SPOKANE, Wash., Jan. 20 (UPI) -- A Kentucky air traffic controller was fatigued when he cleared an airplane for takeoff from the wrong runway before the plane crashed, researchers say.
The Atlanta-bound Delta Connection flight from Lexington, Ky. crashed on takeoff Aug. 27, 2006, killing 49 of the 50 people on board. An ensuing investigation concluded the flight crew failed to detect that the plane was on a general aviation runway half as long as the intended runway.
Washington State University sleep researchers, writing in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention, stop short of saying the controller's fatigue contributed to the accident, but say their findings suggest mathematical models of fatigue could lead to schedules that reduce the risk of accidents by taking advantage of workers' sleep schedules and biological, or circadian, clocks, a university release said Thursday.
In the Lexington incident, the air traffic controller was finishing an overnight shift with just 2 or 3 hours of sleep the previous afternoon.
"He was tired," says Gregory Belenky, study co-author and director of the Sleep and Performance Research Center at WSU Spokane, "and he was working a schedule that was not circadian friendly."
The WSU researchers stress they are not fixing blame for the crash on him, nor can they say whether his fatigue was the cause of the accident.
"We're identifying times of day that are relatively more dangerous than other times of day," says Lora Wu, a research assistant and co-author of the paper. "We're not trying to place blame on any of the individuals involved."
