February 1, 2000
Web posted at: 3:19 p.m. EST (2019 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Airline passengers in the United States are at unnecessary risk of an aviation disaster even when their planes are not in flight, Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Virginia, said on Tuesday.

Wolf, who chairs the Transportation Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, called for a national conference to discuss what he described as a "serious and continuing issue of runway incursions."

"This should be a working conference bringing together technical experts, airlines, controllers, airport officials, private pilots, to come up with focused recommendations for reducing runway incursions and a realistic schedule and a realistic budget to carry out those recommendations," Wolf said at a news conference.

Between 1993 and 1996, runway near-collisions increased 54 percent in the United States and have gone up another 14 percent since that time, Wolf said. He added that since 1990, 59 people have died in five crashes on U.S. runways.

Wolf praised the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board as "super agencies." But he said that while the FAA has proposed plans in the past to deal with the runway incursion problem, the agency has not carried through on those proposals.

"I understand that the runway incursions are particularly complex because they involve the coordinated actions of air traffic controllers, airline pilots, private pilots and the most perilous phases of flight, and often in low visibility conditions," he said.

Wolf

Wolf said that Los Angeles International was the worst airport in the country for runway incursions. But he gave examples of close calls at airports in other cities, including:

  • April 1, 1999, Chicago -- A Korean Air jet carrying 379 people missed a China Airlines jet on takeoff by only 25 to 50 feet.

  • September 12, 1999, Chicago -- A Delta jet and a United Airlines jet missed each other by an estimated 200 to 300 feet.

  • November 22, 1999, Los Angeles -- A United Airlines jet flew over an AeroMexico jet, missing it by only 100 feet.

  • December 6, 1999, Providence, Rhode Island -- A US Airways jet might have crashed into a United jet if the US Airways pilots had not refused the control tower's instructions to take off down the same runway.

Wolf noted that the worst accident in civil aviation history happened on the ground -- a runway collision between a KLM 747 and a Pan American 747 on March 27, 1977 at Tenerife in the Canary Islands. More than 580 people died.

Wolf said he expects the FAA to provide detailed plans for preventing runway near-collisions at his subcommittee's March 22 hearing on aviation. He also wants the FAA to immediately begin filing monthly reports to Congress on the number of runway incursions and what the agency is doing about the problem.

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