Inspector general report confirms rise in air traffic control errors

Federal investigators confirmed Monday that errors by the nation’s air traffic controllers have increased sharply, challenging the Federal Aviation Administration’s contention that most of the jump was due to better data collection. 

The inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation, in an audit released Monday, said that “the increase in reported errors was linked, in part, to a rise in actual errors rather than increased reporting.” 

The report renews concerns about aviation mistakes at a time when the FAA has warned that sequestration may require controller furloughs and closing control towers at smaller airports.

An official familiar with the report said it raises questions about the manner in which the FAA collects reports and classifies the mistakes made by the controllers responsible for safe air travel.

“The report is kind of an indictment of how they categorize and deal with these errors,” said the official, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak publicly.

The inspector general was asked to review the FAA’s error-reporting process by Congress after testimony last April raised questions about the agency’s accuracy. That hearing followed reports in The Washington Post that raised questions about the accounting, and after the National Transportation Safety Board began formal investigation of incidents in which planes came dangerously close to each other while in flight.
 
The majority of errors do not put passengers at great risk. But there were enough serious incidents that year that the NTSB stepped in to investigate. The incidents included a Boeing 737 nearly hitting a helicopter while taking off from Houston; a Boeing 777 skimming under a small plane on takeoff from San Francisco; a Boeing 737 nearly colliding with a Cessna in Burbank, Calif.; an Airbus 319 passing 100 feet above the path of a Boeing 747 taking off in Anchorage; and an Embraer 135 taking off from Chicago using evasive action to avoid an inbound twin-engine prop plane.