Early Wednesday Morning at Reagan National Airport, two pilots from two different airplanes called out to air traffic control in an attempt to land their planes.
The sound on the other end, complete silence.
Several attempts were made to get a response from the control tower not only by the pilots but also through the "shout line", a pipeline that blasts messages via loudspeaker into the control tower from controllers in the surrounding area.
There has been no explanation thus far of the lack of response. There has not even been a confirmation if there was actually anyone in the control tower at the time of the silence.
Luckily, the two pilots landing their planes with 165 passengers total, took the initiative to communicate directly with one another their progress in the air in order to land the planes safely.
There are investigations taking place by an army of agencies to solve the mystery of the Reagan tower. The Federal Aviation Administration and The National Transportation Safety Board are hard at work putting the clues together.
The first clue being, there is only one air traffic controller on duty during the midnight to 6 a.m. shift.
Considering there is just as much activity taking place at night, if not more as during the day, why would there only be one air traffic controller responsible for the graveyard shift activity?
It is just like a local Target or Walmart, at night the activity level is what gets the store ready for the next day of business. Shipments are coming in, prices and displays are being changed, stocking is taking place and clean-up is in progress.
There is not much a difference between a store and an airport. Planes are being moved around to various areas for repairs or to change gate locations, all the activity needed to start the new daytime shift as smoothly as possible while planes are still flying in and out.
So with the level of activity at night it seems odd that only one person would be responsible for being the eyes and ears for the man made birds flying in the air space and moving on the ground.
Results, an increased chance for mistakes and miscommunication.
About a year ago, an air traffic controller forgot to take his pass key that opens the tower door with him when he exited the tower for a moment and ended up getting locked out, leaving no one to respond to air traffic, according to The Washington Post.
If there had been more than one person handling the tower this incident would have never happened.
It is plausible that whatever happened early Wednesday morning could have also been avoided if more than one person was employed to handle to the air traffic at Reagan National Airport.
Ray LaHood, Transportation Secretary , has ordered a second air traffic controller to be on duty at Reagan National Airport. In the meantime, LaHood has also initiated an investigation with the FAA into the level of staffing at airports throughout the country.
There are many things that have happened over the years that no one really hears about as far as lack of communication with traffic control, near misses in collisions at airports during landing and take offs.
To be fair, all the near misses and lack of communication would cause chaos if announced publicly for the airline industry. After 9/11 there is enough fear and doubt for many flyers every time they take the initiative to book a flight.
It is just like any other industry, the public is not made aware every single time something goes wrong with every company or field of transportation.
There just has to be faith on the part of consumers that things will run smoothly, that the outcome of whatever service is being used is being maintained and will end in positive results.
The most that can be hoped for is that the investigations into what happened Wednesday morning will put minds at ease, and there will be further progress made in the airline and traffic control industry to meet a high level of safety.
In the meantime, here is a fact that may ease some minds about flying.
The odds of being killed on a single airline flight based on the top 25 airlines is one in 9.2 million based on a study conducted from 1985-2009. http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm
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