We Guide You Home
12182015 toti videos at our facilities body1

Jan. 15, 2016 // NAS Loyalty Shines in New Turn Off Tune In Videos

(Editor’s Note: This story has been published jointly by the FAA and NATCA.)

Three new videos aim to educate controllers and managers on the continuing challenges posed by distractions, while also demonstrating how individuals at facilities have heightened professionalism and reduced distractions.

The prevalence of electronic devices is only growing, and statistics showing the detrimental effects of using them in the workplace continue to emerge, but support among controllers to remove distractions is more robust than ever. Check out the three new videos below:

12182015 toti videos at our facilities body1At Our Facilities

12182015 toti videos just the facts body2Just the Facts

12182015 toti videos mentoring body3Controllers Talk Mentoring

“Turn Off Tune In At Our Facilities” delves into the culture change that’s occurred since the inception of the distraction education campaign. Efforts to reduce workplace distractions—like the buzzing and ringing of cellphones—have ramped up at individual facilities and have spread nationally to encompass towers, TRACONs, and centers from coast to coast.

Seen in the video “Just the Facts,” the statistics are shocking:

  • The typical cell phone user interacts with their phone 1,500 times per week on average, more than 214 times per day;
  • Distractions reduce our ability to see our environment by 50 percent; and
  • Distractions cause a 10 percent drop in IQ, more than twice the effects of drugs and alcohol, and equal to losing a night of sleep.

“I think it’s a better option to educate [controllers] as to what the consequences are rather than just telling them not to do it [use their phones],” Dan Kerr, a national traffic management specialist and NATCA member at the Command Center, says in the third video, “Controllers Talk Mentoring.”

This video includes interviews with controllers and managers from around the country who share their ways of encouraging colleagues to stay focused.

“I think with everybody you have to take a different approach,” said Scott Montroy, a controller and NATCA member at Dallas TRACON. “With some people you have to be a little more hard-lined to get them to understand how important it is…With other people, it’s as simple as just a, ‘hey’…”

Different people, different places, same goal: Turn Off Tune In.

Jump to top of page