YOU MEAN, SOMEONE ACTUALLY RESIGNED? – AT 11:52 P.M. ET:  The late Steve Landesberg, a nice guy and a terrific comedian, once did a routine satirizing a British cabinet minister resigning and heaping abuse on himself.  ("I'm despicable, and you must get rid of me.")  And yet, resignation after a blunder or embarrassing mishap is one of the more honorable traditions in Britain.

Not so here, as Landesberg liked to point out.  Here you can blame a kid in a baby carriage and get away with it, no matter what you've done.  And in those rare cases where someone does resign after a major boo-boo, he might be rewarded with a TV talk show.

So it's refreshing to see an actual, genuine resignation by a man who takes responsibility for things that happened on his watch.  Now, to be sure, he could have been asked to resign, to walk the plank, but he did in fact submit a resignation:

The head of the Federal Aviation Administration's Air Traffic Organization resigned today, the day after another air traffic controller was caught napping while planes were trying to land.

"Hank Krakowski has submitted his resignation and I have accepted," FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt said in a statement. "Hank is a dedicated aviation professional and I thank him for his service."

Krakowski had held the position since 2007 and prior to joining the FAA had worked for United Air Lines for nearly 30 years, says his FAA bio.

Krakowski's resignation comes as the FAA investigates five incidents in recent weeks of air controllers possibly sleeping on the job.

Following the most recent incident on Wednesday in Reno, Nev., the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Transportation announced that additional air traffic controllers would be immediately added on the midnight shift at 27 control towers that currently have only one person working overnights.

COMMENT:  This is pretty scary stuff, and requires a congressional investigation.  If controllers are dozing off, we must ask how many are too tired to work effectively, where human lives are involved.   The most famous recent doze-off came at Reagan Airport in Washington, not exactly a place lacking in traffic. 

The FAA has long been a troubled agency, hobbled by the dual and sometimes contradictory mission of promoting air safety and and the economic health of the airline industry.

April 14, 2011