There’s not a lot of air traffic at night. So some air traffic control towers close altogether.  Any landing aircraft is on its own.  Other air traffic control towers are staffed with just one controller.  Not surprisingly, lone controllers working the night shift tend to doze off. 

That little secret is now out. That led

NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman’s recent testimony before congress concerning the mid-air collision over the Hudson raises more questions than it answers.  She stated that  the Teterboro controller instructed the Piper pilot to switch to frequency 127.85 to contact the Newark controller.  But before leaving the Teterboro frequency, according to Hersman, the pilot read back to

We count on the NTSB to get the facts right. That confidence is, unfortunately, sometimes misplaced. The truth is that the NTSB gets it wrong. A lot. I’ve written about that herehere, and here.

The NTSB has now given us further reason to question whether it deserves the confidence weATC Radar place in

Compared to pilots in other countries, pilots in the US have extraordinary freedom. Of course, to keep commercial airliners safe from collisions, pilots of small aircraft are excluded from certain Author Over Statue of Libertyairspace near major airports unless they have first obtained a clearance from air traffic controllers.  If a pilot obtains the necessary clearance, controllers will dictate the

Air traffic controllers work within the guidelines set forth in the Controller’s Handbook (pdf), which they often call "the Bible."  The Handbook is hundreds of pages long, and controllers must follow it to the letter.  If they deviate and an accident results, the Federal Tort Claims Act permits the victim to sue the FAA for negligence. 

Sometimes