Air-Traffic Errors Stay Flat in 2011 After Recent Surge

(The Wall Street Journal) - After nearly doubling over the previous three years, errors by the nation's air-traffic controllers remained flat at roughly 1,900 in 2011, according to people familiar with the details of a report to be released soon.

The latest Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) figures will include about 50 of the most serious category of incidents in the fiscal year ended last September, compared with 43 in 2010 and 37 the year before, according to industry officials and others who reviewed the numbers.

The most serious incidents are those that put aircraft closest to each other or that have the greatest chance of causing collisions, in the judgment of the FAA.

Less dangerous errors would allow aircraft, for example, to violate a standard three-mile (five-kilometer) separation zone but still remain relatively far apart.

For 2012, safety experts anticipate a spike in overall error rates, as newly-installed FAA computerized systems track and document relatively minor slipups by controllers that often were not identified previously.

The error trend is being watched closely by lawmakers, industry officials, outside experts and the Department of Transportation's inspector general, amid congressional concern over safety.

Last year, the FAA took action against more than half a dozen controllers for fatigue-related mistakes, while high-profile errors prompted congressional hearings and led to the resignation of the FAA's top air-traffic control official.

Mistakes by air-traffic controllers can lead to sometimes harrowing events. In one 2010 near-miss, a heavily-loaded United Airlines jumbo jet taking off from San Francisco passed within a few hundred feet of a single-engine propeller plane. In another, a controller error placed two regional jets on a collision course at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport last May before a supervisor noticed the conflict.

A commercial-airplane accident caused by controller errors has not occurred since at least the early 1990s.

Read more: The Wall Street Journal