On Tuesday night, March 22^nd, two planes landed at Washington, DC’s Reagan National airport (DCA) without proper tower clearance.  As it happened, the air traffic controller, a career-veteran supervisor with decades of experience, had fallen asleep.  Despite radio hails and phone calls, the controller couldn’t be roused from his slumber, and the planes landed (without incident).

Ironically, earlier that day, NATCA, the air traffic controllers’ union, had started its annual safety conference.  Their reaction was predictable:  what is needed in the tower are more (presumably unionized) employees—someone whose job would be, one supposes, to keep the other person awake for the half-dozen flights that land at DCA between midnight and 6am.

If keeping tower staff awake is our primary concern, a $10 alarm clock, set to go off at regular intervals, would suffice just fine in this regard, and we can forego the tens of thousands of dollars a year in salary and benefits for the second man.  We could also co-locate other non-tower flight operations to the tower for the overnight shift.  But to focus on the number of overnight controllers or why people are falling asleep on the job ignores the bigger, and more important, picture.  This event underscores a deeper problem—one of security, and not safety.

In the days following this incident, a recording surfaced of a fellow air traffic controller operating in Warrenton, VA and in regular communication with the flights into DCA.  In that recording, Warrenton blithely tells the pilots of the plane that he has tried calling the tower at DCA to no avail.  And that’s it.

Considering that the airspace surrounding DCA is considered to have the highest security priority in the nation, encompassing as it does the White House, the Capitol, the Pentagon, the CIA, and just about every other essential federal agency.  This is the reason DCA was shut down immediately following the September 11^th attacks, and why the airspace remains among the tightest restrictions in the nation.

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