ANN wrote:He's Too Tall For ATC
6' 10" Briton Can't Even Win The Lawsuit
by Aero-News Senior Correspondent Kevin R.C. "Hognose"
O'Brien
"I don't want him, you
can have him, he's too tall for me," I remember my grandmother
singing when I was small. My grandfather would sing that line
from some music-hall ditty right back at her, changing the
pronouns. And we all had a laugh out of it (my family generally
being built rather low to the ground). After all, it's supposed to
be good to be tall, and the only times I've ever been glad to be
short is when stuffed into an airliner seat, or under enemy
fire.
But it turns out you can be too tall for your own good. Ben
Sargeaunt-Thompson is hearing that song from his employer of
choice: National Air Traffic Services (NATS), the quasi-private
company that provides ATC services in the UK and eastern Atlantic
(for swingeing user fees, as it happens).
Sargeaunt-Thompson thought that he exceeded NATS requirements by
a wide
margin: he had a university degree in physics, and NATS requires
controllers only to have a secondary education with some study
beyond the GCSE level -- for instance to "A" levels (at age 18).
You have to study all the way to the exam, but you don't have to
pass -- so Sargeaunt-Thompson was all but overqualified for a
profession that, in Britain, accepts the equivalent of US high
school graduates with a "C"
average.
He was 23 and in generally good health, so he breezed through
the medical exam. NATS offered him a job at Swanwick control center
in Hampshire. But before the young man could start work, one
not-so-small snag cropped up: Sargeaunt-Thompson's six foot ten
inch frame, particularly the three feet three inches of which were
legs. Sargeaunt-Thompson is in the 99th percentile for human
height, at the very tip of the bell-curved normal distribution --
and most ergonomic designers design from the 5th up to the 95th
percentile only (which by definition, when you consider it,
excludes ten percent of the population). He didn't fit the
workstation desks in Swanwick: there was no place for legs that
size to go.
Sargeaunt-Thompson's
job offer was rescinded, due to his anthropometric unsuitability.
As he had no personal control over his height, he secured attorneys
and presented his case as discrimination to an employment tribunal.
NATS managers countered that there was no way of making him
comfortable at his station, and an uncomfortable controller might
be prone to errors. The tribunal accepted this: yes, it's a
textbook case of discrimination, but it's justifiable on the
grounds of public safety.
NATS does not appear to have directly imposed a height limit.
But the NATS Careers website has been altered since
Sargeaunt-Thompson filed his suit. It now contains a paragraph
informing applicants that they "may be required to undergo an
assessment to see if they can work safely with operational
workstations." Call it the Ben Sargeaunt-Thompson clause.
How abnormal is Ben Sargeaunt-Thompson? A quick look at
anthropometric information on the web brought us to this treasure trove of
human-physical-factors
information at Cornell University. After reading
the notes for Cornell's classes DEA 325/651 one gets an idea just
how unusual a human being Ben Sergeant-Thompson is.
"'Clinical normality' in height is defined as about the range 54
to 79 inches," say the notes on anthropometric design. So at 82
inches Sargeaunt-Thompson is an outlier, most probably in the 99th
percentile.
But there is a man
alive in Pakistan today who is a full foot taller than the Briton:
94.1" or 7' 10". And a 20th Century American was an incredible 107
1/2" tall -- That's a half inch short of nine feet tall!
So designing to include that last percent is -- no joke intended
-- a tall order. And, of course, humans who are incredibly small
may be equally rare, but they're no less human for that -- how do
you include them?
As far as Sargeaunt-Thompson himself is concerned, he may yet
get a job as a controller, just not with NATS. According to The
Telegraph, he's been offered a trainee position at Eurocontrol's
training academy in Kirchberg, Luxembourg. How can they take him
on, when NATS can't?
Apparently they have a technical innovation that's yet to make
it to British shores, or at any rate to Hampshire: adjustable desks
and chairs.
Den Originalartikel finet ihr unter: http://www.aero-news.net/news/genav.cfm?ContentBlockID=acbd7976-8caa-418f-8d7f-5de83e1a7d48
