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Charlotte Airport Low on List to Get Safety System

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<i> From Associated Press</i>

Charlotte is near the bottom of a list of U.S. airports scheduled to get radar to detect the kind of dangerous winds blowing just before a USAir jet crashed there, killing 37 people.

Six years after Congress authorized $373 million to install Doppler radar at 47 storm-prone airports, the system has been installed in 10 airports, but isn’t operating yet.

The Charlotte-Douglas International Airport is expected to have its Doppler system running in June, 1996. The airport is 38th on the list to receive the equipment because it hasn’t purchased land where radar could be installed.

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The National Transportation Safety Board, which is trying to determine what caused USAir Flight 1016 to crash Saturday, is focusing on a violent thunderstorm with wind shearing that buffeted the jet as it tried to land.

A wind shear is a sudden shift in wind speed and direction.

The pilots of Flight 1016 aborted the landing and crashed moments later. Although they were warned of dangerous wind shears less than two minutes before the crash, Doppler radar may have been able to detect the hazard sooner.

Federal Aviation Administration officials on Tuesday defended the program’s pace.

“It’s a very, very big and complex system,” Glenn Beaupre, an FAA regional program manager, said in a telephone interview. “It’s not like going out and building a house. It’s a $3-million radar system.

The FAA selected the airports for the program based on how many days they have thunderstorms, how many passengers and flights they have and how much the airport is expected to grow over the next 20 years. Its priority list is based on which airports have their sites ready, Beaupre said.

The jet had a wind-shear warning system on the plane, but it was not immediately known if its alarm had sounded. Investigators were interviewing the pilots Tuesday.

“We have excellent information in this investigation,” said John Hammerschmidt, a National Transportation Safety Board member. “Of prime importance is the fact that we have a flight crew that survived.”

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A commuter plane that landed just before the crash reported smooth wind conditions, Hammerschmidt said. But rain was so heavy that the air traffic controller never even saw the USAir jet until after it went down, he said.

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