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Two close calls at Cleveland airport - perceptive pilots avoid potentially catastrophic collisions
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Two very close calls at Cleveland's airport, but perceptive
pilots avoid collisions
A pair of runway potentially catastrophic runway incursions at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (CLE) has the National Transportation Safety Board investigating just what happened at the busy Continental Airlines hub in June.
An incursion occurs when two airplanes come too close to one another—or an airport vehicle--on the ground. They can be deadly. In fact, the deadliest accident in world aviation history occurred March 27, 1977 at Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. That’s when a KLM Boeing 747 hit a Pan Am 747 which was on the same runway. 583 died that day.
In these instances, no one died, and some very perceptive pilots were able to avoid collisions.
The Safety Board says June 26 ExpressJet Flight 2426, an Embraer 145 regional jet, came within 1,500 feet of CommutAir Flight 8717. The CommutAir craft, a DH8 propjet operating under Continental Connection colors, had been cleared to take off on Runway 24L (runways are numbered according to compass headings, thus 24L is aligned with a heading of 240 degrees). The air traffic controller had also cleared the regional jet to cross the same runway. The ExpressJet crew saw the propjet in time, and told the controller they wouldn’t cross.
The Safety Board says the same controller was involved in another incursion at the same airport, this some three weeks earlier. June 3 the controller cleared a Boeing 737 to taxi into position on the same runway—6L—on which an Embraer 145 had just been cleared for take-off. This time the two passenger jets came within a scant 500 feet of one another. The regional jet crew saw the 737, and “queried the tower controller.”
Again, it was very close.
NTSB says the controller involved in both incursions was a “developmental” controller, a controller who was—in effect—still in training.
What’s happening here? NTSB won’t know for sure until it completes its investigations. But the National Air Traffic Controllers Association has long warned of real staffing problems in this nation’s control towers and en route air traffic facilities.
In a 2008 report, the Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General said, “The FAA must establish realistic standards for the number of developmental controllers that facilities can accommodate.”
Cleveland Hopkins is a busy place. It’s Continental Airlines’ third largest hub, the 35th busiest airport in the land. In 2007, the last year for which full statistics are available, CLE handled 11.4 million passengers.
PHOTO: Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. Image courtesy of Wikipedia
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