An aviation safety event that doesn’t harm people or equipment should be considered a learning experience, with, in the end, a positive outcome. A major exception to that rule is the odd event that alarms the public. When the public is alarmed, the general news media get agitated, which, in turn, motivates our political leaders into quick action that often misses the mark and sometimes is worse than doing nothing.
Recently, here in Washington, D.C., the public was alarmed when a night-shift tower controller at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) fell asleep and did not awake when two late flights called in expecting to be cleared to land. With advice from a controller at a nearby radar air traffic control (ATC) facility, and making radio calls in the blind as one would do at an uncontrolled airport, both aircraft landed without a problem.
It turned out that the sleeping controller was a supervisor who was pulling his fourth consecutive night shift. Readers of this magaz…
