Sleeping Air Traffic Supervisor

As we all have, I heard about the sleeping air traffic supervisor at Washington's Reagan Airport a couple weeks ago.foxnews.com  I didn't think much of it because I thought that there would be several people at this airport at the same time to make sure nothing like this would happen.  I was wrong, it wasn't until recently that the Federal Aviation Administration adopted a policy to have two qualified controllers to be on duty at all times.  This sounds obvious to me since you never know when someone might have a health issue or some other catastrophic event that might distract one from their duties.  Sleeping is not a valid event.  If you have knarkalepsy then this might not be the job for you.  


The traffic supervisor was suspended by the FAA until further investigations have been made.  What all of us didn't know is there has been another incident since then at Knoxville, TN.  Another traffic controller has been suspended by the FAA for sleeping on the job.  This employee really should be fired and never come back.  He not only fell asleep on the job, (that happens to have the lives of others at his guidence) but made himself a pallet on the floor to sleep on.  He had a nice five hour nap.  Luckily McGhee Tyson Airport had another controller staffed that night that was able to control all of the flights.  http://abclocal.go.com/ 

I looked up the job description for an air traffic controller, it is as follows:   
Serves an an Operations Supervisor in an ATC-6 terminal facility responsible for planning and directing operations within delegated areas of responsibility. Effects disciplinary actions. Provides first-line supervision to a team of ATCS. Provides training, coaching and guidance to subordinates and facilitates team building throughout his/her area(s) of responsibility. Continuously reviews work processes to assure that results meet the agency's mission and the customer's needs, add value to facility services, and are efficiently achieved. Serves as a member of the management team to improve organizational performance and to meet strategic goals. When assigned as Watch Supervisor, assumes overall management and supervision of the control room.
This sounds like a very important job to me.  They not only have a very important job that holds lives in their hands but also get paid a fair salary for it.  At the same site as the job description, http://jobs.faa.gov I found that the salary range is between $98,099 and $127,529.   Thanks to some alert pilots nobody was hurt in these irresponsible acts.