Much like the railway derailments we discussed recently, are there near misses taking place on the nation’s airport runways “almost every day?” It’s sure starting to feel that way. While it didn’t show up in the headlines until this week, back on January 12, a Southwest Airlines jet came perilously close to hitting an ambulance that was crossing the runway as it was taking off from the Baltimore-Washington Airport. The plane came within 173 feet of the vehicle, which might sound like a fairly comfortable gap, but when the plane is traveling at more than 150 miles per hour, it can close that distance in less than a second. So how does this seem to keep happening? (NY Post)
A Southwest Airlines jet came within 200 feet of slamming into an ambulance crossing the runway as it took off at Baltimore’s airport – one in a series of terrifyingly close calls across the US.
The Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting, or ARFF, vehicle crossed Runway 15R at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) without authorization on Jan. 12, DC News Now said Tuesday.
The Southwest Boeing 737 had just been cleared for takeoff from the same runway and missed the ambulance by less than half the length of a football field, the outlet reported.
As with previous, similar reports, it sounds as if there was a breakdown in communications between the control tower, the plane, and the people working on the airfield. The control tower knew that the Southwest flight was in the process of taking off and told the ARFF driver to “hold short” of the runway. But the driver must have misheard the command because they responded by saying, “ARFF 439 crossing Runway 10 and 15 Right.”
If the control tower operator had heard the inaccurate readback from the driver, they could have issued the command again more urgently. Or they might have been able to stop the jet. But the error was missed and the ambulance continued across the runway in front of the jet. Thankfully, there was no collision, but it was very, very close.
Returning to the original question, do these near-misses really happen on a regular basis or is this an unusual collection of errors? The FAA reported that the incident at BWI was only one of eight such serious incursions that have been recorded since December. It’s being reported that there have been 613 “runway incursion incidents” reported in the past six months. By comparison, there were 801 between October of 2021 and March of last year. I wasn’t a math major, but I’m pretty sure that works out to more than four per day.
Of course, that number includes all reported incursions of any severity. The FAA has four levels of near-collision severity with level “A” being the most dangerous and level “D” being the least. The BWI incident was classified as a “B” level incursion. According to the FAA, there were 18 level “A” incursions at American airports in 2022. In 2010 there were only five, but in 2007 there were 32. So we’re not breaking any records currently, but that still sounds like a lot of seriously close calls.
This is the sort of thing that should be handled by the Department of Transportation, bringing us yet again back to the question of whether or not the perenially absent Pete Buttigieg is really up to the job he’s taken on as Transportation Secretary. I’m not here saying that something Buttigieg did is causing all of these incidents. There were incursions before he arrived and there will no doubt be more after he leaves. But part of the job of the Transportation Department is to minimize incidents such as these and maximize safety for the traveling public and airline workers.
When was the last time we had a review of standard airport protocols, communications equipment, and training? I was unable to find a record of such reviews. But if these things are happening too often (and they certainly do seem to be), shouldn’t Mayor Pete be ordering such a review and bringing in the best people possible to fine-tune the process? Again, I will freely admit that Pothole Pete inherited this situation from his predecessor. No problem with that. But now that he has the job, he should be working on that rather than vacationing in Spain. Just saying…
