Nov 15, 2007 5:43 pm US/Central
Planes Come Close To Collision Over Indiana
Air Traffic Controller Admits Fault; Cockpit Safety Device Credited With Averting Disaster
AURORA, Ill. (CBS) ―
Collision avoidance equipment aboard a Midwest Airlines jet prevented the aircraft from hitting a United Express jet in the same airspace over Indiana. According to a preliminary investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration, the planes came within seconds of colliding because of an error by an air traffic controller.
FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory says the incident happened amid a shift change during a busy time at the Chicago Center radar facility in Aurora. The air traffic controllers' union admits the close call resulted from a air traffic controller's dangerous error.
"The controller messed up," said Jeff Richards of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. "If you read the transcripts, it's pretty much what he says: 'It was my mistake.' And he was apologizing on the frequency for it."
The incident occurred Tuesday night near Ft. Wayne, Ind. A veteran controller told an O'Hare-bound United Express flight to descend to 26,000 feet, just above a Midwest Airlines flight heading to Dayton, Ohio.
Then, the mistake: the controller inadvertently dropped the Midwest Flight from his radar screen, while ordering the United flight to descend lower, to 24,000 feet.
That's when the computer alert sounded in the Midwest plane, and pilot executed an emergency climb. Radar shows the planes were about a mile a part horizontally, and 600 feet vertically, if not closer.
"Our radar spins once ever 12 seconds," Richards said. "So there's a 12-second period where we did not know what was going on between the two flights, actually how close they got."
Richards attributes the error to weariness and stress due to chronic understaffing at the FAA's Chicago control center in Aurora. This is the third close call for controllers there in just six weeks.
"That tells me we have a staffing and fatigue problem at the Chicago center," Richards said.
Richards says there used to be 17 controllers per shift at Aurora. Now, there are 12, with two supervisors.
Due to illness, Richards says there were only 11 controllers on duty, along with one supervisor and five trainees. The union says those trainees can't handle live traffic without supervision.
CBS 2's Derrick Blakley and the Associated Press contributed to this report.cbs2chicago.com's Most Popular Pages 
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