The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Close calls occurring more frequently
Air traffic controllers, pilots acknowledge holes in safety system.
On July 2, a Southwest Airlines pilot had to abort a landing at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. A Delta Air Lines 737 was preparing to take off on the same runway. The sudden maneuver avoided a possible collision by seconds.
Nine days later, in San Francisco, an American Airlines jet was accelerating down the runway at more than 160 mph when it narrowly missed a Frontier Airlines plane whose nose had almost jutted into its path. Moments later, the same thing happened as a German airliner was taking off. In both cases, the planes came so close to hitting the Frontier aircraft that the Federal Aviation Administration, in internal records reviewed by The New York Times, described the encounters as “skin to skin.”
And 2 1/2 weeks after that, an American flight to Dallas was traveling at more than 500 mph when a collision warning blared in the cockpit. An air traffic controller had mistakenly directed a United Airlines plane to fly dangerously close. The American pilot had to abruptly yank the Airbus A321 up 700 feet.
The incidents — highlighted in preliminary FAA safety reports but not publicly disclosed — were among a flurry of at least 46 close calls involving commercial airlines last month alone.
They were part of an alarming pattern of safety lapses and nearmisses in the skies and on the runways of the United States, a Times investigation found. While there have been no major U.S. plane crashes in more than a decade,
potentially dangerous incidents are occurring far more frequently than almost anyone realizes.
So far this year, close calls involving commercial airlines have been happening, on average, multiple times a week, according to a Times analysis of internal FAA records, as well as thousands of pages of federal safety reports and interviews with more than 50 current and former pilots, air traffic controllers and federal officials.
The incidents often occur at or near airports and are the result of human error, the agency’s internal records show. Mistakes by air traffic controllers — stretched thin by a nationwide staffing shortage — have been one major factor.
The close calls have involved all major U.S. airlines and have happened nationwide.
Some have made headlines, but
most have not been disclosed to the public.
In addition to the FAA records, the Times analyzed a database maintained by NASA that contains confidential safety reports filed by pilots, air traffic controllers and others in aviation. The analysis identified a similar phenomenon: In the most recent 12-month period for which data was available, there were about 300 accounts of near-collisions involving commercial airlines.
The number of such near-misses in the NASA database — which is based on voluntary submissions that are not independently corroborated — has more than doubled over the past decade, though it is unclear whether that reflects worsening safety conditions or simply increased reporting.
Aviation authorities say that the U.S. air travel system, which trans
ports nearly 3 million passengers a day, is the safest in the world. But current and former air traffic controllers said in interviews that close calls were happening so frequently that they feared it was only a matter of time until a deadly crash occurred.
The U.S. aviation network has long been protected by an extensive system of overlapping technological and human safeguards. Pilots undergo rigorous training. So do the air traffic controllers who scour the skies and manage takeoffs and landings. Technology alerts pilots and controllers to possible dangers and directs them to steer planes away from peril.
The results are undeniable. There has not been a fatal crash involving a U.S. airline since February 2009, when a Continental flight crashed into a house near
Buffalo, N.Y., killing all 49 people on board. The 14-year streak is the longest in the history of U.S. aviation.
Yet that enviable record masks what pilots, air traffic controllers and others say are growing holes in the layers of the safety system. The result, they said, was an increasing risk of disaster.
One problem is that despite repeated recommendations from safety authorities, the vast majority of U.S. airports have not installed warning systems to help prevent collisions on runways.
But the most acute challenge, the Times found, is that the nation’s air traffic control facilities are chronically understaffed. While the lack of controllers is no secret — the Biden administration is seeking funding to hire
and train more — the short- ages are more severe and are leading to more dangerous situations than previously known.
As of May, only three of the 313 air traffic facilities nationwide had enough con- trollers to meet targets set by the FAA and the union representing controllers, the Times found.
Representatives of Amer- ican, United, Delta, South- wes t a nd o ther ai rli n es emphasized their commit- ment to safety. Airlines said they invest heavily in train- ing and sophisticated safety technology and work closely
h the FAA to improve best practices. They said the lack of crashes showed the sys- tem’s effectiveness.
A United spokesperson said the situation in July in which its plane came too close to the American flight was resolved while the two aircraft were more than 3 miles apart. Spirit repre- sentatives did not respond to requests for comment.
Matthew Lehner, an FAA spokesperson, said the agen- cy’s multilayered approach to safety has “virtually elim- inated the risk of fatalities aboard U.S. commercial air- lines.”
The goal now, he said, was to reduce the number of close calls to zero. “One close call is one too many,” he said in a statement.
Lehner said the FAA lacked the funding to install more runway warning systems. But he said the agency was tak- ing other steps to improve safety.
Yet controllers around the country said they did not think the FAA was doing enough. They said they had voiced concerns through offi- cial channels, including the agency’s internal hotline. Frustrated with what they saw as a lack of action, con- trollers said, they decided to speak to the Times, on the condition of anonymity to protect their jobs.
Buffers breached
For planes that can move at hundreds of miles per hour, distances that seem substantial can vanish in seconds. The FAA therefore requires planes to maintain large buffers between one another.
The FAA and NASA records that the Times reviewed, as well as interviews with con- trollers and pilots, indicate that those standards are rou- tinely breached.
They included a series of incidents that became public early this year. At Kennedy International Airport in New York in January, an Ameri- can Airlines flight crossed into the path of a Delta flight that was accelerating for takeoff. The Deltapilot slammed on the brakes, barely avoid-
ing a crash.
Three weeks later, in Aus- tin, Texas, an air traffic con- troller cleared a Fedex plane to land on the same runway as a departing Southwest flight. The planes, both moving at more than 150 mph, came within less than 100 feet of colliding.
Over the next few weeks, there were similar incidents in Sarasota, Fla.; Burbank, Calif.; and Boston.
In an attempt to improve safety and restore public confidence, federal officials opened investigations into the incidents, urged the avi- ation community to exercise “continued vigilance” and convened a safety summit.
“The absence of a fatal- ity or an accident doesn’t mean the presence of safety,” Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transporta- tion Safety Board, said at the summit in March. She added, “These recent incidents must serve as a wakeup call for every single one of us before something more catastrophic occurs, before lives are lost.”
While the string of head- line-grabbing incidents was unnerving, there were other significant ones that have not been publicly reported. Preliminary descriptions were included in what are known as the Administrator’s Daily Alert Bulletins, which are dis- tributed to a select group of FAA employees and which the Times reviewed.
Mistakes by air traffic controllers caused some of the close calls. Others were pilots’ fault. Some incidents involved errors by both.
When back-to-back planes nearly smashed into the Frontier jet whose nose was edging onto the San Francisco runway in July, one of the underlying problems was the shortage of air traf- fic controllers.
The FAA’ internal reports into the incident found that the Frontier pilot made a mistake. But the control- ler monitoring the runway didn’t do enough to miti- gate the pilot’s error. Staff- ing during the incident “was not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” the FAA wrote.
Officials at the FAA already knew that San Fran- cisco’s air traffic control tower was understaffed. As of May, it had 20 fully cer- tified controllers, accord- ing to data that the Times obtained from the agency via a public records request. That was 33% below the tar- get set by a group of officials from the FAA and the con- trollers union.
The situation in San Fran- cisco was common. Ninety-nine percent of the nation’s air traffic control facilities — 310 out of 313 — had fewer fully certified controllers than the group’s target levels, according to a Times analysis of the FAA data and the agency’s most recent “Air Traffic Control- ler Workforce Plan.”
In the past decade, the number of fully trained controllers has fallen 10%, while airport traffic has increased 5%. The Depart- ment of Transportation’s inspector general recently found that the FAA “lacks a plan to address” staffing shortages.
The FAA has required many controllers to work six days a week.
On t op of th a t, many controllers work a sched- ule where the starting time for their shifts rotates over the course of a week. On the first day, a controller might work an afternoon shift. From there, shifts start progressively earlier, culminating with a 24-hour period in which the controller works both an early morning shift and, as few as eight hours later, overnight duty. Many controllers call the schedule “the rattler” because, like the snake, it has a nasty bite.
The FAA and the controllers union approved the schedule, which is designed in part to spread busy shifts across employees.
But manycontrollers said that, coupled with mandatory overtime, it has pushed them to the physical and psychological brink.
The NTSB and the Department of Transportation’s inspector general have found that “the rattler” increased the risk of controller errors. Since then, the FAA has modified the schedule to address some concerns, but controllers said it remained grueling.
Insufficient systems
Pilots, air traffic controllers and federal investigators have warned repeatedly that America’s air safety system is fraying.
In 2013, for example, the Department of Transportation’s inspector general wrote that so-called losses of separation — which occur when aircraft get too close to each other — “continue to be a major air safety concern, particularly in light of dramatic increases in their occurrence.” Five years later, the inspector general issued a similar warning about close calls on runways.
In 2017, the NTSB called for the FAA to install more systems that alert air traffic controllers to imminent collisions on runways.
Since then, the FAA has not installed a single new surface detection system. Only 43 of the nation’s more than 500 airports serving commercial flights have such systems, according to the FAA. Lehner said the agency did not have the funding for new systems but was looking for more affordable options.
NASA’S database is also filled with warnings. Hundreds of entries detail how factors such as workload, time pressure, fatigue, technological problems and communication breakdowns led to terrifying situations.
The FAA said it was trying to address the controller shortage. In its most recent budget request, it sought $117 million to train controllers and hire 1,800 new ones in the 2024 fiscal year, which begins in October.
The extra funding would not be a panacea. The FAA expects to lose more than 1,400 controllers next year because of retirements and other departures. And new controllers must undergo years of training.
In the meantime, nearmisses continue to occur regularly.