Asleep at the Switch

There has been a rash of sleeping air traffic controllers recently. Most appear innocent enough, a controller doing their best to stay awake and failing to do so. At least one decided they were going to catch a nap regardless of the consequences. There may be little argument that the controllers failed to perform their jobs, which is to direct air traffic into their airport regardless of the time of day. But what else failed?

Humans live and die by circadian rhythms. Cycles of day and night control our lives, our health and even our mental stability. Whether anyone can truly adapt to working at night and sleeping during the day is a subject of much debate, but why risk having only one tired controller at an airport during the night when an airport has operations 24 hours per day?

In today's world of excessive government spending and waste, it is easy to forget that safety might cost a bit more. Having multiple controllers at open airports during night shifts may be a simple way to prevent any more occurrences of napping controllers. If they both nod off at the same time may be an issue for future discussions, but the odds are greatly reduced.

There is a lesson here for any company trying to cut costs. One of the hardest tasks is trying to differentiate between critical and non-critical tasks. Don't sacrifice the critical tasks for economic reasons. The long-term costs may be much higher than you can ever anticipate in the short term.