FAA: Planes land too close for comfort

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/292708p-250589c.html

Passengers at local airports had worse-than-usual butterflies yesterday after a federal report showed a sharp rise in cases where planes came too close to each other.

The Federal Aviation Administration found that airplanes landing at area airports have flown too close to each other 117 times so far this year, compared with 24 times in all of 2004.

Although FAA officials played down any danger behind the figures, the study comes as air traffic controllers complain they are severely understaffed.

"We're trying to maintain the rules, and that's difficult when air traffic is up and staffing is down," said Dean Iacopelli, an air traffic controller at the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control office in Westbury, L.I.

...where I live. Every time I see it I think of that plane that crashed in a residential New York neighborhood shortly after 9/11. The cause of that crash was supposedly that the plane flew in the same path as a previous plane that had left shortly before and there was some kind of residual turbulence, or something like that, which ripped off the doomed planes tail. If that was in fact the case, well I'm surprised that it doesn't happen more often because I see planes flying in the path of a preceding plane all the time. I've also been seeing planes crisscrossing in the sky with what looks like very little distance between them. I really have been noticing this alot these days.

Looks like it all comes down to $$$-- with them ignoring, of course, the LAW$UITS they will get the next time one or two planes crash during one of the "high-severity errors" described below. And this was all before gas prices were at the level that they are now...God knows what other changes they will make to "save fuel, save money".


http://www.cnn.com/2005/TRAVEL/01/21/air.traffic.separation/


The new rule reduces the long-standing vertical separation minimum of 2,000 feet to 1,000 feet, thus doubling the number of routes airlines can fly between 29,000 feet and 41,000 feet, an FAA press release said.


"This action ... gives pilots and air traffic controllers more choices to allow aircraft to fly more direct routes at the most fuel-efficient altitudes," FAA Administrator Marion Blakey said in a statement. "When you save fuel, you save money: it's that simple. And more efficient routes save the passenger time.

"The agency estimates that this move will save airlines and other aircraft operators at least $5.3 billion over the next decade." From 1998 to 2003, incidents of aircraft coming too close together increased 34 percent.

In 2003, an average of three operational errors occurred each day, with one high-severity error every seven days.

Imagine what the true number nationwide must be.

I will say, each time I fly out of La Guardia, I do have a little fear of being hit by another plane because the airspace is so tight. I don't really feel that way in any other airport.

We really need to hire more ATC, or at lest provide overtime for those who are currently serving.

However, the captain can always request "standard separation minima." I never allowed them to reduce separation minima on me when following a "heavy" jet (like a loaded B-747, or B-767 for examples) or in marginal weather conditions. A good indicator that approach separation minima are getting to tight is the number of "go-arounds" due to an aircraft on the runway.