Controllers sleeping, pilots playing on laptops, no wonder

[quinnox]

Air traffic controllers taking a snooze on the job, airline pilots too busy playing on their laptops to notice they overshoot their destination, airline pilots flying while drunk, all incidents from the recent past. No wonder some people don't trust air travel!

Incompetency at the highest levels.

[madrchsod]

1. really? air travel is the safest form of travel

in private industry no one is allowed to work alone. if one person is scheduled to work there has to be another person. where i have worked it is a foreman or group leader. when i worked overnight by myself at a steel mill someone always checked on me at least every half hour.

as for the rest of your statements how many have there been in relation to other forms of travel?

[onethatcares]

3. oh, I would agree with that,

as long as we look at miles traveled per amount of passengers carried.

My beef is with the air traffic controller system that doesn't require 2 sets of eyes or hand or whatever

on the graveyard shift. Ever since ronnie reagan fired the union, it's been the proverbial race to the bottom

due to no city wanting to spend those extra 10 thousands of dollars to keep two personnel working. They said

they didnt' need that many and since there was no union to insist on safty measures.none were hired.

I don't fly anymore. I just don't feel safe.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. There are approximately 20,000 commercial airline flights per day in the US.

And yet there has not been a fatal accident involving a US air carrier in over two years. That's almost 15 million flights. The annual risk of being killed in a plane crash is about 1 in 11 million. Compare that to the annual risk of being killed in a motor vehicle crash, which is about 1 in 5,000. That's not to say the sorts of incidents referenced by the OP are acceptable, but they are atypical, isolated and are being dealt with.

I'm not worried. The most dangerous part of any trip is the drive to the airport.

[SheilaT]

4. I'm convinced that the real issue with the

sleeping ATC guys is bad scheduling. When I first heard the story about the sleeping controller at DCA, my first thought was to wonder what his schedule was.

Too many places where there needs to be coverage 24/7, do NOT do a good job of scheduling so that employees can get enough sleep.