NEWARK, N.J. — A United Airlines jet was coming in for a landing at the Las Vegas airport in 2006 when the tower radioed that a smaller plane was still crossing the runway. So the United pilot executed a “go-around,” a routine maneuver in which an incoming plane pulls up at the last minute and circles around.
But the jet suddenly found itself on a collision course with an American Airlines plane taking off from an intersecting runway.
The United crew took a hard right turn, the American flight veered off in the other direction and disaster was averted. But the near-collision offered a frightening vision of what can happen during a go-round at the nation’s congested airports.
An Associated Press review of tower logs and summaries from eight of the nation’s busiest airports, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, found more than 1,500 go-arounds during the last six months of 2007 alone.
Go-arounds haven’t been blamed for any crashes or midair collisions involving commercial airliners over the past three decades, according to a review of National Transportation Safety Board records.
Still, there have been some close calls, and controllers worry that without more safeguards, a deadly accident is going to happen.
“We can go 99 percent of the time and not have a problem. But it only takes one,” said John Wallin, president of the Memphis air-traffic-controllers union.
In a small number of cases, go-arounds are prompted by “runway incursions” — instances in which taxiing planes or ground vehicles blunder onto a runway in use. However, the vast majority of go-arounds are the result of congestion at major airports, where planes often land and depart every two minutes during peak times.
“We’re trained in that maneuver, so it’s not a tense situation,” said Ralph Paduano, a pilot for Continental. “But you have to really be on the ball; you can’t be complacent about it.”
Some controllers want the Federal Aviation Administration to take extra precautions, such as staggering arriving flights and not using crisscross runways simultaneously.
The FAA said it is looking at its procedures but that the public is in no immediate danger.
The approach at Denver International
“DIA is equipped with advanced detection systems that give pilots and controllers early warnings, and pilots routinely ‘go around’ to avoid these hazards,” said Rick Foster, a Federal Aviation Administration tower controller at Denver International Airport and president of the tower local of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.
Go-arounds also are called “missed approaches.”
“The vast majority of missed approaches at DIA are handled routinely and result from either runway geometry or weather,” Foster said. “When aircraft from three different arrival runways all ‘go around’ at the same time, their flight paths around the bad weather can converge with each other as well as the flight paths of aircraft departing DIA.
“Controllers at DIA will often stop departures when a microburst is detected so that the departure airspace can be used for aircraft that are ‘going around.’ ” — Jeffrey Leib, The Denver Post
