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Near Misses
Wednesday
July 4, 2001
Too
many planes, not enough runways. One hundred and
eighty thousand takeoffs and landings take place
every day in the U.S. One serious near miss every
week.
Air traffic controllers are handling 60 plus planes
at a time, making for potential disaster on the
ground.
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Two die on the tarmac in St. Louis when the top of their small plane was sheared off by a TWA aircraft. Intersecting runways spelled disaster in Quincy, Illinois for a United Express commuter and a private plane.
Los Angeles, 1991. More than 30 people die when a US Air jet collides with a commuter plane on the runway. LAX has the most near collisions of any airport in the country, 33 close calls on or near these runways over the last four years."
Dallas/Ft, Worth had 23 near misses last year, San Francisco 21, Daytona Beach 19, Newark and San Antonio each had 18. A nearly 50 percent increase nationwide in the last four years.
It's frightening, but extra's travel detective Peter Greenberg says ground controllers can't see everything. He says, “They have to depend on the pilots to be their eyes and ears to tell them what's out there."
LAX air controller Michael Foote has seen his share of close calls. He says, “Your heart does tend to race, your adrenaline does pick up and hopefully you can make the transmissions you need to make to make the situation as safe as it can be."
How and why do these near misses happen? The problem will only get worse unless changes are made at the major airports. Changes like expansion, additional lighting and runway reconfiguration. But those kinds of upgrades take years, cost billions and disrupt airport communities.
So till then, we'll have to deal with bumper-to-bumper traffic.
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