Stephen Stock, CBS4 I-Team Investigator
I first started thinking about the safety in our skies after a fellow investigative reporter and good friend of mine, David Savini, of WBBM-TV, CBS2 in Chicago started digging into missing security badges at Chicago O’Hare airport. In fact, Dave won a prestigious DuPont award for his work. And the more he and I talked the more convinced I became that there were other security and safety issues involving air travel in the United States.
After being thwarted in several attempts to get public information through the Freedom of Information Act from various federal and local agencies such as the US Department of Homeland Security, Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration and local airports (including the very same information Dave Savini had successfully obtained) I finally found a huge database that was available to the public on the web as well as through NASA. That’s right, airplane data is tracked by the people in charge of space travel, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
In fact NASA has been obtaining anonymous reports of what’s called “near misses” between airplanes as well as other complaints and concerns regarding air travel since 1988. It’s called the Aviation Safety Reporting System. And there are more than 137,000 reports filed in this massive database. They cover everything from loud and unruly passengers, to problems of animals on airport runways, to bad weather, to inexperienced pilots, to serious close calls between airplanes big and small.
Using computer software specifically designed to manage huge databases such as this one, I was able to extract all the close calls on the runways at Miami International Airport, Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport and Palm Beach International Airport. These dated back to 1988. In fact, by setting up my computer query properly I was able to find ALL incidents of ANY kind involving these three airports.
I then had the computer run yet another series of queries where I extracted all data that involved close calls in the air or on the runways. Included in my query were instances of “go-arounds” which the FAA does not consider to be serious. Officially the FAA says “go-arounds” are routine. But having talked to more than one dozen air traffic controllers, a half dozen different airplane pilots, a former investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) which investigates airplane crashes as well as a former FAA official, I was persuaded that “go-arounds” can include events many of us would consider serious. In fact, the July, 2007, near collision of two big jets at Fort Lauderdale International Airport was initially reported a “go around.” In fact, that air traffic controller used the words “Go Around! Go Around! Go Around!” prompting the pilots of the 757 jet to take back off the runway at Fort Lauderdale (even as they were landing) because another jet was right in the middle of the runway.
I also was on a jet that conducted a “go around” at Los Angeles International Airport and can tell you that “not serious” is all a matter of where you sit.
So in my data queries I asked (among other queries) the computer to extract all “go-arounds,” “anomalies,” “operational errors,” “crew evasive action,” “in-flight encounter,” “airspace occupied,” “missed approaches,” “spatial deviations,””air traffic incidents,” and “incursions.”
That is how I was able to discover that “near misses” are becoming a serious issue among airplanes, not only here in South Florida but also at many major airports around the United States. I then began talking to those in the industry to find out why. And I wanted to know how things could be changed to make you safer.
The FAA correctly points out that there has not been a serious airplane accident involving a fatality and a commercial airline carrier since August, 2006, when a COMAIR flight tried to take off from the wrong runway at Lexington Airport in Lexington, Kentucky. But the more I dug, the more I realized that many facts pointed to a system that was becoming overloaded, maxed out, and there were more and more close calls that demanded action before another tragedy struck. I didn’t want to wait to warn the public and report what was happening “behind the scenes.”
Subsequent to my first report, television stations in Chicago, Boston and West Palm Beach, among others, have reported on the same problems in their communities. The Associated Press also reported in July the problem of rising numbers of “go-arounds” at our nation’s airports. And in June, the US House of Representatives held hearings into the safety problems in our skies.
