DARREN SHANNON / WASHINGTON DC
The US Federal Aviation Administration last week revealed that the USA's airports may be getting safer, but the US Senate has decided it will delay for at least another month its decision on the future of the FAA's role in airport management.
The good news is that runway incursions in the USA are beginning to show signs of decline after a poor show in 2000 and 2001, when a record number of incursions occurred each year (405 and 407 incursions, respectively).
In what FAA administrator Marion Blakey calls "heartening news", the agency reported a total of 339 incursions in 2002, a 17% drop compared to the 2001 record year. Although the 2002 incursion rate of 5.2 per million flights was higher than the 329, or 4.8 per million, recorded in 1999, the FAA reported an almost 50% drop in the most severe, or Category A and B, incursions between the four years.
Most of the safety gains came from commercial aviation, eliminating the most severe incursion, category A, from its records in 2002. "You just can't get better than that," says Blakey.
General aviation, however, still shows a propensity towards runway accidents, says the FAA, but the agency claims this habit will change under its recently announced five-year operational evolution plan.
Mirroring the US House of Representatives, the Senate left for its August recess without voting on the FAA reauthorisation bill, citing the same partisan split over a provision in the conference report, which permits privatisation of about 40 non-radar control towers.
The return of the US Congress in September may renew the privatisation debate, but even then the FAA is expected to remain silent when questioned on its future.
Source: Flight International