Sole controller on duty catches up on sleep at Reagan Intl

[FlowPack]

Just looking at the FlightAware link on the second post and it looks like AA1012 dropped down to 900', then climbed back up to 3000', hung a left all the way around and landed on the second one. If that is indeed what happened I'd say they did the right thing.

[Beefitarian]

I'm sure they did a lot of things and I might have done them also. I don't doubt they were safe and a lot of the suggestions regarding what might have happened make sense. It just sounds very wrong the way the article was written. "They landed without clearance." In overly simplistic terms like to think I wouldn't have.

Thanks for the article OP. I also noticed it mentions the controllers have their union back.

[Rowdy]

Hmm.. so they visually confirmed the runway to be clear and then made all the mandatory calls as if it was an uncontrolled airport, not to mention being in contact with other controllers in the vicinity. I think the aircrews handled this in a perfectly fine manner based on the circumstances.

Enough with the what-ifs. They mean diddly squat!

I mean really.. we're making THIS big of a squabble over something that 15 yrs ago wouldnt have even seen the medias attention.

Ohh and we'll see a bunch of aviation related topics on canadian news as its contract negotiation time at AC

[Shadowfax]

Go read the YYB DH8 incident and some of those posts.

If anything - ANYthing - is amis inside the FAF GO AROUND!

I can't understand the logic of landing unless you were bingo fuel. You have contact with approach, go back to them and work it out. Much better than flaring on top of "maintenance 24". There could be a host of reasons the TWR is not responding, especially in a post 9/11 world. What's the point of carrying fuel for a diversion if you're gonna land at a controlled airport without the control??? Scary.

[yycflyguy]

"Hello? ...Reagan tower? ...Anyone there? Well he's not talking to us screw it, I'm going to land."

If you call it "Reagan" there is a good chance they will not respond. ATC is still pissed that Ronnie fired 'em all back in the 80s. They prefer to be called "National" or "Washington".

[cyeg66]

In Canada, I am sure TC would be all over the pilots for "Landing without an ATC Clearance". They may get some leniancy, but still landed w/o the magic clearance. The controller would also get in crap, maybe even a trip to the doctor to confirm that there was not some form of impairment. But rest assured that there are no Control Towers in canada that are single controller over midnights. The Union fought this years ago and won, 2 controllers at all times. However, most smaller control towers will go to one controller only when winding down for the evening(or opening up until traffic is busy) if they are not staffed for midnight shits.

On midnights, once traffic warrents, 1 controller will be on a break, and 1 working. (break = nap). If for some case the duty controller falls asleep, a phone call will get the other controller upstairs quickly, and after a couple of incidents in the past, I am sure that all TCU's have the lunch room/break room phone numbers for the towercab handy. As for does terminal have to call the tower prior to arrivals? It depends on the unit. Here at CYEG Tower, we used to have that requirement, but traffic over midnights have increased so much that those calls are no longer required, steady almost all night long.

Robbie Benusic, CYEG Tower

Well, Robbie, this exact scenario actually happened at YEG maybe about 5-7 years ago when a KFA 727 on approach to 02 was unable to establish tower contact and went around, talked with terminal, terminal was also unable to reach tower (landline/phone), and pilot was told to land 'at his discretion', which he did. He didn't get shit for landing nor should he have. I think an RCMP officer finally went up and knocked on the tower cab door to see if anyone was there. Just a whole lot of ZZZZZZZZZZZ'n going on that night. PM me if you want to know who it was (unless you already know by now). On mids, the only time we call twr these days is to advise that an airplane will land on a non-noise abatement runway, probably not entirely necessary but twr could have vehicles on the non-Designated Arrival Runway.

[MyWave]

There is information out there that US controllers get 8 Hours off duty between shifts sometimes.
That's 8 hours to get home, do the wife, pay the bills and then "sleep", then go back and get to work.

Should have at least two people on duty, tho.

[Frank Gallagher]

uh put me down for "wouldn't have landed" (given the info we have). some airports (TUS, EWR, RDU off the top of my head) have areas on the ground where comms can be masked/attenuated...probably not a good idea to start treating it like an uncontrolled aerodrome just because you don't get a reply from twr/gnd. in this case, by landing without having talked to anyone on the field you're taking a risk by making assumptions about what's going on on the ground that don't seem to be worth the trouble to me (tantamount to flying into an uncontrolled aerodrome with the radios off and making all your assessments about the field on final [at night to boot]).

the article i read said that the flights switched back to the approach controller who told them that there was no reply on the landline and that they (appr control) figured the tower controller got locked out. given that and taking it as a confirmation that there's no comm fail on my end, i still wouldn't have landed (esp at an airport like DCA) until someone figured out what was going on on the ground.

I would have been all "Holy hell the ruskies have invaded and taken the airport I'm heading to Canada"

[Old Dog Flying]

This same situation has occurred at YVR some tears ago when the controller went for a leak and the cab door locked behind him..and his keys were in the cab.

As for the Reagan booboo, the person on duty was a "management supervisor" and not a "Line controller" so sez NATCA

[Donald]

More info:

An American Airlines Boeing 737-800, registration N823NN performing flight AA-1012 from Miami,FL to Washington National,DC (USA) with 97 people on board, was on final approach to runway 01 and reported on tower frequency but did not receive any reply. The crew went around at 00:07L (04:07Z) and reported back on approach frequency. Approach tried to raise the tower via phone and then reported to the crew that they couldn't reach tower, suspected the controller had locked himself out of the control room adding that a similiar event had happened once already about a year ago, and declared the airport uncontrolled and tower frequency (119.1MHz) to be an advisory frequency. The Boeing was vectored for another approach and landed safely without landing clearance 8 minutes later.

While the American was going around and landing a United Airlines Airbus A320-200, registration N492UA performing flight UA-628 from Chicago O'Hare,IL to Washington National,DC (USA) with 68 people on board, was approaching the airport. Approach reported the airfield had been declared uncontrolled and the tower frequency had been declared an advisory frequency and cleared the flight for a visual approach to runway 01. The crew continued for a safe landing about 10 minutes after the Boeing.

Approach also told another American Airlines Boeing 737-800, registration N954AN performing flight AA-1900 from Dallas Ft. Worth,TX to Washington National, that the aerodrome was uncontrolled before they handed the aircraft off to the tower frequency about 30 minutes after the first go-around. At some stage during the final approach tower began to transmit again.

On Mar 24th the NTSB reported, the controller in question had 20 years of experience, 17 thereof at Washington National Airport. His last transmission had been at 23:55L (Mar 22nd), his first transmission following the unresponsiveness was at 00:28L (Mar 23rd). He admitted in an interview with the NTSB that he had fallen asleep. This had been his fourth consecutive overnight shift, the NTSB is looking into human fatigue issues. The NTSB had released a safety recommendation on Mar 21st 2011 as result of investigations into a crash and two incidents between 2007 and 2009, that air traffic controllers should not be permitted to provide supervisory oversight while performing additional operational air traffic duties.