Special Reports

FAA Plan To Combine S. Fla. Ops Under Fire

MIAMI (CBS4) ― A CBS4 I-Team investigation has uncovered questions about government plans to improve your safety in the skies over South Florida. For months the I-Team has reported on close calls between airplanes in our skies and on the ground.

Now, the Federal Aviation Administration is considering a plan to combine some radar control operations controlling the skies over South Florida that critics say may make a bad situation even worse.

CBS4 I-Team Investigator Stephen Stock dug up details on the plan and critics worry for your safety when you fly as a result.

The sound of the air traffic controller on the audiotape is alarming. "Eagle Flight Stop!! Stop!!!" the unidentified controller said.

The orders from air traffic controllers to pilots on the runway at Miami International Airport are enough to make any air traveler pause.

"Eagle Flight Stop!!!" the unidentified controller continued.

The recording comes from yet another close call, this one on February 26, 2008. It was yet another near collision between two airplanes in the skies and on the ground. It was yet another example of a growing number of near collisions between airplanes. It is an example of the problem directly affecting your safety.

"Eagle Flight Stop!" the controller said once again.

Those two planes might have collided if not for the quick action of air traffic controllers. The accident nearly happened as a United Parcell Service 757 airplane began to take off, another plane, an American Eagle turboprop made a wrong turn onto the runway and into the 757's path.

"Hold it! Cancel your takeoff. Cancel your takeoff!" an air traffic controller is later heard to say on the tape.

Or take this example.

"Mercury 7507 !! You're supposed to be at 8000," an air traffic controller said on the audio tape. "You've got a Boeing 757 dead ahead at 7,000(feet)!" It happened last August 18th, when an Embraer 170 was heading straight into the path of an American 757 at 7,000 feet in the skies over South Florida.

"We are correcting we were at 7000," replied the Mercury pilots on the audiotape.

The planes came so close, that on the radar in the control tower, the two radar dots became one.

"You were issued 8,000 sir," the unidentified air traffic controller said on the audiotape.

An ongoing eight-month long CBS4 I-Team investigation uncovered troubling increases in the numbers of close calls between air planes both here and throughout the country.

Critics say one of the reasons for the increase in close calls can be found in a depleted workforce in air traffic control towers.

One of those critics is Mitch Herrick, a veteran air traffic controller and the legislative liaison and vice president of the local union. "In Miami and Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale alone we've had massive numbers of retirements," Herrick said.

Now, those critics say the FAA is poised to make a troubling situation worse.

"They expect us to absorb their entire airspace without any extra bodies," said James Mariniti, the Miami local facility representative and local president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (the air traffic controllers' union).

Herrick, Mariniti and other critics are talking about a plan by the FAA to combine two different air traffic control radar facilities currently located at West Palm Beach and Miami.

According to the FAA's own data the Miami facility right now handles one point 3 million take-offs and landings within their airspace (1,321,191) at 7 different airports. The West Palm Beach radar room handles more than a half million of those operations (544,218). The FAA wants to combine those separate facilities into one radar room starting in 2011.

"That is a recipe for disaster," Mariniti said of the plan. "So you're going to have fewer controllers working longer time on position working more airplanes fatigue sets in and mistakes happen."

"They want to increase the traffic and the number of airplanes that were working in Miami," ATC Union Miami local vice president Mitch Herrick said.

The FAA said its plan includes moving some West Palm Beach controllers south to Miami and will save taxpayers about 2 million dollars.

"It makes some good logical sense to smooth the flow of traffic," said Ben Coleman, a former FAA and National Transportation Safety Board Investigator.

Ben Coleman runs his own aviation safety consulting firm after serving 17 years as an investigator for the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board. Coleman said he personally doesn't have a "dog in this fight." He's an objective observer who says he sees values in the arguments from both sides.

Coleman says the idea of combining these radar rooms carries both advantages and risks.

"When you ask and task system to do as much as it can possibly do and ask it to do more you have to be prepared for the negative consequences at it," the former FAA official said.

"I think it is a terrible mistake." United States Representative Alcee Hastings, a Democratic representing parts of Broward and Palm Beach Counties said of the FAA's idea.

That's why South Florida Congressmen from both sides of the political aisle are working to ground the FAA's idea before it takes off.

"When the disaster comes it will give me no comfort to say 'I told you so.' But the FAA in the final analysis was looking to save money I'm looking to save lives," Representative Hastings said.

Although he disagrees with Hastings on many things, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican representing West Miami and Miami-Dade agrees on this issue.

"Nothing is worth losing that degree of safety to make sure we have the safest system," Mario Diaz-Balart said.

In fact Diaz-Balart, Hastings and other Florida Congressmen have been meeting with both FAA officials and air traffic controllers to work out a compromise on this combination issue.

In fact at the prompting of Diaz-Balart and Representative John Mica of Winter Park, several members of the Florida delegation met at the eleventh hour, just last month with the FAA and Miami representatives of the air traffic controllers' union.

So far, there have been no firm decisions on whether to combine these two major facilities.

In an e-mail response to questions from the I-Team, FAA officials insist that the combination of these two air traffic radar rooms (called TRACONs) would save taxpayer money and not jeopardize air passenger safety.

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