Close calls on runways alarm aviation experts

From Patty Davis
CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- When a jumbo jet mistakenly taxied onto an active runway at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in 1999, a Korean Air 747 had to lift off early and bank to the left to avoid a collision.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says such close calls on runways are on the rise nationwide, averaging more than one per day.

The FAA's answer is a software system called AMASS, short for Airport Movement Area Safety System, which uses radar to alert controllers to potential collisions. It has just gone online at San Francisco (California) International Airport.

"It's the first surface detection equipment that really gives an alert to the controller and allows the controller to prevent a collision," says Scott Speer, assistant air traffic manager in San Francisco.

Only the San Francisco and Detroit, Michigan, airports have the technology so far. Thirty-two of the nation's biggest airports are scheduled to get it. But a federal watchdog -- the Transportation Department's inspector general, Kenneth Mead -- has told a House of Representatives panel that AMASS is too little, too late.

Plagued by problems

Six years overdue and tens of millions of dollars over budget, the system has been plagued with false alerts.

While the FAA is focusing on helping controllers prevent accidents, Mead and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) say more needs to be done to prevent pilot error, which accounts for 60 percent of runway incidents.

"Unless much is done -- more is done, soon -- to prevent runway incursions, it's a matter of time before a disastrous runway collision," says Carol Carmody, acting chairwoman of the NTSB.

The airlines also are weighing in.

"Runway incursions at our nation's airports reached record levels in 2000," says Carol Hallett, president and CEO of the Air Transport Association (ATA), which represents the major airlines. "With safety as our highest priority, this is simply unacceptable."

The FAA agrees that the AMASS system isn't the complete answer.

Some of its fixes include improved marking and lighting for runways and more training for airport workers.