U.S. air travelers face the biggest risk of death or serious injury on the ground, and now, after a post-Sept. 11, 2001, lull, potentially life-threatening incidents are on the upswing again.
Most fliers worry about crashing in-flight even though only 74 commercial aircraft have crashed since 2001, despite more than 10 million flights annually. But travelers face far more danger during takeoff or while landing, according to Federal Aviation Administration figures. These figures for 452 airports were analyzed by Forbes.com editors, who examined the size of the facility, the numbers of takeoffs and landings, and the severity of the incidents as categorized by the FAA.
Since 2001, 108 travelers have died in ground collisions involving commercial airlines. Many of the deaths occurred at highly congested airports.
Most, if not all, of the incidents could have been avoided if airports had the proper monitoring equipment in place. What's worse, FAA figures show hundreds more commercial jet aircraft came within eight seconds of collision between 2001 and 2006.
Analysts blame congestion, weather, poor runway design and pilot error. Many say the problem is only getting worse.
Runway mishaps have risen 37% since 1995. Incidents peaked at 401 in 2001, then fell off during the recent aviation recession. But now they are on the rise again. Last year, 330 runway incidents occurred, up from 240 in 1995.
To be sure, serious runway incidents involve only a small fraction of an airport's total flights--typically far less than 1%.
But this fact is of little comfort to the families and friends of the 47 travelers and two crew members who died in Lexington, Ky., last August. A confused Comair jet crew rolled onto the wrong runway during an early-morning rainstorm and crashed during takeoff. The fatal Comair crash vaulted Lexington's Blue Grass Airport (82,000 flights annually) onto the list.
Topping the list of the nation's most dangerous airports are smaller fields relieving bigger congested hubs.
Two of the worst are in Nevada and California. North Las Vegas, known as Northtown, had 63 runway incursions since 2001, resulting in six deaths. It is followed in the rankings by Long Beach/Dougherty Field, the scene of 78 incidents and no fatalities. In these cases, it was congestion and high flight volumes that led to the large numbers.
Both airports serve as reliever airports for highly congested nearby cities--Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
North Carolina's Charlotte/Douglas International Airport, normally a safe airport, landed at No. 2 on the list, a ranking earned because of a 2003 US Airways Express crash. A Raytheon commuter aircraft crashed into a hangar during takeoff, killing two crew members and 19 passengers. Poor maintenance, not the airport, was blamed.
Noticeably absent from the most dangerous airports were some the nation's biggest and busiest facilities: JFK and LaGuardia in New York and Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson.
Size--in terms of flight volumes--does present problems, however.
Busy Los Angeles International reported 95 incidents, including eight serious ones since 2001, giving it a No. 4 ranking on our list. Boston's congested Logan clocks in at No. 5 with 53 incidents, two serious, and Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, which handles more than a half-million flights a year, has had 49 incidents, three serious, at the facility in the last five years, earning it a No. 6 ranking on our list.
At busy Newark International Airport in New Jersey, No. 7 on our list, gate space is tight. In August 2005, an arriving Continental Boeing 737 pulling into its assigned gate couldn't gauge clearance and sliced two parked Embraer jets.
Chicago's O'Hare International, the nation's second-busiest airport, ranked eighth, with 68 runway incursions between 2001 and 2006. Three near-collisions at O'Hare in March 2006 pushed the National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA to launch investigations into whether the runway layout was flawed. A $6 billion runway expansion should help, but the project's 2013 completion is behind schedule.
Bad weather and poor runway design give Chicago the distinction of having two airports in the top 12--O'Hare and the much smaller Midway International.
At Midway, built in 1923, a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 skidded across an icy runway in December 2005. The 737 ripped through a fence and plowed onto a city street. The runaway jet killed a 6-year-old boy and injured a dozen others. Runways at Midway are about 2,000 feet shorter than those at newer airports.
Since 2004, the FAA has spent $1 billion per year on modernizing the nation's air traffic control network. The goal is to develop a comprehensive network, using satellites to map aircraft, alerting pilots and controllers of any potential for collisions. Right now, controllers rely on a patchwork of electronic and visual tools to map an aircraft's whereabouts.
One problem: The FAA says it will cost $510 million to upgrade 38 major U.S. airports. Some of that cost would presumably be passed onto passengers and airlines. And the system, if it gets funded, won't be completed until 2011.
Mary Schiavo, an aviation litigator and the former inspector general at the U.S. Department of Transportation, doesn't have much confidence in government bureaucrats' ability to solve the problem. "We've lost control. … The problem is too big for the FAA to handle," she says tartly. "Maybe we should hire Microsoft."
