10 Air Safety Violations in 18 Hrs. Near Chicago Told

In an 18-hour period this week, at least 10 airplanes violated federal air separation limits by flying too close to each other near Chicago, the result of five traffic controller errors, two by a supervisor, sources said today.

A spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration acknowledged three of the errors occurred within half an hour Tuesday, but he stressed that none of the incidents posed a serious danger to passengers.

Sources familiar with the incidents called it a “record day” for errors at the FAA’s Aurora, Ill., air traffic center, a facility that handles 2 million flights each year.

Agency spokesman Mort Edelstein said the errors occurred during “tornado-like” weather and were considered “minor” because none of the planes converged closer than four miles.

Edelstein said all of the incidents, which occurred at 2 p.m., 6 p.m., 6:15 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday and 8 a.m. on Wednesday, are under investigation, but none involved “life-threatening situations or evasive action” by pilots.

Sources familiar with air traffic procedures said poor weather puts additional demands on controllers because pilots frequently request alternate routes to fly around pockets of bad weather.

Controllers, who spoke on the condition they not be identified, said the one-day total is significant because in most control facilities it takes weeks to accumulate as many as five mistakes.

During the week of Nov. 8, for example, 15 of the FAA’s 23 air traffic centers, such as Aurora, had no errors, according to a tape-recorded FAA telephone information message used by controllers.

In addition, assertions that a supervisor committed two errors appears to contradict public statements by FAA Administrator Donald Engen, who has said the supervisors no longer regularly work airplane traffic because the agency has sufficient numbers of controllers.

The FAA was short-handed for a long period following the 1981 controllers strike, because President Reagan fired 12,000 controllers for taking part in an illegal walkout. As a result, supervisors were routinely forced into action.

At the Aurora center, one of the nation’s busiest, 407 of 500 controllers were fired. That staff has been rebuilt to 300, according to the FAA.

But controllers, challenging Engen’s public statements about supervisors’ work regimen, said supervisors handle traffic on almost a daily basis at the Aurora center.

Separation errors occur when aircraft break a horizontal five-mile “traffic free” circle around each airplane, or during intrusions into vertical limits. The vertical limits vary.