Planes landing at a rate of one every 30-40 minutes isn't exactly "overworked."

I don’t have time to check flight logs but I personally landed at LGA coming from MDW on Sunday. And I also know people who got diverted within the hour coming back to LGA that night. 30-40 minutes doesn’t seem accurate. That aside, if you’ve ever done operational staffing, you’d know that you should probably have at least one redundancy. When there is any chance of emergency or two events happening simultaneously, you should have more than one person.

One last meta point. We live in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and the highest air travel prices (some part is a function of longer distances I know). We should expect that we have ample coverage, if not over-coverage, at all times for one of our major metropolitan airports. Pay them.

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bdamm 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

12am-5am is very quiet, at about 1 per hour. But the accident happened during the 10pm-12am time slot, which is not as busy as other times of day, but can still have workload spikes as evidenced by this situation.

ATC should never work alone at any of the "Core 30" airports. https://www.aspm.faa.gov/aspmhelp/index/Core_30.html

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gortok 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In this case there were two arrivals within 4 minutes of each other and two departures, in addition to the emergency plane that had just aborted takeoff.

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pc86 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Which is a completely reasonable amount of traffic for one controller to handle. This wasn't the controller's fault. The firetruck received a clearance, had that clearance revoked, and either didn't hear the revocation or ignored it.

	▲	bombcar 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		If you have ever spent time listening to LiveATC you will realize that like everyone, "tunnel ear" is a real thing - if United 1002 has received the clearance/instructions they expect, read them back, and are proceeding it can be moderately difficult to get their attention again, even with perfect verbiage.
	▲	mannykannot 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The controller was not guilty of malfeasance, but clearing the trucks onto the runway with an airliner on short final was a mistake, no matter whatever else one could say about it.

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SteveNuts 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What is the contingency/continuity plan if the single controller becomes incapacitated while on duty with no warning to pilots?

	▲	bombcar 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Same as if the radios stopped working or otherwise communication fails. Execute the planned procedures (which vary). Often Approach will take over the "tower" and operate in crippled mode (no clearances to cross active runways, you must go down to the end kind of thing). Some airports are uncontrolled at various times and would revert to that. Some airlines would require the pilot execute a missed approach and deviate to a towered airport, others may allow them to land.