Rep. DeSaulnier wants hearing after SFO incidents
SAN FRANCISCO >> Fed up with critical aviation evidence disappearing after close-calls stretching from San Francisco to Atlanta, U.S. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, on Tuesday called for a congressional hearing into the scary incidents and how to better preserve cockpit voice recorders.
“A catastrophic plane crash should not be the impetus for improving aviation safety,” DeSaulnier said. “Something is wrong with the existing rules and procedures governing cockpit voice recorders and the availability of data, and this issue should be immediately addressed to ensure passenger safety and security.”
On Tuesday morning, DeSaulnier wrote Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pennsylvania, chairman of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, and Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Michael Huerta, citing the troubling incidents at San Francisco International and Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International airports.
On July 7, an Air Canada flight mistook a crowded taxiway for its cleared runway and came within dozens of feet of landing on four fully loaded aircraft. Aviation experts have said the incident could have led to one of the worst aviation disasters ever.
On Oct. 22, another Air Canada flight crew landing at SFO did not respond to numerous orders to abort their landing on a runway after an air traffic controller believed another plane had not cleared the space. The pilots said they encountered radio troubles and did not hear the orders.
On Nov. 29, a Delta Air Lines passenger jet aborted a landing after lining up to an occupied taxiway.
All three incidents are being investigated by federal authorities, but the cockpit voice recorders were overwritten in each event because the data were not immediately pulled.
The National Transportation Safety Board has said the cockpit discussions are not necessary to complete a full investigation, adding that interviews with the pilots provided them plenty of information. But DeSaulnier and aviation experts have questioned whether in such incidents that could include pilot error, investigators might not get the full story from flight crews.
“While thankfully none of these incidents resulted in a catastrophe, we are not learning all that we can from them because a crucial piece of evidence — the cockpit voice recorder — was not kept and made available to investigators studying the incidents,” DeSaulnier wrote to Shuster in Tuesday’s letter. “Access to the cockpit voice recorder could have provided valuable information about the pilots’ states of mind on their approaches to the airports, the extent they knew about their positions, and their awareness of other factors involved in these errors.”
Meanwhile, DeSaulnier has added amendments to a wide-ranging aviation bill that would work to save cockpit conversations, but it’s unclear when that legislation might be brought to the floor. He wrote the FAA about this topic in November but never received a response.