By David Shepardson
McLEAN, Virginia (Reuters) -Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday the United States cannot wait for the next “catastrophic event” to address an uptick in aviation close calls that sparked alarm.
The Federal Aviation Administration is holding a safety summit on Wednesday outside Washington with airlines, unions, airports and others after numerous recent near miss incidents have raised safety concerns.
“We can’t wait for the next catastrophic event,” Buttigieg said. “We have seen an uptick in serious close calls that we must address together. Initial information suggests more mistakes than usual are happening across the system.”
National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy said the board has issued seven recommendations on runway collisions that have not been acted on.
“There have been far too many close calls,” Homendy said at the summit. “These recent incidents must serve as a wakeup call.”
Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen in a “call to action” memo last month said he was forming a safety review team.
“We must ask ourselves difficult and sometimes uncomfortable questions, even when we are confident that the system is sound,” Nolen said Wednesday.
“In light of the recent close calls and the attention being focused on even routine go-arounds — are we emphasizing efficiency over safety? How much of what we are seeing can be attributed to the sudden resurgence in demand following the pandemic?”
The NTSB is investigating a series of serious close calls including a near collision in January between FedEx and Southwest Airlines planes in Austin, Texas, and a runway incursion at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport.
On Tuesday, the NTSB said it would investigate a Dec. 18 incident in which a United Airlines Boeing 777 jet lost significant altitude before recovering shortly after departing Kahului, Hawaii.
In January, the FAA halted all departing passenger airline flights for nearly two hours because of a computer outage, the first nationwide ground stop of its kind since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The United States has not had a major fatal U.S. passenger airline crash since February 2009.
(Reporting by David ShepardsonEditing by Alexandra Hudson)
