Questão 645587

Text II

President Obama to Sleepy Air Controllers:

‘Better Do Your Job’

Lisa Stark and Andrew Springer

President Obama lectured air traffic controllers

in an exclusive interview with ABC News, impressing

on them the enormous responsibility of safeguarding

flying passengers and telling them, “You better do

5 your job.”

The president spoke after several controllers

were caught asleep on the job and the man in charge

of air traffic control, Hank Krakowski, resigned on

Thursday.

10 “The individuals who are falling asleep on the job,

that’s unacceptable,” the president told ABC News’

George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview

on Thursday. “The fact is, when you’re responsible

for the lives and safety of people up in the air, you

15 better do your job. So, there’s an element of individual

responsibility that has to be dealt with.”

Five controllers have been suspended for

apparently napping on the job while planes were

trying to land at their airports.

20 The president said a full review of air traffic

control work shifts is under way.

“What we also have to look at is air traffic control

systems. Do we have enough back up? Do we have

enough people? Are they getting enough rest time?”

25 Obama said.

He added, however, “But it starts with individual

responsibility.”

In March, two commercial airliners were forced

to land unassisted at Washington, D.C.’s Reagan

30 National Airport after a controller apparently fell

asleep.

Just days later, two controllers at the Preston

Smith International Airport in Lubbock, Texas, did

not hand off control of a departing aircraft to another

35 control center and it took repeated attempts for them

to be reached.

On Feb. 19, an air traffic controller in Knoxville,

Tenn., slept during an overnight shift. Sources told

ABC News that the worker even took pillows and

40 cushions from a break room to build a make-shift bed

on the control room floor.

And this month, there were two more incidents.

A controller fell asleep on the job in Seattle, and

days later a controller in Reno was snoozing when a

45 plane carrying a critically ill passenger was seeking

permission to land.

The FAA and the controller’s union have been

studying the fatigue issue for over a year and their

report finds that “acute fatigue occurs on a daily basis,”

50 and “fatigue can occur at any time, on any shift.”

Sleep experts suggest midshift naps

Some sleep experts said controllers are ripe for

fatigue because they often bounce between day shifts

and night shifts. “When we’re constantly having to

55 adjust to different work schedules, our body is always

playing catch up,” said Philip Gehrman, Director of

the Behavioral Sleep Program at the University of

Pennsylvania.

Controllers on the night shift have another hurdle:

60 they often work in dim light conditions with little

stimulation between radio calls. “That’s exactly the

kind of type of task that’s hardest to maintain, when

you’re at the wrong point in your biological rhythms,”

said Gehrman.

65 One recommendation from the government study

suggests allowing controllers to take scheduled naps,

with breaks as long as two and a half hours to allow

for sleeping and waking up.

Sleep experts said a long break in the middle of

70 an eight hour overnight shift would help, but it might

be a tough sell politically. It has taken decades to try

to come up with new fatigue rules for pilots and it may

not be any easier when it comes to controllers.

Available at: <http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/obama-air-traffic-

-controllers-individual-responsibility/story?id=13382280#.UA__

XpFceSo>. Retrieved on: July 25, 2012.

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