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NATCA Shares NTSB Concerns About Runway Safety
By NATCA
Posted: 10-17-2008
11/15/2005
In the wake of an annual National Transportation Safety Board meeting this morning where the board is expected to again spotlight runway safety, National Air Traffic Controllers Association President John Carr will tell the Wings Club in New York this afternoon that runway incidents are evidence that the Federal Aviation Administration is not taking a comprehensive approach to maintenance and modernization of the U.S. air traffic control system.
Pointing to recent promises made by the FAA to install a critical ground radar system, called Airport Surface Detection Equipment, model X - designed to prevent runway incursions - at only select airports by 2011, Carr will condemn the FAA's decision to, in effect, create a "two-tiered" safety system in which threats are dealt with reactively and fast-growing, medium-sized airports in important cities are largely ignored.
"What runway incursions have brought to the surface is the FAA's haphazard approach to system-wide reform that is already eroding the margin of safety for U.S. air travelers," Carr said, before his speech. "The ASDE-X installation commitments, like so many others made by the FAA, came only after our public outcry. FAA Administrator Marion Blakey continues to address serious safety issues in this way. The fact that the FAA's installation of ASDE-X in limited cities will take six years does little to address our concerns about dangerous incidents over the last six weeks."
Airport runway incursions have taken on critical significance after a spate of recent, high-profile incidents in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Tampa. Controllers in those cities and others view these incidents as symptoms of the larger safety issues confronting air travelers - like staffing cuts and system-wide modernization - that Carr will cover in his speech. As recently as last month, the NTSB itself declared that ASDE-X was an improvement over existing systems and urged the FAA to "acquire, without further delay, effective means to prevent runway incursions and improve runway safety."
NATCA Shares NTSB Concerns About Runway Safety
