FAA Touring Air Traffic Towers
KAYE: Air traffic controllers napping on the job. We've seen seven suspended recently. The late night tower snoozing points to a problem. Now a solution from the bosses at the FAA. CNN's Sandra Endo has details.</s>SANDRA ENDO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When planes come in for a landing the communication shouldn't be like this -- of a pilot trying to get in touch with an air traffic controller.</s>TRACON: They're not answering the phone line either.</s>PILOT: We're going to need to land.</s>TRACON: Landing at your own risk.</s>ENDO: But it reportedly happened at least seven times at airports across the country since the start of the year, because of controllers falling asleep on the job. But now the FAA and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood are making immediate changes to the schedules for controllers.</s>RAY LAHOOD, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: We will not allow controllers to sleep on the job. We simply will not.</s>ENDO: Under the new guidelines controllers will now have a minimum of nine hours off between shifts instead of eight. They'll no longer be able to swap shifts unless they get nine hours off in between. Controllers will not be able to work an unscheduled midnight shift following a day off. And there will be more FAA manners covering the early morning and late night hours. The problem of fatigue has been around for years. Back in 2007, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended the schedules of air traffic controllers be revised to address the issue which begs the question, why wasn't more done sooner?</s>LAHOOD: I was not the secretary in 2007. I'm secretary today. As soon as I learned about this, these controllers were suspended.</s>ENDO: Congress holds the purse strings for funding the FAA and a key lawmaker says the issue is not the number of controllers employed, but how they're used.</s>REP. JOHN MICA (R), FLORIDA: Air traffic controllers make on average $163,000 a piece. They're professionals. But even the best professional need some recurrent training and with changes in technology and procedures, and we think it is important that we revisit that.</s>ENDO (on camera): What do you say to the flying public? Should they have confidence in this system?</s>LAHOOD: Absolutely. I believe that the airline industry in America is the safest in the world. But we can do better. And we will do better.</s>ENDO: FAA officials and the Air Traffic Controllers Union are starting a nationwide tour in Atlanta to talk to controllers to hear their concerns, but to also hammer home the issue of safety. Sandra Endo, CNN, Washington.</s>KAYE: A short time ago Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood met with controllers at a regional radar facility just outside Atlanta, talking to them about those new rules. It's part after nationwide tour by LaHood and the head of the FAA to personally deliver their safety message. Earlier Suzanne Malveaux asked Secretary LaHood about the added hour of rest.</s>SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN ANCHOR: How much of a difference do we think this is really going to make?</s>LAHOOD: Well, we got that recommendation, really, from a fatigue study that we just are releasing and that study says that pilots should actually have nine hours and we thought that controllers should, too. But look, it that's not enough hours -- and that's really one of the reasons that the administrator and the president of the Controllers Union are traveling the country starting in your bailiwick today, in Atlanta, talking to controllers about workplace rules, about more rest. And if it needs to be more, then obviously we'll take that into conversation. We think nine hours is probably the right amount of rest. But if it's not, we'll do better.</s>KAYE: We'll have much more on LaHood's visit and the new rules for controllers at the top of the hour with CNN homeland security correspondent Jeanne Meserve. That's coming up. Why is it against the law in India to determine the sex of your baby before it's born? I'll explain next in Globe Trekking. It has to do with one of the most shocking social trends, not in India, but in all of south Asia. So, stick around to hear this.