FAA Suspends Flight Operations that Nearly Caused Disaster at Reagan
US Airways
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has banned the practice of ‘reversing the flow’ of air traffic to and from runways today after a miscommunication among air traffic controllers nearly caused the collision of three US Airways commuter planes near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
No commercial airports will be able to use the procedure, in which controllers direct some planes to take off and land from the opposite of the usual direction, until a standardized procedure can be put in place, aviation officials said. There is no national standard for the procedure, although airports follow their own procedures.
“In light of these preliminary findings, out of an abundance of caution, there are some immediate steps we are taking,” Grizzle wrote in a memo to Acting FAA Administrator Michael Huerta.
The FAA expects to have new procedures in place within a month, said FAA Chief Operating Officer J. David Grizzle. In the meantime, airports can only use the procedure in emergencies.
The FAA maintains that the jets involved in the incident at Reagan were not on a collision course.
Category: Airnation
Controllers will probably end up making more mistakes having to change from what they’ve usually done
This is simply unbelievable. We have two non-aviators trying to convince the aviation community that departures from opposing ends of the same runway don’t present aircraft on a collision course. Please Senators on Mr. Huerta’s confirmation committee do your job. Deny this pathetic leadership an opportunity to impact aviation safety for the next five years.
Chris probably has a grasp of the situation far beyond the Grizzle-Huerta team. There was an error. Address it, fix it and lets not re-invent the wheel. Runway changes have been made since Orville and Wilbur used the beach. Kind of reminds me of the knee jerk reaction ion the attempt to fix OPSS-008.
A really poor PR effort on this one guys. Not even Foushee could sanitize it enough to make sense.
Hi All:
It is amazing that all FAA leadership has no aviation experience other then reading a PR speech.
Rich Wyeroski