FAA sets new rules for airport controllers

Regional air traffic facilities now must alert airport controllers working alone at night that a plane is approaching, the Federal Aviation Administration said Friday.

Two days after a controller slept as two airliners landed at Reagan National Airport near Washington, Federal Aviation administrator Randy Babbitt issued new procedures for radar facility controllers, like those who work at the TRACON office in Ronkonkoma.

The radar controllers are "to confirm that there is a controller prepared to handle the incoming flight," Babbitt said.

"Effective immediately, we are instituting an interim plan to ensure we do not repeat another situation like the one at Reagan National Airport," he said in a statement.

On Wednesday between 12:04 and 12:28 a.m., controllers in the Potomac radar facility couldn't get a response from a supervisory controller in the tower at Reagan National.

An American Airlines flight from Dallas-Fort Worth, and later a United Airlines flight from Chicago, landed without assistance from a tower controller.

Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board interviewed the tower controller on Thursday. The controller, who has 20 years of experience, told the NTSB that he had fallen asleep while on duty and that he had been working his fourth consecutive overnight shift, from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Babbitt also said Friday that the FAA will review all overnight staffing at selected airports around the country.

On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood ordered the FAA to staff Reagan National with two controllers on the overnight shift and directed the FAA to study staffing levels across the country.

Babbitt also reminded regional air traffic controllers that if an airport controller can't be reached at a tower, pilots must be given the option to land at another airport.

Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the union that represents the nation's air traffic controllers, said that the controller on duty at Reagan National was an FAA supervisor, not a "front-line controller."

Laura Brown, spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Transportation, said that there are about 30 air traffic control facilities staffed by a lone controller at some point overnight.