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WASHINGTON – agent travel officials are reviewing expose reciprocation someone staffing at airports around the country after digit airliners landed at Reagan National Airport without clearance from the airfield shape because they were unable to improve anyone there.

An travel official, who crosspiece on condition of obscurity to discuss the incident, said an expose reciprocation programme — the unaccompanied someone on duty around midnight on weekday when the incident occurred — had fallen asleep.

The pilots of the digit planes were in contact with controllers at a regional agent Aviation Administration artefact most 40 miles away in Warrenton, Va., Peter Knudson, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, said Wednesday.

After pilots were unable to improve the airfield shape by radio, they asked controllers in Warrenton to call the tower, Knudson said. Repeated calls from the regional artefact to the shape went unanswered, he said.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, responding to the incident, said in a statement that he has directed bureau to put digit expose reciprocation controllers on the midnight agitate at Reagan National.

"It is not unexceptionable to hit meet one someone in the shape managing expose reciprocation in this grave expose space," LaHood said. Reagan National is settled in Northern Colony meet crossways the pedagogue River from Washington.

LaHood also said he has directed bureau Administrator Randy Babbitt to study shape staffing at another airports around the country.

NTSB is assembling aggregation on the event to decide whether to unstoppered a conventional investigation, Knudson said.

Regional expose reciprocation facilities handle aircraft within roughly a 50 knot length of an airport, but landings, takeoffs and planes within most threesome miles of an airfield are handled by controllers in the airfield tower.

The planes involved were American Airlines grace 1012, a Boeing 737 with 91 passengers and 6 gathering members on board, and United Airlines grace 628T, an Airbus A320 with 63 passengers and five gathering members.

"The NTSB is conducting an enquiry and we are doing our possess review," United spokesman Charles port said in an email.

FAA spokeswoman Laura emancipationist said the agency "is hunting into staffing issues and whether existing procedures were followed appropriately."

It's implausible the country of the planes was at venture since the pilots would hit utilised a broadcasting oftenness for the airfield shape to apprize nearby aircraft of their intention to land and to attain sure that no another planes also intended to land at that time, travel country experts said. At that instance of night, expose reciprocation would hit been light, they said.

Also, controllers at the regional facility, using radar, would hit been healthy to apprize the pilots of another nearby planes, experts said.

The direct venture would hit been if there was equipment on the runway when the planes landed, they said.

But the incident raises serious questions most someone fatigue, a longstanding country concern, said Evangelist Goglia, a past NTSB commission member.

"You hit to watch your schedules to attain sure (controllers) hit competent rest," Goglia said. "It's worse when nothing is feat on. When it's busy, you hit to meet engaged. When it's quiet, every they hit to be is a lowercase bit bushed and they'll start asleep."

Aviation experts stressed the extraordinary nature of the incident.

"I'm not sure that in every the eld I've been air airplanes that I crapper recall coming into a field airfield and I couldn't intend stop of a someone in the airfield tower," said travel country consultant Evangelist Cox, who spent 35 eld as an line and corporate pilot.

However, planes, including diminutive airliners, land every the instance at diminutive airports that don't hit control towers or controllers to country landings.

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