Another sleepyhead Air Traffic Controller

[marmar]

By Christi Parsons, Washington Bureau
April 16, 2011, 12:42 p.m.


Reporting from Washington —

Federal officials suspended yet another air traffic controller Saturday for falling asleep on the job, the seventh such incident reported to them so far this year.

The incident took place at the Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center in the early morning hours Saturday, Federal Aviation Authority said in a written statement.

A review of air traffic tapes shows the controller did not miss calls from any aircraft, and there were no accidents as a result, according to the agency.

This latest incident occurred as federal officials were already planning a round of meetings around the country on air traffic control and safety, set to begin Monday. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-controller-asleep-20110417,0,7913826.story

[Brickbat]

1. I saw another story saying their rests are eight hours, and that one of the most popular schedules

"is known as the 2-2-1. Under it, a controller begins the workweek with two evening shifts, does a quick turnaround to a pair of day shifts and then does another quick turn before an overnight shift."

Sounds like "overworked Air Traffic Controller" might be a better description.

[marmar]

2. '"overworked Air Traffic Controller" might be a better description.'

No doubt. But that's a less fetching subject line.

[Brickbat]

4. Yep, people would rather read stories about people they can blame, rather than about broken systems

they should fix.

[Zoeisright]

16. You got it.

Most people, unfortunately, aren't interested in learning the truth behind behavior. They'd rather just feel superior.

[Brickbat]

21. As evidenced by all the "I'VE worked a 12-hour shift and *I* didn't fall asleep" comments.

:mad:

[dana_b]

3. brutal on the body

I can't believe that they keep blaming the ATC instead of looking into the reasons behind it. Stupidity.

[valerief]

7. Shit falls down. nt

[Ed Suspicious]

5. What kind of sadistic A-hole

would even come up with a system like that?

[valerief]

6. If we had regulations in this country, that would be illegal. nt

[Brickbat]

8. That is the regulation.

[AdHocSolver]

9. Scientific research into sleep shows that such changes in the sleep cycle impair functionality.

In "the good old days", nurses were required to alternate work shifts between day, afternoon, and night shifts. This often proved very stressful for them.

New doctors doing their residency would have to pull 72-hour on call shifts. A friend of mine doing his residency told me that sometimes he was so tired during one of these long shifts that he would get confused about what he was doing. He said he hoped he hadn't made any mistakes, and he was thankful when a nurse would alert him to any issues with his decisions.

[Brickbat]

10. Rules in the transportation industry make alternate work shifts commonplace.

Mr. Brickbat is a locomotive engineer, and it's crazy.

[AdHocSolver]

13. Several times I have traveled by train to avoid driving alone.

For the most part, I enjoy it. It is less stressful than dealing with traffic, the scenery is often interesting, and I have taken some great pictures from the train.

I have found the railroad employees to be friendly and helpful, and I have had some interesting conversations with people I met on the train. (These trips were about 350 miles in length.)

Do you work with passenger or freight trains?

(Side note to photographers: To get good pictures through the train window, you need to use a camera that enables you to preset the shutter speed, f-stop of the lens, and the lens focus. You also need to use a fast film of ASA 400 or 800. With ASA 800 print film, I set the shutter speed at 1/250 of a second, lens at f5.6, and focus at or very close to infinity. This works for most light levels. A meter reading can be helpful. My usual camera is an old Canon that has a fixed 40mm focal length lens, and that focal length works well for most pictures.

The train moves at a fast clip (most of the time) and all-automatic operation will be too slow to get good pictures. Point-and-shoots won't work. I don't have a digital camera. However, I suspect that using a digital camera where you can set it up to settings similar to those for 35mm film should work.)

[Brickbat]

20. Mr. Brickbat works on freight trains.

[DefenseLawyer]

11. I remember just a few years ago

seeing a story about the "computers" that were used for our air traffic control system. They were ancient. Is that still the case?

[eqfan592]

12. yes. nt

[AdHocSolver]

14. If the computers that ATC uses (of whatever vintage) do NOT use MS Windows, that is a plus.

With all of the hacking, cracking, system crashes, bugs, viruses, worms, and trojans that affect the standard PC, it is fortunate that ATC uses "old" technology.

If ATC decides to upgrade their technology, then it is hoped that they would go with a computer system that runs open source software such as the Linux operating system.

Besides being of a higher quality than most proprietary software, using open source software would save hundreds of millions of dollars and allow maintenance to be available far into the future without having to be dependent on any private corporations.

[DefenseLawyer]

15. Well whatever

I'm not a computer guy. But this stuff was like 30 years old. I don't think software was the problem.

[AdHocSolver]

17. I programmed computers for twenty years.

As long as they use solid-state hardware (like transistors), and the software is well written, then I wouldn't be too concerned.

However, if they change the hardware, they have to develop all new software for it. Even if the old software was written in Fortran, for which compilers (source code translators) currently exist, porting the old software to the new hardware would be a significant task, and may not even be feasible.

I read a few years ago that the Defense Department uses old computer systems as well. Even more disturbing is the contention that some of the old equipment that they use contains vacuum tubes. That is scary.

[DefenseLawyer]

18. Again, you know a lot more than I

but wouldn't processor speed and memory capacity be horrible in equipment that old? I mean even if it "works" it can't work very efficiently, by today's standards. I think that's part of the problem, it "works" just well enough that no one wants to pay to replace it.

[AdHocSolver]

19. You are correct.. Memory capacity and processor speed would be problematic.

Thirty years ago, the hardware technology was not only limited compared to what we have today, it was very expensive.

This limited the size of programs that could be run on the existing hardware. Therefore, graphics were limited. This limited the size and complexity of the software.

Today, the software suffers from so much bloat, that programs are riddled with bugs that seldom showed up in old software.

To be blunt, software quality has not kept up with the hardware. The biggest expense today is not hardware, but software.

The hardware is so cheap these days, that it is easy to build systems with almost total redundancy to preclude any problems occurring with hardware failure.

The same is not true with software. A totally new software system would have to be developed, and tested in parallel with the existing system to find and fix bugs in the new system.

Then the new system would have to replace the old system, a significant task in itself. A new system would require many years (five?) to develop and the hardware it would be developed on would be obsolete by the time the system was ready to be put into production.

This is why it could only be effectively done using open source software such as Linux. Linux is constantly upgraded, and versions that are backward compatible are maintained for many years, and run on many types of hardware.

This is not true for proprietary software such as MS Windows. The corporate model purposely incorporates changes that prevent backward compatibility for more than three or four generations to get you to upgrade. Using proprietary software would cost hundreds of millions of dollars before even one line of application software were written. Linux is essentially "free" as are upgrades.

[MedicalAdmin]

22. Good points.

ANd everything public should be based on open source. Especially critical systems and double especially voting machines (which should be paper and pencil IMHO).