More Than Four Times More So Far This Year Than In All Of 2004

There have been 117 incidents of aircraft violating spacing regulations in the airspace around New York's major airports, according to the findings of a federal investigation reported Tuesday. That's more than four times the spacing violations reported in all of 2004, according to the FAA.

The FAA downplayed the significance of the report, saying these are minor violations and don't mean the skies over the Big Apple are any less safe, according to Newsday.

Generally, aircraft are supposed to maintain a three-mile horizontal separation. In many cases, though, controllers say aircraft are lining up for approach at something less than that interval. 

"Any place where there's such a volume of traffic, they're going to be pushing the edge of the minimums," John Griffin, a professor of air traffic management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, FL, told Newsday's Long Island newspaper.

The findings of the investigation coincide with another investigation -- this one into a spike in the number of controller mistakes at New York TRACON, according to the paper.

But the FAA blames controllers for safety questions in that instance. "What we believe we have is a rogue group of employees engaged in a shakedown," FAA spokesman Greg Martin told Newsday. He said New York TRACON spent $4.6 million in overtime last year. That's much more than at any other similar facility, according to Martin. "There's no methadone treatment for withdrawing overtime or limiting overtime."

Does that mean the FAA is griping about error reporting? Ruth Marlin, a spokeswoman for NATCA in Washington, thinks so. "That is like saying the problem at Abu Ghraib is that someone had a camera," she told the Long Island paper.

"The FAA has decided that rather than address their staffing problems, safety costs too much money," said NATCA's New York TRACON union leader, Dean Iacopelli. "They want to point the finger at the whistleblowers and the controllers. The blame should be pointed at them."

FMI: www.faa.gov, www.natca.org