Washington, April 14: An air traffic controller has fallen asleep as a flight tried to land in an airport in the US state of Nevada — the fifth such incident so far this year.
The air traffic controller fell asleep during the night shift at Reno-Tahoe International Airport as a medical flight carrying a sick patient tried to land.
The plane, however, landed safely with the help of a radar controller based in California, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said.
The incident caused federal authorities to order an immediate end to the practice of leaving one controller on duty during overnight shifts.
The Reno controller was suspended, and the FAA said it was investigating why there were 16 minutes of silence as the medical flight sought to touch down.
The air traffic control system has come under scrutiny by the National Transportation Safety Board and Congress after a year in which the number of operational errors recorded by controllers increased by 51 percent.
Those errors were failures to keep aircraft at a safe distance while in flight.
A similar incident has forced federal officials to increase staffing at 27 airports, including the Duluth International Airport.
A Seattle tower controller working with two colleagues was also suspended on Monday after he fell asleep, the FAA said.
According to federal officials, it was the third time the controller had slept on the job.
—_Agencies