in total safety!
How can occupational health and safety allow a single person to operate such a critical and crucial job solo?
I worked for a number of years for the government in 24/7 computer system and for that very reason we always has 3 on shift. 1 could be on break leaving behind to operate the system in total safety!
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Just pretend it doesn't happen and the problem will go away.
Senior manager's response to the issue being highlighted? "Just give him/her a nudge..."
What we want to know is, are we overstepping the mark if we wake up sleeping managers?
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I can remember being kept away all night, along with the rest of the crew in Brizvagus.
The reason why we were all bright-eyed(?) and bushy-tailed that night?
The snores from the System Supervisor!!!!!
Yeah napping on nights doesn't happen - just ask
management who get to sleep in their beds every night - helped no doubt by a red or two purchased with their "productivity bonus".
The reason why we were all bright-eyed(?) and bushy-tailed that night?
The snores from the System Supervisor!!!!!
Yeah napping on nights doesn't happen - just ask
management who get to sleep in their beds every night - helped no doubt by a red or two purchased with their "productivity bonus".
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Of course it is not only controllers, I had a very worrying night flight many years ago now, from BNE to TSV in a Kingair, the only Pilot was asleep for some 20-30 minutes during cruise. 
And although not a danger to Pilots and their pax, this problem of long hours at night can be dangerous in other ways too. Over the decades I did shift work at airports there are numerous times I didn't remember a lot of the drive home in the morning after night shifts. One morning I will never forget, scared the hell out of me, stopped for a red light at a major intersection, next thing the light is going red again, scary thing was I still don't know if I nodded off and missed one more changing of the lights or more than one.
And although not a danger to Pilots and their pax, this problem of long hours at night can be dangerous in other ways too. Over the decades I did shift work at airports there are numerous times I didn't remember a lot of the drive home in the morning after night shifts. One morning I will never forget, scared the hell out of me, stopped for a red light at a major intersection, next thing the light is going red again, scary thing was I still don't know if I nodded off and missed one more changing of the lights or more than one.
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On certain single doggo sectors, controllers are rostered on standby if someone becomes unavailable for the night shift (doggo).
Controllers have argued that if you want me to be on standby and I prepare for the shift anyway why don't I come in and share the shift and reduce the fatigue of the poor schmuck working it? ASA do not want this, their level of animosity to controllers seems to have no bounds. There is a corporate pathological dislike of controllers.
Airservices Australia do not care about their operational people, the culture is flog your people to death and prove that you are a hard assed manager. This is why those that can are leaving.
The Last Days of Empire, you've seen it with 'traffic restrictions due operational requirements' it will get much worse and Minister Albanese is probably hoping it won't be on his watch.
Controllers have argued that if you want me to be on standby and I prepare for the shift anyway why don't I come in and share the shift and reduce the fatigue of the poor schmuck working it? ASA do not want this, their level of animosity to controllers seems to have no bounds. There is a corporate pathological dislike of controllers.
Airservices Australia do not care about their operational people, the culture is flog your people to death and prove that you are a hard assed manager. This is why those that can are leaving.
The Last Days of Empire, you've seen it with 'traffic restrictions due operational requirements' it will get much worse and Minister Albanese is probably hoping it won't be on his watch.
Last edited by max1; 22nd Apr 2011 at 22:31.