Airliners face “a high risk” of catastrophic runway collisions because of inadequate federal leadership, which has allowed air traffic controllers to become fatigued and technology to fail, congressional investigators concluded Wednesday.
“The absence of national leadership and a current national runway safety plan impede further progress on runway safety,” the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ non-partisan investigative arm, said in a report.
The report pointed to the nation’s busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, as an example of the dangers. It found that 52 percent of controllers there regularly work six-day weeks.
“Air traffic controller fatigue, which may result from regularly working overtime, continues to be a matter of concern,” the report said.
In addition, “runway safety technology currently being installed is experiencing some operational difficulties with its alerting function, while additional technology to prevent runway collisions is years away from deployment,” it said.
The GAO found that the FAA’s most advanced ground-control radar, which is operating at only eight airports, issues false alerts of impending collisions.
In addition, “FAA has not prepared a national runway safety plan since 2002, despite agency policy that it be updated every two to three years, resulting in uncoordinated efforts within the agency,” the GAO said.
The GAO concluded that because of such ongoing problems, the rate of runway incursions — any incident that creates a collision hazard when planes are using a runway — rose 12 percent between fiscal 2006 and 2007, and was nearly as high last year as its peak in fiscal 2001.
FAA spokesman Paul Takemoto said the GAO report did not take into account the 55 percent drop in “serious” runway incursions since 2001. “We are focused on the most serious incursions,” he said, and those were down to just 24 in fiscal 2007, compared with 31 in fiscal 2006.
Hits and near misses
Since 1990, 63 people have died in six U.S. runway collisions. The FAA’s previous definition did not classify some serious runway errors as incursions, including an Aug. 27, 2006, crash in Lexington, Ky., of a Comair jet that took off from a too-short runway, killing 49.
This year has seen dramatic near misses:
* On Aug. 16, two commercial jets carrying 296 people came within 37 feet of colliding at LAX.
* A Delta Boeing 757 touched down in Ft. Lauderdale, on July 11 and had to take off immediately to avoid hitting a United Airbus A320 mistakenly on its runway.
* A Delta Boeing 737 landing at New York’s LaGuardia Airport on July 5 narrowly missed a commuter jet mistakenly cleared to cross its runway.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating those incidents, two others in Denver and one in San Francisco.
What to do?
Safety experts polled by the GAO recommended these as the most effective ways for the FAA to avoid runway incursions:
1. Enhancing airport markings and lighting
2. Enhancing airport signage
3. Approving perimeter taxiways, which provide aircraft with access to gates without crossing active runways
4. (tie) Establishing runway safety action teams — groups of airport safety stakeholders to identify and implement safety improvements
4. (tie) Testing runway status lights, which provide a visible warning when runways are not clear to enter or cross
