Controllers’ fatigue studied

Report questions work schedules, budget cuts.

WASHINGTON — Three years after a series of incidents in which controllers were found to be sleeping on the job, a National Research Council report released Friday expressed astonishment that the Federal Aviation Administration still permits controllers to work schedules that cram five work shifts into four 24-hour periods.

The schedules are popular with controllers because at the end of last shift they have 80 hours off before returning to work the next week. But controllers also call the shifts “rattlers” because they “turn around and bite back,” increasing the chance for fatigue, errors and accidents.

The report also expressed concern about the effect of budget cuts on the FAA’s program to prevent controllers from suffering fatigue on the job. And the 12-member committee of academic and industry experts who wrote the report at the behest of Congress said FAA officials refused to allow them to review results of prior research the agency had conducted with NASA examining how late-night work schedules affect con- troller performance.

An example of the kind of schedule that alarmed the report’s authors starts with two day shifts, followed by two morning shifts and, on the same day as the second morning shift, an overnight shift beginning eight hours later. When factoring in commute times and the difficulty people have sleeping during the day when the human body’s circadian rhythms are “promoting wakefulness,” controllers are “unlikely to log a substantial amount of sleep, if any, before the final midnight shift,” the report said.

“From a fatigue and safety perspective, this scheduling is questionable and the committee was astonished to find that it is still allowed under current regulations,” the report said.

FAA officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association defended the scheduling, citing the unreleased 2009 study. The union said in a statement that NASA’s research showed that “with proper rest periods,” the rattler “actually produced less periods of fatigue risk to the overall schedule.”

In 2011, FAA officials and then-Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood promised reforms after a nearly a dozen incidents in which air traffic controllers were discovered sleeping on the job or failed to respond to calls from pilots trying to land planes late at night. In one episode, two airliners landed at Washington’s Reagan National Airport without the aid of a controller because the lone controller on the overnight shift had fallen asleep.