Rating the world's Airports

Airports are being judged these days by a group that has a greater personal involvement than most hi safe air travel. Every year the International Federation of Air Line Pilots Associations (IFALPA), representing the flyers of 65 nations, awards a black star, its lowest ranking, to those airports it thinks are "critically deficient," a red star to those "seriously deficient," and an orange one to those simply "deficient."

Of the 26 black star airports, three belong to the world's most technologically advanced nation, the U.S.:

LOS ANGELES: Pilots complain about the L.A. Airport's nightly noise-abatement procedures, which require planes to land and take off over the ocean, where visibility is often obscured by fog banks. Observes one veteran pilot: "L.A. Airport is a disaster waiting to happen." Though the airport has cut back on over-ocean landings and installed new instrument-landing systems for runway approaches, some pilots still fear that they may set down in the water.

BOSTON: Noise controls at Boston's Logan Airport often require airliners to land and take off with tailwinds, as well as use the same runways for arrival and departure. At night, planes must approach and depart over Boston Bay. Says a senior airline pilot: "It's like descending into a black pit over that bay."

ST. THOMAS, VIRGIN ISLANDS: The short runway at the Harry Truman Airport gives jet pilots too little margin for error, and was blamed for the crash of an American Airlines jet last year. Construction of a runway extension has not yet begun, though federal funds have been made available.

Foreign black star listings include seven fields in Colombia; three in Australia; Rhodes and Corfu in Greece; and eleven others, including Iran's huge airport at Tehran.

IFALPA gives 36 world airports red stars including three U.S. fields:

NEW YORK CITY'S J.F.K.: Pilots knock the big airport for doing a poor job of removing snow, allowing too many maintenance vehicles on the airfield and using unsafe noise control.

HONOLULU: The main airport does not have approach lights for landing, and lacks runway groovings to help aircraft brake. The association charges that the procedures used by Honolulu's control tower need "review."

ANCHORAGE: The Alaskan field has just one east-west strip, so that many landings are made in tricky crosswinds. Until Anchorage completes its new cross strip, it will keep its red rating.

Among foreign red star airports:

Mexico City, Hong Kong, Bombay, New Delhi, Naples and Nassau.

IFALPA names one U.S. airport among the 250 on its orange star list:

PORTLAND: Pilots complain that the Oregon airport does not provide satisfactory runway lighting for approaching planes.

Some of the foreign orange star fields: Cairo, Kingston, San Juan.

Still, there are airports that even the most demanding pilots do not fault. In the U.S., according to a TIME survey taken last week, airline captains prefer Dallas-Fort Worth, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Kansas City, Miami and Dulles International outside Washington, D.C., because they are uncongested and have wide spaces between runways and taxiways. They also have excellent air traffic control and emergency equipment. Abroad, pilots like London's Heathrow, Amsterdam's Schipol, Paris' De Gaulle and the Frankfurt airport. These fields, like their American counterparts, have the best lighting, communications and radar equipment available.

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