Air Traffic Control: Be Careful Out There

The Northwest DC-10 was speeding toward takeoff at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport when the warning came from the flight engineer: "There's a whale on the runway!" Another Northwest wide-bodied DC-10 had just left a taxiway and poked its nose into the path of the oncoming plane. "I see it," replied the amazingly cool captain of the departing aircraft. He abruptly jerked his jumbo jet into the air. His wing cleared the fuselage of the crossing plane by a mere 50 ft. There were 501 people on the two jets. They had barely avoided what would have been the world's second worst air disaster, akin to the 1977 collision of two Boeing 747s that killed 582 people on a fog-shrouded runway at Tenerife in the Canary Islands.

What went wrong under clear skies at Minneapolis last March 31? Two air- traffic controllers, sitting side by side in the terminal tower, each failed to realize what the other had done. One had cleared the taxiing plane to cross the runway. The other had told the second plane to roll toward takeoff.

Whether on the ground or in the air, the high-speed collision of two aircraft is every pilot's worst fear. Yet each day in the U.S. the worry grows. "Near midairs," the safety experts' term for when two planes come dangerously close to each other in the air, are increasing at an alarming rate: 311 in 1982, 475 in 1983, 589 in 1984, 777 in 1985, at least 812 in 1986. Commercial airliners were involved in 35% of the 1986 incidents. What the air-travel industry too gently calls "runway incursions" are also on the rise: 102 in 1985 and an estimated 112 last year.

"Hell, every week that goes by, it's almost accepted as a common event, a near midair!" complains Captain Hank Duffy, the outspoken head of the 39,000- member Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA). Says Duffy: "Near midairs, runway incursions, delays -- every indicator in the system says that we're hanging by our fingernails."

In a candid memo to United Airlines pilots last month, Captain Lloyd W. Barry, United's senior vice president for flight operations, warned, "I am increasingly concerned about the ever present threat of a midair collision. Within the last twelve months, United crews have averaged 6.3 near-misses per month. Any of these incidents could have resulted in a catastrophe had it not been for the professional skill of our pilots or, in some cases, just plain good luck."

The close calls in the sky are by far the most worrisome trend in the nation's overburdened, understaffed air-safety system. The chilling reality of what can happen when luck turns sour was illustrated last Aug. 31 over Cerritos, Calif., when an Aeromexico DC-9 and a private Piper aircraft collided in the congested "birdcage" of controlled airspace around Los Angeles International Airport, killing 82 people. Many aviation experts like Duffy fear that what is still one of the safest air-transportation systems in the world is slipping dangerously as air traffic grows relentlessly through the unfettered competition of deregulation. The experts voice three major concerns: