August 20, 2014 4:48 AM
China Eastern Airlines planes are seen on the tarmac at Hongqiao International Airport in Shanghai.Reuters
Add sleeping air traffic controllers to China’s endless list of air travel woes.
News recently surfaced that two air traffic controllers nodded off last month while a China Eastern Airlines flight was trying to land in the central Chinese city of Wuhan around midnight. The pilot tried to make contact with the airport’s air traffic control tower, but was unable to do so for a period of 12 minutes.
The reason? According to a spokeswoman at China’s aviation regulator, two air traffic controllers on duty had fallen asleep.
While the plane eventually landed safety, news of the incident sparked furious reaction among observers.
“This is such irresponsible behavior,” Ren Zhiqiang, a well-known property developer, wrote on his microblog.
“It put hundreds of peoples’ lives at risk,”wrote Wang Wei, a financier, on his verified microblog.
“It is so irresponsible. Heavy pressure and fatigue alone can’t account for such behavior,” wrote another microblogger. Others called for the napping staff to be fired.
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Still, others leapt to the defense of the fatigued workers. “No one cares about the life of air traffic controllers. Recent years saw a 20% increase of flights in the air, but it takes two to three years to train a professional air traffic controller. Such changes have resulted in a dire shortage of controllers. They are working overtime but their pay is declining. It is wrong to sleep while on duty. But the media never care about our lives,” another microblogger user identifying himself as an air traffic controller wrote on his verified account.
China’s hardly the only country that’s seen some air traffic controllers fall prey to slumber, with numerous cities across the U.S. ranging from Boston to Washington, D.C. reporting similar problems.
The spokeswoman for China’s aviation regulator said an investigation into the matter had been launched and that the two air traffic controllers had been transferred from their duties for the moment, without providing more details.
While the flight’s landing was delayed, she said an approach controller — whose job is to direct pilots before they make contact with an airport’s air traffic control — was still closely monitoring the flight. ”We won’t be careless with air safety. It’s always our top priority,” she said.
– Joanne Chiu and Ma Si
http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/BL-CJB-23699