FAA must curb runway risks

This sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. More than half of the air traffic controllers at the nation's busiest airport — Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport — work six-day work weeks. The same is true for between 20 percent and 52 percent of controllers at 25 Federal Aviation Administration facilities, including seven of the busiest towers nationwide.

That fatigue, combined with significant technology failures and faltering federal leadership, spells "a high risk of a catastrophic runway collision occurring in the United States" congressional investigators noted in a report released this past week.

Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, D-N.J., who requested the report, said the FAA is ignoring "too many red flags."

Congress must move to update technology at the nation's airports, insist that the FAA take greater ownership of runway incursion risk and above all, take steps to curb overtime hours, which will necessitate the hiring of more air-traffic controllers. Currently, "agency officials indicated that they had no plan to mitigate the effects of air traffic controller fatigue," the GAO report said. What a disturbing finding.

Since 1990, 63 people have died in six U.S. runway collisions. A crash of a Comair jet in Lexington, Ky. on Aug. 27, 2006, occurred when the jet took off from a runway that was too short. That crash killed 49 people.

Meanwhile the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating other near misses, including a Delta 737 landing on July 5 at New York's LaGuardia airport that narrowly missed a commuter jet mistakenly cleared to cross the runway. Less than a week later, a Delta Boeing 757 that had touched down briefly in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., had to take off immediately to avoid a United Airbus A320 mistakenly on its runway. The following month, two commercial jets carrying nearly 300 people came within 37 feet of colliding at Los Angeles International Airport. The NTSB also is reviewing two incidents in Denver and one in San Francisco.

In many respects, commercial air travel has a remarkable safety record. In fact, the GAO credited the FAA with reducing runway safety incidents from a peak in 2001. But it also noted that the "FAA's runway safety efforts subsequently waned" as the number of incidents settled at a lower level, according to an Associated Press report.

When it comes to air traffic safety, there can be no resting on one's laurels. There must be a significant commitment to safety every single minute of every single day. To achieve that end, the FAA cannot continue to overwork traffic controllers or use radar equipment that malfunctions during rain and snow storms or issues false alerts, as the GAO report revealed.

It must embrace changes to head off the approaching storm identified in the GAO report. Congress must respond with adequate resources to make the needed changes — now, before someone else gets hurt.