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Sleepy air traffic controllers: Could it happen in Tucson? You betcha.

by on Mar. 26, 2011, under jobs, Tucson, unions
Ronald Reagan

President Ronald Reagan ordering striking unionists back to work. (Photo Credit: Wikipedia.)

Earlier this week, President Ronald Reagan’s air traffic controller union busting devolved to a dangerous low point in air safety when a lone controller fell asleep at the switch at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, a bustling, major airport outside of Washington DC.

As a result, two passenger jets trying to land at Reagan National had to wing it. From the Seattle Times…

The supervisor – the only controller scheduled for duty in the tower around midnight Tuesday when incident occurred – had fallen asleep, said an aviation official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the incident…

The pilots of the two commercial planes were unable to reach the tower, but they were in communication with a regional air traffic control facility, Knudson said. That facility is in Warrenton, Va., about 40 miles from the airport…

After pilots were unable to raise the airport tower by radio, they asked controllers in Warrenton to call the tower, Knudson said. Repeated calls to the tower went unanswered, he said…

“The FAA is looking into staffing issues and whether existing procedures were followed appropriately,” agency spokeswoman Laura Brown said in an email. [Emphasis added.]

In its post-incident investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board is finding that Washington National is not the only air terminal with one person on duty over night. Aren’t there rules about this sort of thing?

Now we find that Tucson International Airport is among those airport terminals with a lone controller at night.

Anyone who has driven alone at night on a boring interstate knows that one person working alone all night is just not safe. I’m sure this is not the first time an air traffic controller has fallen asleep.

Two issues unions fight for are safety and good working conditions. Air traffic controllers haven’t been unionized since the early 1980s– thanks to Reagan.

A little history lesson… the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) was a union that represented the nation’s air traffic controllers from 1968 to 1981 when the Reagan Administration broke a PATCO strike, fired 11,345 air traffic controllers, and banned them from federal service. Some unionists see busting the PATCO union as a turning point in the history of labor in the US.

Destroying a union that actually supported him in the election against Carter is part of Reagan’s legacy. Now we can add unsafe skies to Reagan’s legacy.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 26th, 2011 at 7:55 am and is filed under jobs, Tucson, unions. Tags for this post: , , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  • Don “Crude” Craig

    Ms. Powers, one sentence (Air traffic controllers haven’t been unionized since the early 1980s– thanks to Reagan.) is not correct.
    NATCA (National Air Traffic Controllers Association) is the current union for controllers and other groups within the FAA.   NATCA started in 1985 and became certified in 1987.
    http://natca.unionlaborworks.com/ULWSiteResources/natcaweb/Resources/file/Media%20Center/NATCABrochure7_2007.pdf
    Everything else in your article is spot on and quite accurate.  Labor took a tremendous hit during Reagan’s term and the current crop of Republicans are right now attempting to do away with unions altogether.
    Don “Crude” Craig  -  X-D10

  • Fear the soicalist left and the crazy right

    It sounds rose to blame the down fall of the union on Reagen but the truth is it was on the decline for thirty years prior and he busted the controllers union to stop them from shutting down the entire aviation industry and every person trying to get somewhere in the name of higher pay.  What a powerful weapon to use at the expense and hardship of hundreds of thousands of people.  This is the reason most states prevent, by law, striking of police officers, firefighters etc.   So you can complain all day long, but the fact is the union has had little to do with the middle class for thirty years and now more than ever has almost no impact on work environment beyond pay for only 12% of Americans.  So no wonder they want pressure based open ballots, which only has one out come, unionization by peer pressure, and they say the morons on the right are trying to bring down the American way, how more un-American can you get than open ballot.
    I applaud the labor movement and what it has done but having been in three unions and also having held jobs in nonunion shops, the only thing I saw was an ok pay scale and a whole lot of people that would not have made it a week in a nonunion shop due to being lazy, apathetic, or out right incompetent.  I also have always made more when not in a union which is ironic if you think that you have to be in a union to be middle class…..

  • leftfield

    It sounds rose to blame the down fall of the union on Reagen (sic)…

    You can blame ‘State’s Rights’ Ronnie for all sorts of bad things.  The demented old codger was responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of people in Central America, so union-busting was not the worst of his despicable crimes against humanity.  And he had greasy hair!  I hate greasy hair!

    • Fear the soicalist left and the crazy right

      And this is different than Obama running off to bomb in Libya without congressional approval?  Yes Qaddafi is a bad guy and probably needed to be bombed but are you saying that cartel condoning governments did not climb to the same level?  Oh wait its Obama and he does all that he does to help the little people that get squashed by rich people….  He would never want to take the power from the people…  No he just wishes that the courts went further to redistribute wealth by force…..  Or worse wants to OK open ballots in unions so people can course and pressure people into unions so they can rebuild there falling numbers and power……  On a second note I also do not like greasy hair.

    • Fear the soicalist left and the crazy right

      On second thought your statement about state’s rights brings me to think that the following statement is pretty clear
      “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
      Not a right or left statement but sure it clear to me, maybe I failed to understand the term “are reserved”   But hey why not give away your rights so you can obtain a false sense of fairness and security.

      • leftfield

        Yeah, except the demented senile old man was not talking about the constitution.  He was talking about his support for preserving white privilege.  You know, protecting them against those mythical “welfare queens”; the ones you imagine are having lots of babies, watching their big screen TVs (‘they got big screen TV’s.  I got a job and I don’t even have a big screen TV.  It ain’t fair I tell ya’.), drinking heavily and generally living a life of ease on YOUR tax dollar that them ‘libs’ is taking from you by force. 

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The Tucson Progressive

Pamela Powers Hannley writes the Tucson Progressive blog on the TucsonCitizen.com and contributes articles to the Huffington Post and Salon.com. She has had more than 30 years of experience in written, visual, and electronic communication—including freelance writing, photography, graphic design, and consulting. In addition to blogging for the Citizen, she is the Managing Editor of an international medical research journal.

Hannley has authored medical research articles, print magazine and newspaper stories, and numerous cancer prevention and self-help publications.

She has been a blogger since 2006, joined the ranks of Tucson Citizen bloggers in October 2010, and started contributing to the Huffington Post in 2011 and to Salon.com in 2012.

Hannley holds a masters’ degree in public health from The University of Arizona and a bachelors’ degree in journalism from The Ohio State University. She is a native of Amherst, Ohio but has lived in Tucson since 1981.