The government flight study that will scare you

It’s a study the government decided to keep secret for three years. Probably because it would have scared too many people.

Three years ago, NASA equipped more than 3,200 air traffic controllers with special wrist devices to detect how often they fall asleep on the job.

The answer? Too often.

A total of 61 percent of them admitted to catching themselves about to doze off. Almost 20 percent said they had a close call while directing air traffic within the previous 12 months. And of those, more than half of them felt like fatigue had something to do with it.

In 2011, a controller working the late shift at Washington DC’s Reagan National Airport, known as the DCA, fell asleep, forcing two airliners to essentially land themselves.

The problem was severe enough that former National Transportation Safety Board chair Mark Rosenker &#8212 now a CBS News aviation analyst &#8212 sent a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration eight years ago, asking them to look at the issue.

“I’m curious to know why the FAA, after getting a good study by NASA, has not told us how many of these 17 recommendations they’ve implemented,” Rosenker told CBS.

That’s a good question, especially when you look at the results of the sleep survey.

Using the information from the wristbands, the researchers found that the controllers in the study averaged 5.8 hours of sleep per day over the course of a work week. Those who pulled the early morning shifts averaged 5.4 hours before reporting to work. Those who pulled the midnight shifts averaged only 3.1 hours before reporting to work. The FAA says it’s made some changes, but I can see why they might not want to release those results.

Everyone would demand to fly in the afternoon.