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](/images_blogs/photos/uncategorized/2008/05/12/taxi.jpg)An FAA airspace redesign project designed to reduce delays and congestion at airports within the Northeast corridor is creating pilot confusion that could result in safety problem.
The vice president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association in Newark says there have been several incidents on the ground there that can be attributed to the new procedures. In one, a United Airlines jet turned the wrong way prior to departure, and in another, a JetBlue pilot communicating with a controller admitted to not knowing how the new procedures worked. Two minutes later, another pilot radioed the tower with questions about the new process. In both cases, the planes were only minutes from takeoff.
The airspace redesign is an attempt by the FAA to deal with delays at airports in the New York area (JFK, La Guardia, Newark) and Philadelphia. It involves creating additional jet routes by allowing planes to fly closer to one another and easing congestion by routing departing flights on a set of parallel paths, rather than having them criss-cross one another.
This change is the first airspace modification since the 1960s, and that might actually be part of the problem. Deeply ingrained habits are hard to break, and pilots who have spent decades flying under the old procedures now suddenly find themselves dealing with a new set of rules. For example, planes departing Newark from the southwest have for decades turned left immediately after takeoff, but can now turn right. And the FAA isn't helping matters any -- it says the pilots are responsible for learning the new procedures, and won't publish the new patterns until they've completed more work on the overall redesign.
On the upside, the FAA estimates that when the project is completed, it will save 12 million minutes a year at JFK, La Guardia, Newark, and Philly.
Photo: PetroleumJelliffe/Creative Commons 2.0
