Tower to Feds: We Need Your Help : Report on LAX pressures Federal Aviation Administration
After the fiery collision last February at Los Angeles International Airport, attention focused on the mistakes of a controller who directed the two airplanes onto the same runway. But a report issued Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board justifiably shifted most of the responsibility for the disaster to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Rather than being the last chapter in this tragedy, the federal report should serve to initiate a series of overdue structural reforms in the FAA’s ground control operations.
The nation’s air traffic control system has been pushed to the breaking point since the early 1980s. Deregulation of the commercial airline industry since 1978 has significantly increased air traffic at major airports around the country. Cuts in the number of controllers in 1981, when President Ronald Reagan broke the air traffic controllers union, meant fewer and fewer controllers were responsible for watching more and more planes.
And now, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which oversees policies and programs relating to aviation safety, the controllers too are poorly managed.
The NTSB report excoriated the FAA, taking the agency to task for failing to provide adequate “policy, direction, and oversight.” This failure “created an environment in the LAX tower that ultimately led to the failure of (air controller Robin Lee Wascher) to maintain an awareness of the traffic situation, culminating in the inappropriate clearances and subsequent collision.”
The report catalogued the failures of FAA supervisors--both in Los Angeles and Washington. For example, ground radar is supposed to help controllers regulate traffic between the runways and terminal buildings. But at LAX--the nation’s third-busiest airport--the ground radar system frequently breaks down. Management also was sluggish in redesigning and moving light fixtures to reduce glare, which makes spotting planes at some points of the runways difficult, the report said.
But perhaps the greatest failure is a systematic one, the failure of FAA officials to thoroughly and regularly review tower operations at LAX and quickly correct problems.
No system is foolproof. But in the commercial airline business the safety of millions depends in large part on the skill and precision of air traffic controllers. FAA management should do everything in its power, using existing resources, to see to it that tower personnel have the kind of work environment that reduces--rather than contributes to--pressure.
The NTSB’s final report recommends that, among other things, the FAA review air traffic control procedures at LAX, as well as check the lighting at all tower-controlled airports in the nation in order to reduce glare and assure that anti-collision lights are visible on aircraft.
It must not take another tragedy to focus attention on these crucial operational details. FAA Administrator James P. Busey now has no more urgent a task before him.
