Danger On the Ground

Something is seriously wrong with U.S. aviation when the greatest danger occurs not in the air but on the ground. Runway collisions and near misses are far too common, despite decades of warnings and calls for safety improvements - and despite the belief that current technology could significantly reduce the risk.

Congress and the Bush administration need to find out why the danger persists and what steps should be taken to make runways safer.

In the six months that ended March 30,The New York Times reported last month,there were 15 serious "runway incursions,"compared with eight in the same period a yearago. An incursion involves the unauthorized presence of a plane, vehicle or pedestrian on a runway.

TOO COMPLEX AND EXPENSIVE

Solving runway incursions has been onthe National Transportation Safety Board's"most wanted list" of safety improvements since 1990.

Since 2000, the NTSB called for a collision warning system that would alert pilots directly, rather than tower controllers, but the Federal Aviation Administration says such a system would be too complex and expensive.

The FAA has taken steps such as improved lighting and signs on the ground, but the deadly risk remains:

In March 2000, four people died at Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport as two small planes collided on a runway.

The last airliner crash in the United States, in August 2006 in Lexington, Ky., was a runway incursion caused by the crew trying to take off on the wrong runway. Forty-nine of 50 people on board were killed.

Just two months ago, on March 2, three people were killed at an airport in Titusville when a small plane trying to land crashed into another taxiing to a ramp area.

GPS HAS MORE INFORMATION

Runway collisions are almost always caused by human error, The Times' Matthew L. Wald noted, but the number could be greatly reduced through available technology, from pavement paint to electronic warning systems.

Airliners and many smaller planes, for instance, have navigation systems based on Global Positioning System satellites that can locate them while in the air but are not usually linked to surface maps that could locate them by taxiway and runway.

"If you've got a GPS in your car, you have infinitely more detailed information than in the cockpit of an airplane on the ground" at Kennedy International Airport, Randy Babbitt, a former president of the Air Line Pilots Association, told The Times.

Congress and the administration should determine what it will take - other than an airliner collision and a major loss of life -to make sure the nation's runways are safe.