FAA Won’t Cut Flights, Backs Safety Methods

The Federal Aviation Administration, responding to recent charges of an “erosion” of air safety, Wednesday defended its safety procedures and vowed that it “will not allow air traffic to exceed the bounds of safe operation.”

FAA Administrator Donald D. Engen, in outlining his agency’s position, rejected a recent recommendation by the National Transportation Safety Board that airline flights be cut back to reduce the chances of an accident during what is expected to be the busiest summer of air travel ever.

“The FAA firmly believes that existing procedures and programs provide more than an effective means of balancing demand with capacity throughout the system,” Engen said in a letter to Jim Burnett, chairman of the safety board.

At the same time, the FAA released flight statistics showing that Los Angeles International Airport is now the nation’s third busiest airport and that during the first four months of the year experienced more than twice as many flight delays as it did during the same period in 1986.

In moving up one notch in the flight volume ranking, it handled a 20% increase in takeoffs and landings between January and April. Delays increased from 3,047 in 1986, or 37 per 1,000 flights, to 7,980, or 17 of every 1,000 flights.

Legislation Introduced

As the statistics were released, Sens. Wendell H. Ford (D-Ky.) and Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R-Kan.) introduced legislation to require the airlines to publish flight schedules that more accurately reflect the actual arrival and departure time of flights.

Engen defended the agency’s safety systems in the letter to Burnett, whose independent government agency two weeks ago cited evidence of diminishing air safety.

Engen acknowledged that errors by air traffic controllers increased more than 20% during the first quarter of 1987 over that period last year, but he noted that these errors had decreased consistently for the two previous years and that preliminary figures for the current quarter show them declining again.

“I should like to put those safety indicators in perspective,” Engen said.

He noted that the number of runway incursions, or near collisions and other incidents involving planes on the ground, decreased 11% for the first quarter, compared to last year.

And he said that although near collisions in flight increased 10.8% from 1985 to 1986, air traffic control procedures are being adjusted and technical improvements made to correct the trend.

Engen cited surveys showing that a majority of air traffic controllers “do not believe the current situation should be categorized as unsafe.”

700 Schedule Changes

Voluntary scheduling meetings with airlines which operate at five of the nation’s busiest airports have produced more than 700 schedule changes to reduce peak traffic during the summer months, he said, and a new computer technology recently installed at FAA headquarters will enable the agency to better monitor air traffic at the FAA’s 20 en route centers.

“It is not necessary” to reduce flights or impose other limits “to ensure that peak sector traffic remains below acceptance limits,” Engen said.

In its May 13 recommendations to the FAA, the safety board cited an “immediate need for FAA action to reduce air traffic density,” and said that there should be no further “relaxation” of the minimum distance between jetliners at high altitudes to accommodate more flights. The FAA had reduced the separations from 20 miles to 10 miles.

Atlanta Airport Busiest

Engen said the FAA has no plans to relax its procedures “or in any way allow the system safety to be diminished.”

In the statistics released by the agency, Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport surpassed Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport in the last four months as the nation’s busiest airport. Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, the previously third-ranked airport in volume, fell to fourth.

Hartsfield handled 264,647 takeoffs while Chicago had 263,978.