FAA suspends more sleeping controllers

WASHINGTON – The Federal Aviation Administration is immediately adding a second controller at night at 26 airports and a radar facility after finding two more cases of controllers sleeping on duty.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s announcement Wednesday came hours after a medical flight carrying at least three people landed at Reno-Tahoe International Airport in Nevada without assistance because the pilot was unable to raise a controller in the airport tower. The FAA said in a statement that the controller, who has been suspended, had fallen asleep. The incident occurred at 2 a.m. PDT, when the controller was alone on duty.

Another controller, at Boeing Field-King County International in Seattle, has also been suspended for falling asleep during his morning shift on Monday, the FAA said. That controller was already facing disciplinary action for falling asleep on two separate occasions during an early evening shift in January, the agency said.

The latest cases follow three previously disclosed incidents in which controllers have been suspended, including two episodes of controllers sleeping on duty.

“I am totally outraged by these incidents. This is absolutely unacceptable,” LaHood said in a statement.

Last week, FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt told a congressional panel that the FAA is seeking to fire a controller in Knoxville, Tenn., who deliberately slept for five hours while he was supposed to be manning a radar facility that handles aircraft approaches for the Knoxville airport as well as several other smaller airports in the region. The lone controller on the midnight shift in the airport’s tower wound up performing both his job of landing planes as well as the sleeping controller’s job of handling approaches.

“Air traffic controllers are responsible for making sure aircraft safely reach their destinations. We absolutely cannot and will not tolerate sleeping on the job,” Babbitt said in a statement Wednesday.