Too Close Encounters

By Sally B. Donnelly/Washington

Bob Dole survived the battlefields of Italy during World War II, but he almost didn't make it out of Los Angeles International Airport last year. It was a clear November evening when the former Senator and his wife Elizabeth were settled comfortably into first class on a United Airlines flight to Washington. The 757 began its rapid roll to take off. Moments before, an AeroMexico jet had mistakenly begun to cross that very runway on its way to the terminal. As the United plane hurtled down the tarmac, the pilots were startled to see the AeroMexico plane wandering into their path. The United captain reacted quickly, abruptly pulling the jetliner's nose off the ground. His plane, with 133 passengers on board, avoided the AeroMexico plane by 100 feet.

It was a frightening near collision. But what is even more alarming is how much the occurrence of such incidents has grown: up 71% since 1993. The Federal Aviation Administration says last year there were 322 so-called runway incursions--incidents that present an on-the-ground collision hazard. A joint industry-government commission to study aviation safety, which used broader guidelines, put the annual number at closer to 1,000.

Fears of plane accidents usually focus on airborne problems, but runway incursions can be just as deadly. The worst accident in flying history took place when two packed 747 jetliners collided on a runway on Tenerife in the Canary Islands in 1977, killing 583 people. Just two weeks ago, four people were killed on a runway in Sarasota, Fla., when two small planes collided and burst into flames.

The FAA is under unprecedented pressure to do something. This week Congress will hold a hearing on runway incursions that is expected to get heated. Jim Hall, head of the National Transportation Safety Board and a close ally of Vice President Al Gore, will testify in detail about four of the most serious runway incursions of last year, and he will call on lawmakers to take swift action. "Runway incursions are the No. 1 problem in aviation today," says Hall. "The FAA has run off the runway and is in a ditch on this one, and they better get out quick." Jane Garvey, director of the FAA, will be put in the hot seat by, among others, Virginia Congressman Frank Wolf, who says the hearing will serve as "a hot compress on a boil."

The main reason for the growing problem is simple physics: much more matter in the same amount of space. There are 100 million more passengers today than there were only five years ago, but only one major new airport has opened in the past decade. Many older, big-city airports are as jammed at rush hour as the highways leading to them. "The hard part isn't flying to Chicago, it's getting around on the ground," says a veteran airline pilot. "And the controllers are so rushed you don't ask for help." A big part of the problem is human error. The FAA says more than half of runway incursions are attributed to pilot mistakes. These include not following instructions, missing turns, even getting lost at an unfamiliar airport. An additional 25% of runway incursions result from controller miscues.

The FAA can take some small steps to make runways safer. Garvey says a regional airport manager told her to make sure the lights in airports were washed more frequently, and she intends to do that. The FAA has also installed bigger and brighter signs, embedded lights in the tarmac pavement and painted more lines on taxiways. And last week, as part of Garvey's new commitment to the issue, the FAA announced programs to provide refresher training for controllers and to encourage pilots to come forward to report runway incursions.

But the best solutions may be the big-ticket improvements that have proved most elusive. The FAA continues to support a sophisticated ground-radar system that is $30 million over budget and years late. Closing poorly designed airports and restricting the number of flights per hour would probably prove effective--and expensive. It comes down, says Air Safety Week editor David Evans, to "the classic tension between economics and safety." In this trade-off, there's a lot to be said for safety. Just ask Bob and Elizabeth Dole.