On Sat, 29 Oct 2005 19:46:21 GMT, "Steven P. McNicoll"
wrote:


"Stefan" wrote in message
...

You're absolutely correct. But then, there's such a thing which we call in
German "corporate culture" (translated, I don't know if this is the
correct term in English). You grow up and live in a certain corporate
culture and it's very difficult if not impossible to resist. It's the
responsibility of the managers to create a safe corporate culture. In this
case, one man operations at two workstations at night were SOP. It's
asking very much to second guess the SOP.


What's wrong with one-man operations during light traffic periods at what
would normally be two work stations? In the US you can find half a dozen
sectors combined and worked by one man during the night.

Are they combined on the same scope, or does the controller have to
physically roll the chair up and down the stations to see all the
screens covering their sectors? If memory serves, in this incident
the screens were separate, the controller was looking at another
screen dealing with something there, and by the time he got back to
this station the aircraft were already well within the lateral
distance which would have caused the alerting system to activate, if
it wasn't INOP.