Pilots land blind while airport tower goes silent

The buzz around the internet right now concerns an incident that happened at Reagan airport just outside Washington DC, where two airliner where forced to land on their own after getting no response from the air traffic control tower. The situation started at 12:10 a.m. Wednesday when an American Airlines plane tried to call the tower for clearance to land but got no answer, reports stated. The pilot contacted a regional air traffic control facility, which also had no luck getting a response from the tower.

The pilot landed the plane without assistance and shortly afterwards, a United flight also landed without assistance before communication between the tower and landing planes was re-established.

It’s not like the person working the tower pulled a JetBlue and walked off. Reports are surfacing that the lone employee working in the tower that night fell asleep, and has since been suspended.

The question has to be asked, for such an important position, why is there only one person working the nightshift? Who knows, maybe the employee was out drinking, gambling and carrying on before his shift or maybe he wasn’t able to sleep all day because his three year old child was sick with the flu, or maybe he had a hard time clearing out the hookers from his hotel room, who knows? The point is, he should have some back up.

I remember my time working in online gambling call centers, the night shift was a fun time. You get the prank callers, the soft core porn on the tv screens, nerf football wars, all the while taking bets and giving great customer service to clients. Those were fun times, and there were times when some employees had to take that twenty to thirty minute power nap, you covered for them.

We’re talking about a call center here having more than one person on duty on a night-shift, an airport traffic control center can’t do the same? That’s just cheap.

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