Billy Nolen, acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), is gathering a group of experts to investigate airline safety following numerous high-profile near misses at airports across the country.
Nolen, who testified before the Senate Commerce Committee on February 15, says the industry specialists, including commercial and general aviation leaders, “will examine which mitigations are working and why others appear to be not as effective as they once were,” per Reuters.
According to the National Transportation Safety Board, one particularly close call came in early February at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport when Southwest and FedEx jets came within 100 feet of colliding.
Another incident occurred at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York in January. Delta and American Airlines aircraft narrowly avoided a crash after an apparent misunderstanding of air traffic controller directives.
According to the FAA memo, the team will “examine the U.S. aerospace system’s structure, culture, processes, systems, and integration of safety efforts.” An FAA-planned safety summit in March 2023 will explore additional measures that “the aviation community needs to take to maintain our safety record,” per Yahoo News.
At the beginning of the year, for the first time since September 11, 2001, the FAA grounded all departing passenger flights for almost two hours due to a computer outage. The shutdown affected no less than 11,000 flights across the United States.
As a result, Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-California) and Rep. Pete Stauber (R-Minnesota) cosponsored a bill to study improvements to the country’s Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system.
The NOTAM system is designed to alert pilots about potential hazards along their flying routes. Although millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent in recent years to upgrade the decades-old infrastructure, work on the project remains unfinished. The legacy system is expected to be phased out by 2025, though FAA officials claim they are looking to shorten that timeline.
Despite recent near misses, the United States largely maintains an exceptional air travel record. In fact, the U.S. has not experienced a major fatal passenger jet crash in 14 years.
Nolen says this is “the safest period in aviation history” but cautioned against taking the situation for “granted,” according to Reuters.
“Recent events remind us that we must not become complacent. Now is the time to stare into the data and ask hard questions,” he stressed in a statement, per Reuters.
Nolen’s announcement was met with praise from Sara Nelson, the President of the Association of Flight Attendants.
“U.S. aviation is the safest transportation system in the world. But we cannot ever rest. It takes constant vigilance and engagement of all stakeholders in our collective responsibility to safety,” she said, according to Reuters.
As part of the unfolding investigation, Nolen requested the FAA Commercial Aviation Safety Team comb through Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing data to confirm if other past events “resemble ones we have seen in recent weeks.”
