Personal Injury Blog

New Data Shows That Air Traffic Controller Errors Increase by 81% over Three Year Period

September 9th, 2011
Air Traffic Controller Errors are up by 81%

Air Traffic Controller Errors have been on the rise for the past 3 years.

A new study indicates that Los Angeles plane crash lawyers need to be much more concerned about air traffic controller errors than they currently are.  Data from the Federal Aviation Administration indicates that air traffic controller errors increased by a staggering 81% between 2007 and 2010.

The information was obtained by the Boston Globe through a public records request.  The number of operational errors increased from 1,040 in 2007 to 1,887 in 2010.  What’s more, this increase in air traffic controller errors has been seen even though there has been a 10% decrease in total air traffic during this period of time.

The information also indicates that in Boston, this increase in air traffic controller errors has been even more pronounced than in the rest of the country.  Here, air traffic controller errors spiked by 114%.

The Federal Aviation Administration has brushed aside the relevance of these statistics, saying that this was the result of the agency’s encouragement of reporting of errors, than any increase in errors.  However, Los Angeles plane crash lawyers and aviation safety groups know differently.  The fact is that the lack of experienced air traffic controllers, and a number of external factors like fatigue, are the reasons behind this surge in errors.

According to the Globe, there are currently more than 15,000 air traffic controllers across the country.  These are responsible for monitoring an average of 50,000 flights a day.  More than 50% of these air traffic controllers are new personnel, who have been hired only over the past five years.  The Federal Aviation Administration has been busy hiring new personnel in order to replace air traffic controllers who were due for retirement.  In fact, on any given day, you’ll find that as many as a quarter of all air traffic controllers on duty are trainees.  In one particular aircraft at the facility in Texas, the number of trainees is as much as 75%.  Once upon a time, air traffic controllers were required to be experienced veterans, but those days seem to be long past.

Training new air traffic controllers has proved to be a challenge.  When a new hire is placed into a tower environment, it means an additional workload for the training instructors.  The training instructors will be required to train the new hires on a daily basis, contributing to fatigue.

That brings us to another factor that Los Angeles plane crash lawyers have often blamed for the increasing number of air traffic controller errors.  In 2011, there had been a number of incidents involving air traffic controllers who fell asleep on the job.  The Federal Aviation Administration has been trying to address air traffic control fatigue and its role in contributing to errors, but new recommendations or guidelines by the agency have been a long time coming.  The agency has chosen to delay the issue, instead suggesting that air traffic controllers read books or listen to the radio to resist fatigue.

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