New York Airports Need Surveillance Radar System, Senator Says
NEW YORK _ The three major New York airports should not have to wait to get an advanced ground surveillance radar system already in place elsewhere in the country, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Sunday.
Schumer, speaking days after planes nearly collided at Newark Liberty Airport, said that LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark airports are too busy and too important to wait for the advanced technology.
“Here we are, the most crowded airport area around, and we’re scheduled to the bottom of the list,” he said. “It just doesn’t make any sense. We’re asking they move us right up.”
But a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said two of the region’s three airports saw fewer near-misses on the ground this year. All three will have the technology installed by 2010, said FAA Eastern Region spokesman Jim Peters.
“We just don’t go into a store and pick it off the shelf. We have to develop schedules and sites have to be engineered,” Peters said. “That work is ongoing in New York.”
Peters said there were 13 “runway incidents” at the three major airports during the 2006 fiscal year, which ends in September, compared to seven in fiscal year 2007. Each of the incidents, he said, was classified as minor.
Peters said the three New York-area airports have a version of the surveillance radar system, though one not as advanced as at airports in Chicago and Atlanta.
Peters said last Thursday’s incident at Newark, in which a Continental Airlines plane taxied onto a runway where another Continental flight was about to land, was still being investigated. The two planes came within about 300 feet of each other, Peters said.
That incident came the same day as a federal Government Accountability Office report concluded that there is “a high risk of a catastrophic runway collision occurring in the United States” because of poor leadership, outdated technology and overworked air traffic controllers.
The GAO report also found the number of near misses doubled between 2003 and 2006.
Schumer said he has asked Acting FAA Administrator Robert Sturgell to expedite the installation process for the technology at the three major New York airports. But Peters said he does not believe a change in the schedule is coming.
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