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FAA split on close calls at runways (MEM)

Old 04-13-2007, 01:34 PM
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Exclamation FAA split on close calls at runways (MEM)

FAA split on close calls at runways
By Alan Levin, USA TODAY
April 13, 2007

A controversial air traffic procedure has nearly caused midair collisions during takeoffs and landings around the nation and brought a stern warning from U.S. safety investigators, who this month ordered the practice halted at Memphis International Airport, according to federal records, controllers and pilots.

Passenger jets arriving at Memphis and several other airports routinely fly directly over the top of planes landing on another nearby runway. Earlier this year, a midair collision between a Northwest Airlines DC-9 and a commuter plane was narrowly averted in Memphis, according to a report on the incident.

The issue offers a rare glimpse into the steps aviation officials take to increase capacity at airports and the debates that arise over safety.

Dangerous configurations where planes travel on crossing runways or nearby runways with intersecting flight paths can also be found at other airports, such as Minneapolis-St. Paul, Las Vegas and Philadelphia, said Capt. Larry Newman, chairman of the Air Line Pilots Association's air traffic group.

Close calls in Memphis have prompted a pitched battle within the FAA. The agency's Air Traffic Safety Oversight Service, an independent investigative arm, demanded in an April 2 memo that Memphis managers stop the practice: "This ongoing lack of compliance with FAA regulations … is unacceptable."

But the agency's air traffic division has ignored the demand.

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown would not comment on the internal dispute. She said the FAA is working to address safety concerns.

Memphis, which had nearly 200,000 departures carrying 5.6 million passengers in 2005, has had a series of close calls associated with landings on two nearby runways. One of the worst occurred Feb. 18 at 6:13 p.m., according to a report by Peter Nesbitt, an officer with the Memphis unit of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

A Northwest Airlink Saab 340 was about to touch down when its pilots radioed the tower to say they were aborting their landing. At the same moment, a Northwest Airlines DC-9 approaching another runway was headed for the Saab.

A controller ordered the Saab's pilots, "Stay low, stay low!" said the report. The controller then told the DC-9 to climb. It flew over the commuter plane.

"Only some luck and the quick action by the … controller prevented a midair collision from taking place," said the report.

Pete Sufka, who heads the controllers' union in Memphis, said controllers can't always prevent accidents in similar circumstances.

"I don't want any of my controllers getting in trouble running an operation that one part of the FAA says they shouldn't be operating," Sufka said. "All of these planes have people aboard, and we want them to come down in one piece. That is our job."

The Memphis procedure and others like it around the country allow more flights than if controllers had to keep planes farther apart. In Nesbitt's report, he said an air traffic manager insisted on using the procedure "because it helps (airlines) make money."

Nesbitt concluded, "We are placing profit over safety against the objections of many controllers who are forced to deal with this unsafe situation."

Newman said pressure to move aircraft is compromising safety. "The way we see it, there are cracks in the system," he said. "There is a tremendous push to increase capacity."

(Go to the link listed below to see graphics and participate in an on-line discussion of this article)

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http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/...#uslPageReturn
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Old 04-15-2007, 01:44 PM
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Originally Posted by MEM_ATC View Post

"Only some luck and the quick action by the … controller prevented a midair collision from taking place," said the report.
Um, were there not pilots involved here?
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Old 04-15-2007, 02:28 PM
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It could happen anywhere with parallel runways. Guess every airports going to need 4 parallels the same direction from now on to be "Safe."
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Old 04-15-2007, 07:50 PM
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Originally Posted by grumman View Post
Um, were there not pilots involved here?
Um, yeah, but the situation they're talking about is one in which it is not easy for one aircraft to have the other approaching aircraft in sight. Look at an airport diagram for MEM. Visual approaches are normally made to 27(CRJs and Saabs, sometimes DC-9s, excluding FedEx) and then perpendicular approaches to the 18s or 36s. The situation they're describing is when the 18s are in use. The 18L approach path crosses over the last half of 27 and with an aircraft going around off 27 and one on short final for 18L, if the aircraft on 27 never got the aircraft on the 18L app in sight prior to touching down, they will never know the proximity of that aircraft on a go-around or have the time to acquire it while executing a go-around. And MEM tower always points out traffic on the perpendicular approaches if you are on 27 and vice-versa if you're on the 18s. They're very good about that, except it is sort of difficult to spot that other aircraft from either runway. At least it is for me .

Our company always gets approaches to 27, up until recently, when it was no longer offered to us very much anymore. Always wondered why, and when one of our guys asked the tower one day why that was, they responded with, "can't talk about it over the frequency, but if you want to call the tower later on the phone, they'll tell you". Now it all makes sense.....
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Old 04-15-2007, 10:13 PM
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Originally Posted by manfred33 View Post
Um, yeah, but the situation they're talking about is one in which it is not easy for one aircraft to have the other approaching aircraft in sight. Look at an airport diagram for MEM. Visual approaches are normally made to 27(CRJs and Saabs, sometimes DC-9s, excluding FedEx) and then perpendicular approaches to the 18s or 36s. The situation they're describing is when the 18s are in use. The 18L approach path crosses over the last half of 27 and with an aircraft going around off 27 and one on short final for 18L, if the aircraft on 27 never got the aircraft on the 18L app in sight prior to touching down, they will never know the proximity of that aircraft on a go-around or have the time to acquire it while executing a go-around. And MEM tower always points out traffic on the perpendicular approaches if you are on 27 and vice-versa if you're on the 18s. They're very good about that, except it is sort of difficult to spot that other aircraft from either runway. At least it is for me .

Our company always gets approaches to 27, up until recently, when it was no longer offered to us very much anymore. Always wondered why, and when one of our guys asked the tower one day why that was, they responded with, "can't talk about it over the frequency, but if you want to call the tower later on the phone, they'll tell you". Now it all makes sense.....
It does make for a precarious situation, especially if the crew delays in announcing their go-around.
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Old 04-17-2007, 05:44 AM
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Originally Posted by manfred33 View Post
Um, yeah, but the situation they're talking about is one in which it is not easy for one aircraft to have the other approaching aircraft in sight. Look at an airport diagram for MEM. Visual approaches are normally made to 27(CRJs and Saabs, sometimes DC-9s, excluding FedEx) and then perpendicular approaches to the 18s or 36s. The situation they're describing is when the 18s are in use. The 18L approach path crosses over the last half of 27 and with an aircraft going around off 27 and one on short final for 18L, if the aircraft on 27 never got the aircraft on the 18L app in sight prior to touching down, they will never know the proximity of that aircraft on a go-around or have the time to acquire it while executing a go-around. And MEM tower always points out traffic on the perpendicular approaches if you are on 27 and vice-versa if you're on the 18s. They're very good about that, except it is sort of difficult to spot that other aircraft from either runway. At least it is for me .

Our company always gets approaches to 27, up until recently, when it was no longer offered to us very much anymore. Always wondered why, and when one of our guys asked the tower one day why that was, they responded with, "can't talk about it over the frequency, but if you want to call the tower later on the phone, they'll tell you". Now it all makes sense.....

I guess you thought I was faulting the pilots - just the opposite. My point was that the FAA patted themselves on the back for ATC saving the day without acknowleging the two pilots involved for some pretty good flying to avoid the smack. JMHO
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Old 04-17-2007, 05:49 AM
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Originally Posted by Ewfflyer View Post
It could happen anywhere with parallel runways. Guess every airports going to need 4 parallels the same direction from now on to be "Safe."
It's the simo-perpendicular/intersecting runway operations that are far more potentially dangerous - which was the case here. Parallels had nothing to do with it.
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Old 04-25-2007, 08:23 PM
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Originally Posted by grumman View Post
I guess you thought I was faulting the pilots - just the opposite. My point was that the FAA patted themselves on the back for ATC saving the day without acknowleging the two pilots involved for some pretty good flying to avoid the smack. JMHO
You're right, I did. My bad. However, I still thought that there was some 'splainin to be done about the whole thing in Memphis...
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Old 04-26-2007, 07:07 AM
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Default FedEx Says FAA Rule Could Delay Deliveries

Updated:2007-04-25 07:32:46
FedEx Says FAA Rule Could Delay Deliveries
By Alan Levin
USA Today
FedEx says that the FAA's decision to end a controversial landing procedure at the cargo carrier's Memphis hub should be reversed because it could lead to serious delays in package deliveries across the nation.
FedEx's senior vice president for air operations, James Parker, said in a letter to Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Marion Blakey that the change isn't appropriate and would lead to a significant slowdown in operations.

"The impact of this change to our 'absolutely positively overnight' service cannot be understated," Parker wrote.

On April 13, the FAA ended the practice of allowing jets landing on one of Memphis' north-south runways to fly directly over planes landing on a nearby east-west runway.

Safety investigators ruled on April 2 that the landing arrangement violated FAA rules and that it was "never properly authorized," according to an FAA memo.

The review was triggered by a Feb. 18 near-collision in which a Northwest Airlines jet flew within several hundred feet of a turboprop commuter plane that had aborted its landing on the other runway.

The FAA and unions for pilots and controllers have said that the landing practice could be altered in a way that would not cause more than minor delays.

FedEx spokesman Maury Lane said that flight delays of even a few minutes could trigger "delays in our sorting operations, which could have a negative impact on our customer service levels."

"For more than 20 years, we've landed in this configuration, and we know it's safe," Lane said.

The FedEx letter highlights the competing pressures that FAA faces between the push to reduce flight delays and the need to ensure safety. The situation in Memphis has provided a public debate over those issues as one arm of the FAA declared the landing practice illegal while another part of the agency continued to operate it.

FAA air-traffic officials met in Memphis on Tuesday to conduct a safety review of the landing pattern, FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said.

FedEx said it could find no incidents involving the runway configuration on any of its flights. But Pete Sufka, president of the Memphis chapter of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said controllers in April 2002 witnessed a FedEx jet come within several hundred feet of another jet on a similar runway pattern.

FedEx's Lane said that the incident involved different runways and was not comparable.

The Air Line Pilots Association, which has raised concerns about similar operations at airports around the USA, believes FedEx is exaggerating its potential delays, said Larry Newman, the air-traffic safety chairman.

The FedEx letter said it was working with Northwest Airlines, the airport's largest passenger carrier, on the issue.

Northwest spokesman Roman Blahoski declined to comment on the letter and said the airline would abide by the FAA's decision.
Copyright 2007 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. All Rights Reserved.
2007-04-25 07:32:46
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