FAA Pushes for Faster Fixes to Anticollision Systems on 9,000 Planes

By ANDY PASZTOR, The Wall Street Journal

February 9, 2012, 1:39 P.M. ET

Federal aviation regulators this week ordered airlines and business aircraft operators to accelerate fixes to collision-warning systems on roughly 9,000 planes, citing additional concerns that the devices could malfunction.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued a final mandatory rule Tuesday giving U.S. airlines three years to install software changes to the devices, manufactured by a unit of L-3 Communications Holdings Inc., to ensure that they properly keep track of all nearby planes.

In 2010 the FAA proposed requiring fixes to the devices within four years. That initial directive was prompted by reports of problems with the devices on a test flight through busy airspace over airports in New York, Chicago and Atlanta, including a single malfunction that lasted some 40 seconds.

The devices are designed to warn pilots of impending midair collisions.

Since the initial directive, the agency has identified another time the equipment malfunctioned, according to the FAA. The agency didn't provide details of the incident this week. But the FAA cited that second event as one of the reasons it called for a three-year compliance time, rejecting industry requests for a longer deadline and other changes to the final rule.

The FAA rule comes amid heightened scrutiny of airborne near-misses across the U.S. Since 2010, the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates aircraft incidents and accidents, has been collecting its own reports of cockpit collision-avoidance warnings. The safety board has looked at many dozens of such incidents.

On Wednesday, an L-3 Communications spokeswoman said the company initially informed the government about the issue in 2009. She said the company voluntarily alerted airlines, cooperated with the FAA and has free software fixes available for customers. The company has told the FAA that the likelihood of a problem in actual operation is "low enough" that it doesn't warrant any agency action, according to FAA documents.

"The safety, performance and integrity of our products is of utmost importance," the spokeswoman said in a prepared statement.

When the FAA originally proposed the directive at the end of 2010, the agency said it covered devices installed on more than 7,000 U.S. airliners, about 1,800 business jets and fewer than 100 U.S. military aircraft. The widely used safety systems are intended to keep track of nearby aircraft on cockpit displays, and to issue various warnings and instructions to pilots if aircraft approach each other too closely or are on a collision course.

The collision warnings are supposed to be virtually foolproof. Cockpit crews are trained to instantly comply with computer-generated instructions, which typically order pilots to take action by climbing or descending without first checking with air-traffic controllers.

According to FAA documents, results of several flight tests, discussions with industry safety experts and other data collected by the agency indicate that the current risk "is unacceptable" and requires government action.

Source:  http://online.wsj.com