Federal Aviation Administration to cut more air traffic controllers

"Judah" wrote in message
. ..
JohnSmith wrote in news:eaeRg.21555$eW5.17847
@bignews5.bellsouth.net:

Incorrect. It is an issue. Fatigued controller working a
double shift without proper rest combined with the FAA
violating their own staffing orders at KLEX.

Irrelevant. Taking off and landing safely is the pilot's responsibility.
The
presence or absence of a tower, a controller, or even a runway is
irrelevant.

Really? Then why bother having them?

Of course the crew had primary responsibility, although the anomalies in
airport markings and notices and layout will play a role, too.

The point about the ATC role goes to redundancy, not the crew's actions. If
the controller had been able to stick to just one of his two jobs, he might
have noticed the errant takeoff and warned the crew. There was a fairly
recent posting in one of the aviation groups of exactly the same incident -
same airport, same runways confused by a regional airliner crew - 13 years
ago. The crew and the controller caught it at about the same time. This
time neither did, but the controller couldn't have caught it because by then
he was engaged in other duties - the job that should have been performed by
the second (required) controller.

This is not to excuse the crew's oversight, but redundancy is an essential
pillar of our safety system. It's prevented far, far more accidents than
have occurred. Redundancy failures often are part of the chain of events
that has to occur before you actually get an accident. The secret to
airline safety's excellent record is identifying the links that can make up
such a chain, and fixing or preventing them.

It is a HUGE issue. The word is Liability. Look it up.

In the US, anyone can sue anyone for anything with pretty much no risk.
For
example, if it bothers you so much that there are black homosexuals in the
FAA, you are certainly able to sue.

The FAA has been successfully sued as part of post-acciident liabilities,
and we're not talking chump change, either. Furthermore, there are other
"liabilities" involved - the PR and political price to be paid when an FAA
screw-up results in an accident, expecially one with many fatalities.

Just please stop ranting about it here.

Safety isn't his agenda here.

To blame this accident on an FAA "social engineering" program is like saying
that the reason that Johnny can't read is because he had to listen to a
classroom discussion of African-American history. He's using a legitimate
safety issue as an excuse to plaster aviation newsgroups with racist crap.