Near-collisions down at NLV Airport

Jace Radke

Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2004 | 11:13 a.m.

The number of planes nearly colliding with other aircraft or objects on runways at the oft-criticized North Las Vegas Airport continued to drop last fiscal year, according to a new Federal Aviation Administration report.

In the 2003 fiscal year North Las Vegas had two such incidents, called runway incursions by the FAA, down from seven the year before. But in 2003 the general aviation airport was also the site of one of only two accidents last year in the nation involving aircraft colliding.

On Sept. 23 a Piper Arrow was cleared to land at the airport and a minute later a Piper Mirage began taxiing down an intersecting runway. The planes collided, and the pilots suffered minor injuries.

The National Transportation and Safety Board is investigating the accident and has not yet released its final report, but general aviation airports such as North Las Vegas generally have more close calls than large commercial airports partially due to less-experienced pilots, FAA spokesman Donn Walker said.

"North Las Vegas has done an excellent job cutting their incursions," Walker said. "It's too bad that they had the collision, but luckily both of the pilots were able to pretty much walk away."

The FAA has found that nearly two-thirds of the near-collisions nationwide are caused by pilot error, or by the error of someone driving another vehicle on the runways.

Nationally there were 324 near collisions in 2003, down from 339 in 2002 and from 405 in 2000.

The agency ranks the severity incursions based upon how close the objects came to colliding. The FAA rates near-collisions on a four-level scale ranging from a minor infraction with an extremely low chance of a collision -- a D -- to an emergency situation in which a collision is narrowly averted -- an A.

The FAA considers an incursion to be any incident in which an aircraft, vehicle or some other object enters a runway reserved for use by another aircraft. Something as seemingly innocuous as a plane's nose crossing over a marked runway line while another plane has called within range could qualify as a near miss.

North Las Vegas' two incidents in 2003 were ranked at C level. In 2000 the airport had 14 incursions, one B, two Cs and 11 Ds.

At McCarran International Airport the number of incursions rose slightly from two to three from 2002 to 2003, but all three of the 2003 infractions were rated as Ds, while one of the 2002 incidents was a C and the other was a D.

There were more than 500,000 takeoffs and landings at McCarran in 2003, and more than 227,000 at North Las Vegas last year.

Some neighbors of North Las Vegas Airport have complained in the past about crashes of small planes at and around the airport. They have said they don't believe the airport is operating safely.

In releasing this year's incursion report, FAA Administrator Marion Blakey said, "American runways are the safest the world has to offer. Pilot awareness programs and new technology continue to pay real safety dividends on the nation's runways."

Larger airports such as McCarran use ground radar in addition to signs and markings to help controllers track the movements of plane's and vehicles on runways.

Of the seven incidents since 2000 involving planes actually colliding with another plane or object, five involved general aviation aircraft. The sixth was a jet making an emergency landing and hitting a closed runway sign and the seventh involved a jet knocking over three orange plastic cones.

In the worst incident, a March 2000 accident in Sarasota, Fla. killed four people when two general aviation planes collided at the intersection of two runways.