SeaTac Tower: Nobody Home

"Philip S." wrote in message
...
Sorry if this has been mentioned before, but I just saw a story on my
local
news (in the Pacific Northwest) about an incident at SeaTac airport on
April
11th, and this is the first I've heard of it.

Apparently, there was a period of about 30 minutes on that day (no mention
as to what time of day) [...]

I only saw a brief mention on the evening news last night. They said it was
in the early morning hours.

when no incoming flights could get a response from
the tower. The security guard at the tower was eventually asked to
investigate, and it seems that the lone controller on duty had fallen
asleep. The story ended by noting that the FAA now required two
controllers
on duty in the SeaTac tower at all times.

As if two different controllers couldn't fall asleep at once.

Seems to me that there should be some sort of alarm, hooked to the radio and
which goes off if some small number of radio receptions occur without any
transmission by a controller in the tower cab. You'd need to set the number
higher than 1, but fewer than a dozen would probably be fine, and would
probably have woken this guy up in this case.

Anybody else hear of this? I'm guessing that it couldn't have been during
a
busy time, as that would have caused utter chaos. I'm also guessing that
this sort of thing isn't unprecedented.

Hard to imagine it's the first time, but there is a first time for
everything. One hopes whether this was the first or not, it doesn't
happen often, even if it does only happen during the quiet hours of the
morning.

Pete