LAX radar upgrades are delayed
Several radar upgrades that air traffic controllers say are essential to help identify potential collisions on the ground at Los Angeles International Airport are months behind schedule.
In one case, equipment that eliminates blind spots and false alarms that plague an existing collision-alert system will not be operational until 2009. Originally, the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency that operates the nation’s complex air traffic network, slated the user-friendly system for installation this year.
In another, a system that would colorize airplanes on radar scopes to distinguish whether aircraft are approaching the correct runway has yet to be installed in the air traffic control tower because of software glitches.
News of the delays comes on the heels of two high-profile close calls at LAX in the last four months. In each instance, a pilot inadvertently drove onto an active runway in front of a departing aircraft. On Sept. 30, two planes came so close to colliding that a SkyWest pilot -- who slammed on his brakes and came within 100 feet of a Gulfstream business jet -- can be heard hyperventilating on tapes of the cockpit conversation.
The new collision-alert equipment, known as Airport Surface Detection Equipment Model X, or ASDE-X, helps controllers avert close calls on the ground by displaying a detailed picture of the 3,600-acre airfield.
“The system is a lot cleaner, clearer picture than what we’re looking at right now,” said Mike Foote, a controller in the LAX tower and a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Assn. “It’s a lot more reliable.”
The existing ground radar system at LAX shows objects as blobs on a monochromatic screen and doesn’t distinguish between a person, a vehicle or an aircraft.
The advanced equipment identifies each airplane by its flight number and airline by picking up signals sent by radar and sensors on the airfield and transponders in aircraft. Sensors eliminate blind spots that exist because the current radar system cannot see through buildings and other static objects.
Controllers at airports with ASDE-X say it has saved lives by helping them pinpoint problems as they develop. At T.F. Green Airport in Warwick, R.I., controllers recently noticed a convoy of construction trucks moving briskly on a scope and were able to stop it from crossing an active runway where a plane was about to land.
“It really makes the tower operation a lot better -- a lot safer,” said Ed Curran, a 24-year veteran controller at T.F. Green and president of the local chapter of the National Air Traffic Controllers Assn. “You know exactly who it is, or where it is, or where it’s going.”
The FAA attributed the delays in the ASDE-X system at LAX to construction at other airports that required the agency to install the equipment at those facilities first.
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International needed the system for a new air traffic control tower and a new runway, and Seattle-Tacoma International needed it to be installed at the same time as a new runway, said Ian Gregor, an FAA spokesman. He emphasized that the current runway safety equipment at LAX is not “insufficient in any way.”
“The FAA is always pushing the technology envelope,” Gregor said. “Given the scope and complexity of what we’re doing, it’s inevitable that delays will occasionally occur.”
Los Angeles World Airports, the city agency that operates LAX, expected to get the ASDE-X system this year. The Airport Commission voted two years ago to help defray costs. LAWA will pay two-thirds of the system’s installation costs, or about $4.8 million.
“To operate safely as the primary international gateway airport on the West Coast, LAX must have the latest technology and modern airfield geometry,” said Paul Haney, deputy executive director of airports and security. “This is not a place where we’re willing to cut corners or delay what we know needs to be done.”
Legal discussions between the FAA and the city contributed to the delay. The system is scheduled to be delivered to LAX in August -- about 18 months later than originally planned. The agency says it still intends to meet its original plan to have the system up and running by June 2009.
Aviation experts disagree about whether ASDE-X is necessary.
“It is not critical to the safe operation of any airport,” Gregor said. “The most significant thing, numerous studies have shown, is constant awareness and vigilance of everyone who operates in the runway environment.”
But pilots and academics who study close calls between aircraft on the ground disagree, saying the equipment is essential because airports have gone as far as they can to stem such incidents by installing upgraded lighting and runway markings and by educating pilots and other workers about the airfield layout.
At LAX, the rate of close calls has remained stubbornly high, despite years of efforts to ensure that pilots and controllers follow federal rules that allow only one plane at a time on or near a runway. Among the nation’s airports, LAX is unusual because aircraft cross its four parallel active runways about 900 times a day.
“Integrated technology is the silver bullet,” said Mack Moore, a retired United Airlines captain and aviation safety expert. “What we’re depending on now is human beings -- the most failure-prone component is the human being.”
Moore and others would rather have a system that directly alerts pilots of an impending collision on the ground. Such equipment is under development but would require a hefty investment from the cash-strapped airlines.
Another delayed upgrade at LAX involves a system known as Remote ARTS Color Display, or RACD. The equipment will replace monitors that hang from the ceiling in the tower and are used by controllers to monitor arriving aircraft. To ready it for installation, the FAA has been testing the $550,000 system for months.
The FAA hopes to begin installing 10 monitors, fed by six computers, in the first quarter of 2007 and says controllers should be trained and ready to use the system 30 days after installation.
Controllers say the new equipment would have helped them avert a close call in August 2004 in which an arriving jumbo jet narrowly missed a departing Boeing 737 after a mix-up that opened the same runway to both planes. An independent federal safety agency later used the incident to dramatize the ongoing problem with close calls at LAX and other airports.
If the Asiana Airlines jet’s image on the radar scope had been colorized, controllers more easily could have seen that it was headed for the same runway where a Southwest jet was awaiting clearance for takeoff. The Asiana captain aborted the landing, coming within several hundred feet of the Southwest airplane.
“Every aircraft landing on an inner runway would be a different color than someone coming in on outboard,” said Foote, the LAX controller. “The clarity of the picture is crystal clear, and we can read data tags through each other. Right now it’s a jumbled mess ... on our radar scope.”
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