Editorial: Air safety threat

Saturday, April 14, 2007 | 7:27 a.m.

Federal transportation safety officials say sleep-starved air traffic controllers have played a role in many near-fatal or fatal accidents on the nation's runways, including a crash last summer on a Kentucky runway that resulted in 49 deaths - the worst U.S. aviation crash in five years.

In an 11-page safety recommendation letter issued Tuesday, the National Transportation Safety Board said it "has long been concerned about the effects of fatigue" on transportation industry employees, including air traffic controllers.

Fatigue came to the forefront in tragic form Aug. 27 when Comair flight 5191 crashed while taking off from Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Ky., killing 49 of the 50 people on board. The sole air traffic controller on duty had cleared the aircraft for takeoff on a 7,003-foot runway, but failed to notice that the aircraft mistakenly was headed for an unlighted runway half as long.

The plane ran off the runway, hitting an airport boundary fence and trees.

Initial reports said the controller lost track of Comair Flight 5191 because he was tending to paperwork after clearing the aircraft for takeoff. The controller also told investigators that "his only sleep in the 24 hours before the accident was a two-hour nap the previous afternoon" between his two eight-hour shifts, the NTSB reports.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which is in charge of controllers and aviation regulation, "does not consider the potential impact of work scheduling on fatigue and performance," the NTSB says.

A National Air Traffic Controllers Association spokesman told USA Today that fatigue is the No. 1 problem among controllers and that the "FAA is stretching the ranks too thin."

The FAA has conducted "a great deal of research" on fatigue that has resulted in a better understanding of its causes, but it "has been slow to change controller-scheduling practices," the NTSB says.

The NTSB has pushed for better fatigue control policies since 1989. It is unconscionable that the FAA has not improved its scheduling of air traffic controllers, potentially placing controllers who are too sleepy to perform their duties in the position of making life-and-death decisions.