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Small Airports Covet Cheap
Radar, But Even Collisions Can't Sway FAA
Page
One Feature, Wall St. Journal
Agency Prefers to Wait for New Technology, Even as Control Towers Can't See Planes
By SCOTT MCCARTNEY
A student pilot flying a Cessna at a busy general-aviation airport just north of
Chicago lined up to land. So did a plane flown by WGN radio personality Bob
Collins.
"Do you see a Cessna in front of you?" asked the air-traffic controller in the Waukegan, Ill., tower. After a few seconds of silence, Mr. Collins's response was chilling: "Just had a midair." Both planes crashed to the ground, killing Mr. Collins, his passenger and the student pilot.
Seven months later at Fort Pierce, Fla., a Piper Cherokee and a Piper Aztec collided in clear weather three miles from the airport, killing both pilots. Again, both planes were talking to the control tower.
The National Transportation Safety Board found that these and at least two other midair collisions last year had one thing in common: They occurred at busy small airports that lacked radar screens, one of the simplest and oldest air-traffic-control tools. Controllers, blind but for binoculars, couldn't see the planes.
Naked Eye
Across the country, 90 airports busy with corporate jets and small prop planes are in need of radar, according to Federal Aviation Administration standards. Several are even building new million-dollar control towers, yet they still won't have access to radar. This even though a basic system -- operating at a few airports with good success -- could be had for as little as $25,000.
The reason: The FAA has refused to let the airports install the basic system. The agency is holding out for a much more expensive one that will take years to deliver.
"They've got a system that's proven and that's affordable, and yet they won't let us have it," complains Michael Moon, airport director in Stuart, Fla., which was also the site of a midair collision last year. "It's an absolutely nutty situation."
Vision Thing
The simple system, called Tardis, was developed by an FAA engineer eight years ago. It piggybacks off the radar at big airports nearby, requiring little more than a phone link to the big radar facility, a PC, a high-resolution monitor and some software. "It's as easy as hooking another television to your cable," one NTSB investigator says.
A dozen airports that managed to get Tardis report life-saving results with it. Most got it only because they had mustered congressional pressure on the FAA or suffered a midair collision that prompted a public outcry.
"Someone is going to get killed because the FAA refuses to give it to us," says Sally Sims, a pilot and FAA-certified safety counselor at Sugar Land, Texas, who recently had a near miss when a plane unseen by the control tower flew right over her plane.
Sugar Land, a busy Houston-area satellite airport that is about to open a new 90-foot control tower, has budgeted funds for a Tardis system, but the FAA won't let it buy one. The FAA says it has plans to equip this and other airports in need of radar through a hand-me-down program. The agency intends to install new Raytheon Co. technology in bigger airports. As it does so, it will refurbish screens currently in use, called D-Brite, for the busier small airports that lack radar.
Holding Pattern
"We felt that the capability that best serves users and the public was the D-Brite capability we already have," says Stephen Brown, FAA associate administrator for air-traffic services.
But this system, which also piggybacks off a radar signal from another airport, isn't manufactured any longer. Parts are scarce, airport managers say. Sugar Land isn't scheduled to get D-Brite until 2003.
Eventually, the FAA says, Sugar Land and other small airports will get the newer Raytheon system, known as STARS. But the agency's $1.57 billion program to put in the Raytheon system is several years behind schedule, $460 million over budget, and plagued with software problems. The FAA inspector general recently warned that tight scheduling of software testing may further delay it.
Critics contend the tug-of-war over radar at small airports reflects an FAA commitment to billion-dollar projects over easier alternatives. "The FAA has been criticized for being more interested in process than results, and with Tardis, that's a fair criticism," says Scott Lueckert, a National Air Traffic Controllers Association official. "How can you miss with something like this? It's minor bucks, and it saves lives."
The government's safety watchdog, the NTSB, has blasted the FAA for failing to get radar to busy small airports. "The Safety Board concludes that the installation and implementation ... are already seriously behind schedule and must not be delayed further," the NTSB said in an April letter to the FAA.
Mr. Brown of the FAA says his agency "fundamentally agrees" with the NTSB's recommendation. But he says the FAA won't allow installation of Tardis, even as a temporary aid, because the agency has never certified the system. Contending Tardis is "fundamentally no better than binoculars," he adds: "Our judgment is Tardis doesn't have the technical ability to be a certified product."
Tower Babble?
The only reason Tardis hasn't been certified, reply its developer and some who use it, is that the FAA refuses to test it. Tardis developer Mike Risley says that Tardis uses the same radar data as the hand-me-down system, has software written to FAA specifications, and continually tests the accuracy of its display. It operates fast enough and displays the same information that other radar displays have, such as a plane's altitude and speed. The few towers that have it report only three minor PC glitches in its history.
"It's not certified because of internal conflicts within the FAA," says J. Spencer Dickerson, executive vice president of the American Association of Airport Executives.
Mr. Risley, an FAA engineer in Kansas City, says he has been told to stop working on the Tardis system and keep quiet about it. In a conference call last month recorded by a third party, an FAA official in Washington, John Timmerman, told Mr. Risley: "The FAA has chosen its approach. ... We've got to expect all agency people behind it."
When Mr. Risley protested, Mr. Timmerman said, "I thought you worked for the FAA also."
"The message is, I better get in line," Mr. Risley says. "I've been fighting them for years on this."
An FAA spokesman says that since Mr. Risley doesn't report to Mr. Timmerman, the call wasn't "directive," and Mr. Risley was merely being appropriately reminded of his responsibilities.
Tardis, which stands for Terminal Automated Radar Display and Information System, tracks planes down to at least 1,000 feet above the ground, where they're easier to pick up visually. Despite Mr. Brown's statement that it's no better than binoculars, controllers who use Tardis say it enables them to spot airplanes miles before they can be detected by eyesight. The controllers also say it lets them accurately gauge distance between planes, even if it lacks some of the bells and whistles of fancier systems.
"We love it," says Ted Lane, tower chief in Gainesville, Fla. One day recently, Mr. Lane says, he warned a Cessna climbing away from Gainesville about a plane that was flying right into the Cessna's path -- but was too far away to be seen and wasn't talking to the tower. Without Tardis, the tower never would have spotted the plane, Mr. Lane says. Gainesville was able to get the system after its local member of Congress, Karen Thurman, wrote an order for Tardis installation into last year's federal transportation budget.
McKinney, Texas, also got Tardis after political intervention, in this case from Sen. Phil Gramm. Says McKinney's tower chief, Dave Rush: "How often does it help us prevent trouble? It's a daily occurrence."
The FAA hasn't studied the experience of the dozen airports that have Tardis. Mr. Brown says the agency thinks this would be a waste of money.
Because the FAA hasn't certified Tardis, controllers who have it may use it only as an advisory tool and can't use radar language, such as "traffic at 2 o'clock, two miles." Instead, they may warn a pilot of a plane Tardis spots by saying, "To your right, maybe a couple miles away."
Lost in the Haze
That's a lot more than Stuart's controllers can do. Last year two pilots over the Florida airport clipped wingtips but managed to land safely. A controller had seen them but thought one was farther behind the other than it really was. Tardis could have painted a more accurate picture.
"These big binoculars, that's the only way we have to spot airplanes," says tower chief John Milne.
On a recent day, a pilot radioed Stuart that he was over the Palm City Bridge, two miles from the airfield. Controllers couldn't pick up the white plane against a milky white background of high, thin clouds. "Some days you can't see them until they are on top of you," says Mr. Milne. Indeed, a white Falcon jet flying to Stuart wasn't seen at all as it neared the airport, prompting Mr. Milne to ask the pilots for their position again.
"Right on top of the field," was the reply.
Stuart relies on pilots to report their position. But those reports are often faulty. Sometimes, pilots look at their instruments, which say they are heading northward, and mistakenly report that they are north of the airport when they are actually south. Sometimes they misjudge distance, guessing they are five miles from the airport when they are eight miles out. Some even mistake the large, inland Inter-coastal Waterway for the coastline. Controllers have no way of checking, because binoculars let them see planes two or three miles away at best.
At nearby Fort Pierce, controllers handle 200,000 landings and takeoffs a year, with planes landing on intersecting runways and other intricacies. Even after the fatal midair crash last September, the FAA wouldn't let Fort Pierce have a radar system.
"How many people do we have to kill?" asks airport director Paul Phillips. "This is something that can be easily prevented."
The NTSB agreed in its April report, saying that both the Fort Pierce crash and one in Waukegan, Ill., probably wouldn't have happened if radar had been available.
In Waukegan, Mr. Collins and a passenger, Herman Luscher, were in a white Zlin 242, a swift single-engine plane, returning from a trip to Sheboygan, Wis., on the afternoon of Feb. 8, 2000. Student pilot Sharon Hock, a United flight attendant, was practicing her takeoff and landing skills in a single-engine Cessna 172.
Mr. Collins, Chicago's top-rated morning radio host, told the tower he was 15 miles away, inbound for landing.
"Are you coming down the shoreline?" the controller asked.
Mr. Collins said he was, although radar data captured from Chicago's big terminal-area air traffic facility later showed he was actually 4.5 miles off the shoreline over Lake Michigan.
About five minutes later, the Waukegan controller asked Mr. Collins for his position. "Just about a mile or two off the lake ... off the shoreline," he said. Radar data later showed he was almost four miles off the shoreline.
The controller told Mr. Collins to "keep your speed up as much as feasible," to which he replied he was "peddling as fast as I can." The controller told the student pilot that he would send her farther away from the airport so she would follow the Zlin. She said she didn't see the other plane, which was about 3.5 miles away.
The controller later told the NTSB that he lost sight of the student's plane only 1.5 miles from the airport and couldn't see Mr. Collins's plane at all in the day's haze. Again, the tower asked the Zlin for its position. "Just crossing the shoreline," Mr. Collins said, even though radar data showed he was still more than three-quarters of a mile offshore.
The controller asked the pilot of the Cessna if she saw the Zlin. She didn't. Had she passed the shoreline? "Getting there," was her response.
Believing the speedier Zlin had crossed the shoreline and was closer to the airport than it really was, and that the Cessna was farther out than it was, the controller told the student pilot to begin turning back to the airport and follow the Zlin. "You should be No. 1, Bob," the controller told Mr. Collins.
Radar data later showed the student was just slightly in front of Mr. Collins.
At that point, the controller told the NTSB, "something started to click [that] something was wrong." He used binoculars to try to get the aircraft in sight but could see only the Zlin.
Worried, the controller asked Mr. Collins, "Do you see a Cessna in front of you?" He didn't.
The two planes collided two miles from the end of the runway. Mr. Collins's plane crashed into the roof of a hospital and exploded. The Cessna crashed onto a residential street.
The NTSB concluded that Mr. Collins's failure to maintain a distance from the other plane was the probable cause. But the safety agency separately faulted the FAA for failing to provide airports like Waukegan with radar. The high-profile crash produced an outcry for a radar at Waukegan. Basketball great Michael Jordan even took up the cause, threatening to move his private jet from Waukegan if the FAA didn't respond.
Two days after Mr. Jordan's statement, Mr. Risley got an order from his boss at the FAA: Install a Tardis system at Waukegan.
Write to Scott McCartney at scott.mccartney@wsj.com