"SFO, San Jose airport respond to FAA report"

Thursday, October 25, 2007

SFO, San Jose airport respond to FAA report
Air officials say runways are safe
By Mark Abramson
The San Mateo (CA) Daily News


Officials at two Bay Area airports that are being told by the Federal
Aviation Administration they need to address problems on their airfields
claim things aren't as bad as some reports say. 

San Francisco and Mineta San Jose international airports made a Federal
Aviation Administration list of 20 airports that need to address confusion
on the airfields, including close calls on runways. The list was released
earlier this week. 

SFO and San Jose made the list based on the potential for airfield mix-ups
rather than those airports' number of near-collisions, FAA spokesman Ian
Gregor said. "Those airports are two of the worst for confusion on the
airfield, not for runway incursions," Gregor said. "At San Francisco and San
Jose, they are really minor fixes (that need to be made)." 

The FAA claims that at SFO, pilots sometimes lose track of where they are on
the airfield because of confusing signage and markings. The agency has
suggested that SFO improve markings, including on taxiways and other parts
of the airfield, Gregor said. 

SFO officials said they are puzzled about why they made the list. The FAA
sent a team to the airport to look at the airfield markings last week, and
they liked what they saw, SFO spokesman Mike McCarron said. 

He said there was a case in 2006 where a mechanic towed a plane across a
runway without clearance, but since then the airport has required all
mechanics working at SFO to be retrained on airfield operations. 

McCarron also acknowledged that SFO had some incursions last year but
pointed out that there were none in 2005. 

The most serious incursion this year was in May, when one plane was forced
to take off unexpectedly to avoid colliding with another plane on the
ground, Gregor said. The FAA attributed the incursion, in which the planes
missed each other by 30 to 50 feet, to a mistake by an air traffic
controller. It was labeled a Category A incursion, which is the most severe
on a scale of A to D. 

According to the FAA, the problem at San Jose seems a little more complex
because that airport has three parallel runways. The two larger runways are
each 11,000 feet long and used by commercial airlines and cargo planes.
Those planes use one to take off and the other to land. General aviation
aircraft use a separate, 4,600-foot-long runway to the west of the two
longer runways. 

The problem is that sometimes pilots don't know which to use, Gregor said. 

"On a number of occasions, arriving pilots have tried to land on the wrong
runway," Gregor said. 

The FAA's solution for San Jose is to add lights at the end of the general
aviation runway so pilots will be able to tell which is which. 

San Jose airport officials said adding the lights is a minor change, and
claim their airfield is safe overall. 

"We are in good shape," San Jose airport spokesman David Vossbrink said. "In
a 12-month period that the FAA looked at, we had four incursions, and the
closest one was about 4,500 feet. We are not talking about near-misses." 

FAA officials met with officials at the airports on the list, as well as air
traffic controllers and airlines, to brainstorm ideas to improve the safety
at each facility and rectify any problems. 

The list also includes Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, Los Angeles
International Airport, John F. Kennedy in New York and airports in Boston,
Las Vegas, Miami, Dallas and Milwaukee.

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