Your Safety Depends on Air Traffic Controllers Who Are Still Working Crazy Shifts

WASHINGTON — Air traffic controllers are still working schedules known as "rattlers" that make it likely for them to get little or no sleep before overnight shifts, more than three years after a series of incidents involving controllers sleeping on the job, according to a government report released Friday.

A report by the National Research Council expressed concern about the effectiveness of the Federal Aviation Administration's program to prevent its 15,000 controllers from suffering fatigue on the job, a program that has been hit with budget cuts. 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 conducted with NASA examining how work schedules affect controller performance. Read more...