By Ashley Halsey III
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 5, 2010
A 120-seat United Airlines plane bound for Reagan National Airport from Chicago narrowly avoided colliding with a business jet departing from Dulles last Monday, the latest of 22 recent potentially dangerous mistakes by air traffic controllers who command the skies above Washington.
The United Airbus 319 was within 15 seconds of colliding with a 22-seat Gulfstream jet before, an internal FAA document shows, an onboard warning system ordered the pilots to take evasive action. The United pilot reported seeing the smaller jet pass just behind him.
“It’s the air traffic controller that’s supposed to control this situation, not” the onboard warning system, said John DeLisi, deputy director of aviation for the National Transportation Safety Board. “When it had to kick in and do its thing, that wasn’t a good controller.”
The number of times planes have come too close for comfort in the region in the past six months has surpassed the total of 18 the previous year. Nationwide, air traffic controllers committed 949 errors last year.
The incidents come as a new cadre of controllers is being trained to replace a generation of retiring controllers, a legacy of the 1981 strike during which President Ronald Reagan fired virtually the entire staff of controllers. Forty-nine of the 177 controllers who handle in-flight traffic for the Washington region, the third-busiest airspace in the nation after New York and Los Angeles, have yet to be certified in all aspects of their job, according to the FAA. Continue reading
Por ERIC TORBENSON
If you’ve ever missed a turn, set the altitude bug incorrectly or committed any of thousands of sins that air traffic controllers routinely catch and help correct every day without much fuss, those days are apparently over. The FAA has apparently ordered controllers to violate pilots for any and all errors and has threatened to discipline them if they don’t file the reports. While the FAA says it’s just enforcing rules already in place, the head of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association say it’s yet another burden on an already-overworked workforce that will pit controllers against pilots. “We are not the FAA police! The FAA’s and controller’s mission is to provide the safe and efficient movement of live air traffic,” said NATCA President Patrick Forrey. “The fact that the FAA is now disciplining controllers for not ‘policing’ pilot actions as they relate to flight regulations is indicative of the tyrannical and oppressive culture the FAA has created.” The FAA, as might be suspected, has a different view. 
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