A Pilot Comes Face-to-Face with the Bureaucracy

By now, everyone knows that a controller at National Airport Tower in Washington fell asleep on duty last week during the midnight shift. The fact that this was a supervisor up there by himself always gives the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) a chance to giggle a bit. This time though, I didn’t hear the union poking fun at the FAA’s management stumble. Good for them too.

What made the event even less tolerable to all is that National Airport is THE closest facility to the White House and sits smack dab in the middle of the most complex, security-focused airspace in the world, precisely because it is located so close to the President’s office. How in the world did the manager of National Tower not figure that another controller on the night shift might just be worth fighting for, despite what the traffic count said was required?

That’s precisely why FAA’s Randy Babbitt — the guy at whose desk the aviation buck stops — was probably so angry at this misstep. Sure it’s embarrassing, but one controller on the midnight shift is also stupid precisely because of what occurred last week, not to mention that this could have been even uglier if a vehicle had run out on the runway when either of the two airliners landed. And Randy Babbitt knows it, because he’s not a bureaucrat … he’s a pilot who happens to have been chosen to run a bureaucracy that ranks almost dead last in terms of being a great place to work.

Pilots like to fix things, so I for one am glad Capt. Babbitt got mad, rather than simply defending this employee and explaining it on and on until reporters stopped asking questions. There are times to defend the folks that work at the agency and there are times when you say that the service delivered was simply not good enough.

Thanks for pushing that envelope a bit Capt. Babbitt.

Rob Mark, Publisher