NTSB hearing focuses on near-collision of two jetliners in Austin

National Transportation Safety Board investigators told a hearing into last year's incident at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport that inadequate training and a lack of critical safety technology were also factors. factors. If modern technology had been installed at the airport, it could have helped the controller track the location of traffic, especially when visibility is limited, as it was on the day of the incident, the agency said.

“We saw two planes come within 200 feet of each other and that should not have happened,” said board member Michael Graham. “I'm glad we're talking about a near miss today. There could have been another outcome and we could be talking about a tragedy.

The Feb. 4 incident in Austin was one of more than a half-dozen serious episodes that caught the attention of federal regulators and prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to convene a safety summit aimed at understanding the he sudden increase in what are known in the industry as runway incursions. At least six of the most serious incidents occurred in the first two months of 2023.

Details of the Austin alert show how close the two planes came to colliding in the early morning hours of that foggy day. Investigators said the FedEx crew was preparing to land when the first officer spotted the Southwest Airlines jetliner below.

In response, FedEx pilots stopped and circled to avoid the plane. Investigators said the belly of the FedEx plane was less than 200 feet from the tail of the Southwest Airlines plane. Although no one was injured, the Federal Aviation Administration classified the incident as Category A, the most serious on its rating scale.

The controller told investigators that, in his experience, Southwest pilots tend to move quickly and so he believed there would be enough time for the flight to take off before the plane landed. FedEx plane. However, he said, when he didn't hear the 737's engines indicating the plane was taking off, he realized something was wrong. Investigators said visibility was limited on the ground and once the FedEx cargo plane fell below 800 feet, it no longer appeared on radar, so the controller may have lost control. idea of ​​where the planes were positioned.

As part of its final report to be released in a few weeks, the NTSB will issue seven recommendations to the FAA. These include improving communication between pilots and air traffic controllers and requiring initial and refresher training for air traffic controllers on how to manage airport operations when visibility is limited.

Council members also reiterated their call for the FAA to accelerate the installation of collision prevention technologies, a recommendation they first made more than two decades ago. While many U.S. airports have technology to alert controllers of potential conflicts, Austin does not. NTSB members also said planes should be equipped with similar warning systems.

Jennifer Homendy, chair of the NTSB, said that too often, agencies base their cost-benefit analysis on risk assessments of crashes in which serious injuries or deaths have occurred. She said agencies such as the FAA need to be more proactive about safety.

“The FAA needs to be able to determine how to manage risk based on what could have happened, not just based on some sort of tombstone mentality as my former boss called it. We cannot act only after the fact, after people die,” she said.

In response to the series of incidents, FAA officials launched an internal review of safety data and convened a safety summit last March. The NTSB convened a separate meeting on the issue last May and launched investigations into seven of the most serious incidents, including the one in Austin.

The issue, however, remained at the forefront of lawmakers' minds. At a hearing last November, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois), chairwoman of the aviation subcommittee, said such incidents were a sign of a strained system.

The FAA said in a statement that it recognizes the important role the NTSB plays in improving safety and will carefully consider its recommendations. The agency noted that the serious runway incursion rate during the first three months of 2024 decreased by 59% compared to the same period in 2023, from 0.56 per 1 million airport operations to 0. .23 per 1 million operations.

Yet even though the number of serious incidents appears to be declining, two recent near misses occurring within weeks of each other at Reagan National Airport highlight that near misses at airports remain a concern.