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The head of the US air traffic control agency has resigned after a number of incidents where air traffic controllers fell asleep while on duty.
Randy Babbitt, chief of the Federal Aviation Administration, said he had accepted Hank Krakowski’s resignation.
On Thursday, Mr Babbitt pledged a “top to bottom review” of the air traffic control system.
In the past month, several planes have landed safely at US airports without controller guidance.
“Over the last few weeks we have seen examples of unprofessional conduct on the part of a few individuals that have rightly caused the travelling public to question our ability to ensure their safety,” Mr Babbitt said in a statement.
“This conduct must stop immediately.”
Mr Babbitt said David Grizzle, chief counsel of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), would assume Mr Krakowski’s duties as acting head of the Air Traffic Organization.
Night shifts
Mr Babbitt announced on Wednesday that the FAA would place an additional air traffic controller on the midnight shift at 27 control towers across the country; previously, they had been staffed with only one controller during that shift.
The issue rose to prominence last month when two jets were forced to land at about midnight at Reagan National Airport, just by Washington DC, without help from the local control tower.
The pilots, who carried 165 people aboard the two planes, were unable to raise the tower controller on the radio, and a subsequent investigation revealed he had inadvertently fallen asleep during the shift.
This week, the FAA revealed that an air traffic controller at a major airport in Seattle had fallen asleep during a morning shift on Monday; the FAA said he had also fallen asleep on two separate occasions during an early evening shift on 6 January.
And a controller in the US state of Nevada was asleep and out of communication for about 16 minutes on Wednesday while a medical plane was landing, federal officials have said.
An air traffic controller in Tennessee was found to have lain down for a nap during an overnight shift in February,
Most flights between Europe and North America were delayed yesterday due to the spreading cloud of volcanic ash stretching across much of the northern Atlantic, the European flight control agency said.
Flights were rerouted north over Greenland or south over Spain to avoid the 2000km-long cloud stretching from Iceland to northern Spain, Eurocontrol said. This was due to increase flying times by about an hour in either direction.
Approximately 600 airliners make the oceanic crossing every day. Around 40 per cent were due to be rerouted south and the rest would skirt Iceland from the north.
The plume of ash yesterday also forced the closure of 15 airports in northern Spain and was expanding into southern France, carried along by Atlantic winds. Spain’s main international airports of Madrid and Barcelona were expected to remain open.
Just over 100 flights were cancelled at mainland Portugal’s three international airports yesterday because of the ash cloud.
Until Eyjafjallajokul, the volcano in southern Iceland, stops its emissions, the key to the future course of Europe’s ash crisis will be the prevailing winds.
The eruption of the volcano has shown no signs of stopping since it began belching ash April 13. It last erupted from 1821 to 1823.
Since the ash is reaching altitudes of up to 10,000m, in the path of most trans-Atlantic flights, it will effectively block the usual routes. Eurocontrol said this would cause significant congestion, particularly in the airspace over Spain and Portugal where many of the diverted flights are heading.