Federal officers are investigating why two planes received dangerously shut on a runway at New York’s LaGuardia Airport earlier this month regardless of the airport being geared up with a sophisticated floor radar system that is designed to assist stop such shut calls.
Each the Federal Aviation Administration and the Nationwide Transportation Security Board stated Monday that they’re investigating the Could 6 incident when a Republic Airways jet needed to abort takeoff and slam to a cease as a result of a United Airways airplane was nonetheless taxiing throughout the runway.
In audio from the tower that ABC obtained from the web site www.LiveATC.web, the air visitors management stated to the pilot of the Republic Airways jet: “Sorry, I thought United had cleared well before that.”
On the time that controller was directing the Republic Airways jet to takeoff, a floor controller on a distinct radio frequency was directing the United airplane to a brand new taxiway after it missed the primary one it was supposed to make use of to exit the runway.
Each the airways and the airport referred inquiries to the FAA.
The variety of shut calls lately has created critical issues for the FAA, NTSB and different security consultants. The NTSB’s investigation of a February 2023 shut name in Austin highlighted the issues, however there have been a variety of different high-profile close to misses. In a single case, a Southwest Airways jet coming in for a touchdown in Chicago narrowly averted smashing right into a enterprise jet crossing the runway.
LaGuardia is considered one of simply 35 airports throughout the nation geared up with the FAA’s finest know-how to forestall such runway incursions. The ASDS-X system makes use of a wide range of know-how to assist controllers monitor planes and autos on the bottom. On the different 490 U.S. airports with a management tower, air visitors controllers must depend on extra low-tech instruments like a pair of binoculars to maintain monitor of plane on the bottom as a result of the techniques are costly.
Increasing the techniques to extra airports is one thing Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wish to do if Congress indicators off on his multi-billion-dollar plan to overtake the nation’s ageing air visitors management system.
Nevertheless it’s clear the know-how shouldn’t be good as a result of shut calls proceed taking place. The FAA is taking a variety of extra steps to attempt to scale back the variety of shut calls, and it plans to put in an extra warning system at LaGuardia sooner or later.
However the fee of runway incursions per 1 million takeoffs and landings has remained round 30 for a decade. The speed received as excessive as 35 in 2017 and 2018. However usually there are fewer than 20 of essentially the most critical form of incursions the place a collision was narrowly averted or there was a big potential for a crash, in response to the FAA. That quantity did hit 22 in 2023 however fell to simply 7 final yr.
To assist, there are efforts to develop a system that can warn pilots instantly about visitors on a runway as an alternative of alerting the controller and counting on them to relay the warning. That might save valuable seconds. However the FAA has not but licensed a system to warn pilots instantly that Honeywell Worldwide has been creating for years.
The worst accident in aviation historical past occurred in 1977 on the Spanish island of Tenerife, when a KLM 747 started its takeoff roll whereas a Pan Am 747 was nonetheless on the runway; 583 folks died when the planes collided in thick fog.
