What’s so comfortable in sleeping high up in a US airport control tower you might ask after having read this week’s news about controller number five and six falling asleep during their night shifts. Number five was reported to have happened mid week at Reno-Tahoe International Airport (IATA: RNO) where a medical flight carrying a sick patient tried to land without anyone responding. The latest one, number six, was reported on Saturday. Here the controller fell asleep during his shift at the Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center, which oversees mostly high-altitude, long-distance flights. According to the FAA, this time the controller did not miss any calls from aircraft and there was no operational impact. With all this, voices suggesting problems in the system rather than failures of individuals now become louder as stated in a Washington Post article. This won’t be the last time we wrote about it!

Another story that was hard to miss this week was the collision of the Air France A380 with a jet belonging to Delta regional subsidiary Comair at New York’s JFK airport (IATA: JFK). The spectacular spin of the smaller jet was caught on tape and subsequently shown in news bulletins across the world. Later in the week the NTSB, the US National Transport Safety Board, released additional photos of the damaged planes which were published by USA Today. A full investigation of what exactly happened and why is currently under way.

On a better note, San Francisco International Airport’s newly renovated Terminal 2 (IATA: SFO) opened on Thursday for its first arriving and departing flights, as reported by Mercury News. The first departures from the new $383 million terminal were scheduled for 6 a.m., when two American Airlines flights took off for Dallas and Miami, SFO spokesman Mike McCarron said.

It anyway seems to have been an all US centric week as even we published a new airport review for one of America’s airports. Part 2 of our big Los Angeles International Airport (IATA: LAX) review concluded our series of this massive, fascinating airport with plenty to do if you have ample time.

That’s all for this week. Next week is Easter and LateDeparture will take a short break with the next weekly round-up to be published on Sunday, 1st May. Have a great Easter break and travel safely!

[Photo from Flickr – Some rights reserved by gusset]