FAA Endangering Lives, Panel Is Told

The Federal Aviation Administration is endangering the lives of the flying public with a hopelessly outdated and understaffed air traffic control system, a congressional panel was told. Witnesses testified that planes had been coming dangerously close to each other at the rate of more than three a month in the New York region and that there had been six near misses there since April, that equipment was so antiquated controllers had been observed plotting the course of aircraft with grease pencils and that radar screens charting the position of each plane often went blank.