Air Traffic: September 2005 Archives

Air Controller Loses Job After Near-Miss. Except that he didn't. He was decertified on the position, perhaps from all positions of operation. This is what is known as taking precautions pending an investigation. Unless something really out of the ordinary occurred, they will re-certify him within a week or two after retraining makes certain that it's not part of a pattern.



With that said, the scenario given is one of those classic nightmares. The controller made about as huge a mistake as is possible, and the "Big Sky" theory doesn't apply on the runway. I never had one, but it's very easy to make this kind of mistake through not being quite thorough enough just once. It doesn't say whether he was working ground control or tower, but ground is usually where troubles occur at commercial airports, as things are usually set up to make things as easy and routine on the Tower controller as possible. On the other hand, (and this is speculation only, I haven't talked to anyone!) for runway crossings many tower controllers will assume when it's busy and they're talking ten miles per minute that a ground controller has checked out the runway (as they should) and won't ask to cross if it's not clear. Unfortunately, sometimes the ground controller misses the plane behind the pillar or the other controller's body blocks it. We're all human. Ground's mistake, Tower's Official Error (although Tower is far from blameless if they gave permission). I've seen any number of deconstructions of these when general aviation is involved. Large commercial aircraft are easier to spot and harder to miss, of course. The number one and two enemies for controllers are routine and complacency, and the most apt job description I've ever seen of the controller's job is "Hours and hours of mindless boredom occasionally punctuated by stark raving terror."



As I said earlier, we're all human. We have no robots to do the job, and robots probably would make a horrible hash of it, as it requires real time reactions to unpredictable events. Most controllers make mistakes; the only question is if they are little mistakes (un-noticeable to the public), mediums (somebody maybe gets delayed when there's no need), or major like this, where it was sheer dumb luck nothing horrible happened. Nonetheless, the FAA would have damned few controllers if they fired someone everytime something like this happened, so they don't (although it is one of the best tickets for promotion into management as the bureaucrats then don't want that controller to have another chance to mess up publicly).



Furthermore, there are supposed to be automated systems up to frustrate precisely this kind of error, but the FAA's procurement process is riddled with all kinds of problems. I wonder if something automated failing was a contributing factor?



AP got this one wrong, and failed to ask any of a host of obvious questions to find out what really happened. If someone with first-hand knowledge wants to contact me, I don't work for the FAA anymore, and there's nothing they can do to me. I'd be happy to report it from an "anonymous" source.