Passenger planes must be suspended to avoid runway collisions at LaGuardia Airport in New York
Federal officials are investigating why the two planes were dangerously shut down on a runway at New York's LaGuardia Airport earlier this month, despite the airport being equipped with an advanced ground radar system designed to help prevent such close-range calls.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Commission said Monday they were investigating the May 6 incident when Republican Airlines planes had to stop taking off as a United Airlines plane still taxied across the runway.
In audio of the tower obtained by ABC from the website www.liveatc.net, Air Traffic Control said to the pilot of the Republic Airlines pilot: “Sorry, I think Manchester United has cleared it before that.”
After the controller instructs Republic Airlines to take off, a different RF ground controller takes the Manchester United plane to the new taxi lane because it misses the first exit runway it should use.
United Airlines did not immediately answer questions about the incident, while Republic Airways and the airport forwarded the questions to the FAA.
In recent years, the number of close calls has attracted serious attention from the FAA, NTSB and other security experts. The NTSB's investigation of the close call in Austin in February 2023 highlights these issues, but there are many other high-profile people nearby. In one case, Southwest Airlines jets sailed into a Chicago landing, nearly avoiding crashing into a business jet that crossed the runway.
Laguardia is one of only 35 airports in the country, equipped with the best technology from the FAA to prevent such runway invasions. The ASDS-X system uses various technologies to help the controller track aircraft and vehicles on the ground. At the other 490 U.S. airports with control towers, air traffic controllers must rely on more low-tech tools, such as binoculars, to track aircraft on the ground, because the system is expensive.
If Congress signs his multi-billion dollar plan to a nationwide air traffic control system, expanding the system to more airports is what Transport Secretary Sean Duffy wants to do.
But it is obvious that the technology is not perfect as close calls continue to happen. The FAA is taking many other steps to try to reduce the number of close calls and plans to install additional warning systems in Laguardia in the future.
However, over the decade, the rate of runway invasions per 1 million takeoffs and landings has remained at around 30. The FAA said the rate was as high as 35 in 2017 and 2018. This figure hit 22 times in 2023, but fell to only 7 last year.
To help, there are some efforts to develop a system that will directly warn pilots about traffic on the runway, rather than warning the controller and relying on them to deliver warnings. This can save precious seconds. But the FAA has not yet proved that the system directly warns Honeywell International that it has been developing for years.
The worst accident in aviation history occurred in 1977 on Tenerife, Spain, when the KLM 747 began taking off while the Pan AM 747 was still on the runway. When the plane collided in thick fog, 583 people died.
