There is alarm at the sharp increase in incidents when collision avoidance systems have been activated, writes Ashley Halseyin Washington
ON-BOARD SYSTEMS intended to keep aircraft from colliding in midair have been triggered more than 45 times this year over Washington, according to a new safety review.
The review found that air traffic controllers who guide planes to and from the capital region’s airports have made dangerous mistakes at a record-setting pace.
Two of the closest calls this month involved four aircraft carrying a total of 589 people, including one in which a Delta 737 was turned into the potentially deadly turbulent wake of a United 757 as the two planes flew along the Potomac river on final approach to Reagan National Airport.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) dispatched a safety review team to the Washington region’s Potomac Terminal Radar Approach Control (Tracon) facility last month after onboard collision avoidance systems were activated as a result of a controller error as a United Airlines flight carrying Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner jnr narrowly missed colliding with a 22-seat Gulfstream business jet.
The team found that “more than 45 such events have been documented this calendar year” in which avoidance systems have been triggered in Washington airspace, according to an internal FAA summary.
The systems, required on all planes carrying 19 or more passengers, kick in and order pilots to take evasive action when their sensors indicate a potential midair collision.
Though few of those events were as harrowing as Mr Sensenbrenner’s experience, the review team said controllers were being instructed to allow additional space between planes in Tracon airspace. The Sensenbrenner incident on June 28th was recorded as the 23rd error of the year by Potomac Tracon.
Since that date controllers there have officially reported 15 more mistakes, including two this month that were ranked in preliminary internal reports as “Category A, yellow”.
Only a Category A, red, is considered more serious, usually involving an actual crash or act of terrorism.
The number of errors by air traffic controllers has risen dramatically nationwide this year. FAA records are compiled on a fiscal year beginning October 1st. The total by Tracon during the last fiscal year was 754. With a month left in the current fiscal year, the error total has reached 1,257.
Alarmed by the national increase in incidents when onboard collision avoidance systems were activated, the National Transportation Safety Board has begun a review of almost a dozen near midair collisions, including a March 25th incident 24,000ft over Maryland when a Continental Airlines 737 came within about a mile of colliding with a Gulfstream jet.
The NTSB, best known for investigating accidents, has the authority to propose regulations but not to mandate them. It has raised questions about the reliability of the FAA’s reporting of close encounters in the skies.
Critics within the air traffic control system contend that much of the fault lies with a generational shift in the ranks of controllers brought on by mass retirements of those hired after 1981, when President Ronald Reagan fired the nation’s striking controllers. They say many of the new controllers have been prematurely thrust into high-pressure roles. FAA administrator Randoph Babbitt rejects that as unfair, saying the new controllers are fully capable. He says plane-crash deaths are at an all-time low, and there has not been a major midair collision involving an airliner in two decades.
He says the rise in reported errors is the result of a new programme that encourages controllers to report their own errors without fear of retribution. He issued a rule that says they should "only rarely be removed" from directing flights while their errors are investigated. – ( Washington Post-Bloomberg)