Also Cites FAA For Failure To Install TARDIS
It's been more than
seven years since Chicago radio listeners learned that WGN morning
man Bob "Uncle Bobby" Collins (shown below, right) and two other
people had died following a mid-air collision. A federal judge
ruled Friday Collins was only five-percent at fault for the
accident, levelling the rest of the blame at the FAA and an air
traffic controller.
Collins' plane collided with one flown by a female student
pilot. Collins and his passenger died when his Zlin came down on
the roof of the Midwestern Medical Center in Zion, IL. The student
also suffered fatal injuries when her Cessna came down on a
street.
The two families sued each other -- each claiming the other
pilot had been at fault -- as well as the FAA. The NTSB ruled the
probable cause of the midair was, "The pilot's failure to maintain
clearance from the other airplane. Factors relating to the accident
were the pilot's poor visual lookout, and the airport control tower
local controller's failure to provide effective sequencing."
Christine Collins said she was pleased at the finding of the
court. "My husband had been unfairly targeted as the cause of the
accident, and I am very pleased that the judge found that was
clearly not the case," she told her attorney, Bob Clifford.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports that because 95 percent of the
blame has been placed on a federal agency which is immune from
lawsuits, the only money which can be collected by plaintiffs is a
$1 million insurance policy carried by Midwest Air Traffic Control
Services, a private contractor which ran the tower at Waukegan
Airport.
US District Judge John Darrah decided the controller "failed to
safely separate Collins' Zlin airplane and Hock's Cesna airplane,"
Darrah wrote. "When [the controller] realized he was unaware of the
two aircrafts' positions, [he] failed to issue a safety alert and
order Collins and Hock to abort their landings, when he had the
opportunity to do so."
The air traffic
controller had gone seven hours without a break, according to the
ruling.
Judge Darrah was also critical of the FAA for failing to install
a Terminal Automated Radar Display and Information System, or
TARDIS, at Waukegan Airport until after the three fatalities...
while Meigs Field, with less traffic, got one first.
TARDIS was developed in 1993 by FAA engineer Michael Risley
using software he created, running on a standard desktop computer.
TARDIS is put into small airports without their own radar systems,
and uses data derived from nearby radar facilities to create a
virtual radar display. It can reportedly be implemented for about
$40,000 per airport, a small fraction of an actual radar
system.
"Contrary to FAA-stated criteria ... the decision on whether or
not to install a TARDIS at a particular location was primarily due
to 'Congressional Interest' from local politicians who wanted a
TARDIS installed in their district/state or after an accident at a
facility," Darrah wrote.