NEWARK, N.J. — A United Airlines jetliner was coming in for a landing at the Las Vegas airport in 2006 when the tower radioed that a smaller plane was still crossing the runway.
So the United pilot executed a “go-around,” a routine maneuver in which an incoming plane pulls up at the last minute and circles around. But the jet suddenly found itself on a collision course with an American Airlines plane taking off from an intersecting runway.
The United crew took a hard right turn, the American flight veered off in the other direction, and disaster was averted. But the near-collision offered a frightening vision of what can happen during a go-round at the nation’s congested airports.
An Associated Press review of tower logs and summaries from eight of the nation’s busiest airports, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, found more than 1,500 go-arounds during the last six months of 2007 alone.
Go-arounds haven’t been blamed for any crashes or midair collisions involving commercial airliners over the past three decades, according to a review of National Transportation Safety Board records. Still, there have been some close calls, and controllers worry that without more safeguards, a deadly accident is going to happen.
“We can go 99 percent of the time and not have a problem. But it only takes one,” said John Wallin, president of the air traffic controllers union at Memphis.
In a small number of cases, go-arounds are prompted by “runway incursions” — instances in which taxiing planes or ground vehicles blunder onto a runway in use. However, the vast majority of go-arounds are the result of congestion at major airports, where planes often land and depart every two minutes during peak times.
“We’re trained in that maneuver, so it’s not a tense situation,” said Ralph Paduano, a commercial pilot for more than 20 years who now flies for Continental. “But you have to really be on the ball; you can’t be complacent about it.”
Some controllers want the Federal Aviation Administration to take extra precautions such as staggering arriving flights and not using crisscross runways simultaneously.
The FAA said that it is looking at its procedures on a case-by-case basis — and has altered or abandoned some practices — but that the public is in no immediate danger.
In recent months, federal authorities have investigated go-around procedures at three of the nation’s busiest hubs:
Newark Liberty International Airport, where three runways intersect at the northeast corner of the airport and planes often have to be sent around when two of them approach intersecting runways at the same time;
Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, where a go-around procedure was discontinued this spring after air traffic controllers warned it was putting planes directly into the path of planes taking off from another runway;
Memphis International Airport, where changes were made last year after an arriving Northwest Airlines DC-9 flew close to a commuter plane that had been forced to go around because of a mechanical problem.
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