On July 31, air traffic controllers at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and the FAA’s radar station in Warrenton failed to follow standard operating procedures and mistakenly cleared two outbound US Airways commuter planes in the direction of an incoming flight. At a press conference, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Federal Aviation Administrator Michael Huerta defended the agency’s handling of the “miscommunication.” Downplaying the danger, LaHood pointed out that the planes were never on a head-to-head collision course. But the FAA’s subsequent decision to temporarily ban airplanes from flying in opposite directions at all of the nation’s airports underscored the severity of the situation.
Last year, two passenger planes had to divert their late-night landings at Reagan when a sleeping supervisor in the tower could not be roused. U.S. Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner noted in a May 8 letter to President Obama that substantiated reports from FAA employees, including air traffic controllers, “paint a picture of an agency with insufficient responsiveness given its critical public safety mission.”
Air traffic controllers were caught sleeping in the control room, leaving their shifts early, texting, watching movies and playing video games on their personal laptops while on the job. One assigned to the crowded New York/New Jersey airspace reported that managers there routinely flouted the FAA’s own separation rules, resulting in a “near-collision in which the aircraft were within 200 vertical feet of each other and less than three-quarters of a mile apart.” Even though planes are required to be 1,000 vertical feet and 3.5 horizontal miles apart at all times, Lerner noted, the FAA “failed to resolve these issues for more than two years.”
“It is unacceptable that a controller raising a serious safety issue after an incident in which airplanes came dangerously close together must persist in raising the alarm both inside and outside the agency over a years-long period in order to prompt an appropriate review of the matter,” she told the president.
The FAA has the highest rate of whistleblower filings per employee of any agency in the executive branch. An astonishing 89 percent of cases the special counsel referred for investigation “were ultimately substantiated or partially substantiated,” Lerner noted. Yet LaHood’s agency still failed “to take timely corrective action.” Until it does, the flying public will continue to be exposed to such unnecessary risks.
