The rate of close calls on airport runways is up over last year and the risk of a collision is high, a government investigator said Thursday.
Gerald Dillingham, the Government Accountability Office's top expert on aviation safety, told a House panel that even though the Federal Aviation Administration "has given a higher priority to runway safety" there were 24 of the most serious kinds of runway incursions — defined as an event in which any aircraft, vehicle or person intrudes in space reserved for takeoff or landing — in fiscal 2008.
That's the same number of serious runway incursions as last year. But since air traffic operations have declined this year, the rate of serious incidents — measured by number of incidents per 1 million takeoffs and landings — increased 5 percent in the first three quarters of fiscal 2008, Dillingham told an aviation subcommittee of the House transportation committee.
