Airplane Near-collisions Are Down In The Us — But Underlying Problems Remain

A worrying rise in near-collisions on runways across the country seems to have ended — for now.

This year has seen just one airport close call through October that aviation regulators have classified as serious — a drop that people in the industry credited to an intense focus from the FAA and a call for the entire industry to renew its attention to the basics of safety.

Since air travel began climbing out of its pandemic-induced trough, the country had seen a steep spike in near-collisions involving commercial airplanes, with five incidents in 2022 and 11 incidents in 2023 in which a passenger airplane came perilously close to colliding with another plane or a vehicle on the ground. Though FAA data for this year runs through only October, all of last year’s 11 serious incidents occurred during the same period.

But air safety experts warn that the improvement belies the stress still bearing down on the aviation system — including record-breaking demand for flights, fatigue and shortages among air traffic controllers and increasingly decrepit FAA equipment. All of those remain threats to the nation’s unprecedented safety record, which has not seen a fatal airline crash in the U.S. since July 2013.

In addition, Mike Whitaker, who has led the FAA for roughly the last year, is departing Jan. 20, leaving a leadership vacuum that President-elect Donald Trump’s administration will have to fill.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), a former Army helicopter pilot who chairs the Senate subcommittee that oversees aviation, said steps the FAA has taken to redouble attention to safety basics have helped — including through a March 2023 safety summit led by the agency that got the industry talking about solutions.

But that doesn’t mean it’s time for a victory lap, she said — a sentiment shared by several other experts who spoke with POLITICO.

“I don't think we can relax because I think that as we get into the holiday season and then next summer, we're only going to see traffic increase,” Duckworth told reporters earlier this month.

Duckworth noted that a recently enacted law boosted the number of air traffic controllers that can be trained annually, but they will still need time training on the job. She said much of the aviation system is still “playing catch-up” from the pandemic, after which travel demand rose much faster than expected.

“We're not going to get to a place where we can be secure until we get all of these upgrades to the equipment that's desperately needed,” she added.

According to POLITICO’s analysis of FAA data through October, the agency logged one incident in which a passenger jet came too close to hitting a vehicle on a runway. The FAA classified that incident as the second-most serious type in the agency’s four-tier sorting scheme.

The FAA has logged other near-collisions this year, but the agency declared them to be in the lower urgency tiers, meaning the planes had enough time to avoid a catastrophe. It has yet to classify some incidents, including at least two potential incidents dating back to June, according to POLITICO’s analysis.

The incidents the agency classified as less than dire included several that had grabbed media attention — such as one in Nashville, Tennessee, in September when an Alaska Airlines plane had to abruptly abort its takeoffto avoid a Southwest Airlines flight that was cleared to cross the same runway.

Another another incident earlier this year saw a Swiss Airlines flight abort its takeoff at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York because four other aircraft were crossing the same runway downfield. It also received a less-serious classification.

Last year, an independent panel of experts found that some of the previous sharp rise in near-collisions could be attributed to challenges facing the air traffic controller workforce, which is roughly 3,000 people short — coupled with aging equipment at control towers that grows more obsolete each year.

In a statement, FAA said that while airport near-collisions “are significantly down” this year, “one incident is one too many.”

The agency also said it is studying the risk for runway incidents at 45 of the busiest airports, an audit that it expects to complete in early 2025.

The FAA has also made strides to hire and train more air traffic controllers, which the airline industry has routinely said contributes to chronic delays. Airlines for America, the trade group for major U.S. commercial airlines, in a statement said that a full complement of controllers, along with upgraded technologies and funding are all “crucial to ensuring the safety” of the airspace, “including on the ground at airports.”

The airline industry also pointed to work being done by an advisory body studying fresh kinds of cockpit technologies that can alert pilots to potential dangers.

Southwest Airlines highlighted a safety summit the FAA held last year, which the airline said placed a “renewed emphasis” on the issue. A spokesperson said the airline's own “dynamic” organizational safety program prompts it to continuously review performance to help identify safety gaps where it can.

American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta Air Lines had no immediate comment about why this year's statistics are better.

John Cox, a former pilot and former executive air safety chair with the Air Line Pilots Association union, credited a whole-of-industry effort for the turnaround.

“There was more focus and emphasis by all operators and the number decreased this year,” Cox said. “The FAA was part of the active team that increased awareness and training. This certainly helped.”

ALPA leader Jason Ambrosi, whose union represents a majority of pilots for U.S. airlines, credited pilot awareness and technology for helping blunt the trend this year.

He also praised the FAA for bringing the aviation community together to tackle the issue, which prompted organizations such as ALPA to remind its pilots to refocus on basics like reducing distractions, among other initiatives. But more redundancies to prevent such events are needed, he said.

“You need to invest in the technology to help prevent this,” Ambrosi told POLITICO after appearing on a Senate aviation panel hearing earlier this month.

The FAA has made investments in additional equipment at certain airports that alert air traffic controllers of a potential calamity, and an aviation law passed earlier this year also mandates more technologies that help controllers better see all sorts of moving parts on runways and taxiways.

Ambrosi said these efforts are the first step in the “multilayered approach for safety” that’s needed, which will someday include cockpit-alerting technologies currently under discussion. “There is really good hope for [that] technology in the near future,” Ambrosi said.

“We have to maintain our vigilance,” he said. “We're not going to let go.”