More planes are flying than ever before, but the number of people who do everything from piloting them to fixing them isn't keeping pace. The growing shortage is raising fresh concerns about air safety.
Industry and government experts are worried that a looming dearth of pilots, aircraft inspectors and air-traffic controllers around the world could place new strains on maintaining some of the advances in airline safety of the past two decades.
In a recent survey of 142 aviation professionals world-wide, 56% said they expect airline safety will stay the same or decline in the next five years, according to British consulting group Ascend Worldwide Ltd., which conducted the poll. The primary reason cited: a shortage of experienced personnel.

Air traffic controllers at Torrance Municipal Airport made a critical mistake that caused two helicopters to collide in front of the control tower in 2003, killing two men in one chopper and seriously injuring the pilot of the other, a federal judge has ruled.

U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper's ruling Monday in Los Angeles directly contradicted a report by the National Transportation and Safety Board that concluded the surviving pilot, Gavin Heyworth, was to blame for the crash.

Cooper determined that both pilots "properly relied upon and complied with the control instruction they were given by" air traffic controller Edward Weber.

They acted "negligently and carelessly" in failing to keep "adequate vigilance and positional/situational awareness of the air traffic at and around Torrance Airport," Cooper wrote. And Weber "failed to issue clear and concise instructions" to Heyworth.

Forget everything you've heard about airlines and CO2 emissions. The news is much worse than anyone thought.

A recently disclosed report finds that airlines are spewing 20 percent more carbon dioxide into the environment than previously estimated and the amount could hit 1.5 billion tons a year by 2025. That's far more than even the worst-case predictions laid out by the International Panel on Climate Change.

If you're looking to put that number in perspective, the European Union currently emits 3.1 billion tons of CO2 annually. Yup, that's the entire 27-nation, 457 million person EU.

Three near-misses in the past two weeks have raised concerns at Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.

“We've had three instances over the past three weeks (that) I would consider to be serious, situations that certainly could have been avoided,” said Jason Hubbard of the air traffic controllers union.

He said that, in each instance, passenger planes came much too close together for comfort.

A passenger jet crossed in front of another last Friday, Hubbard said, and a departing plane came too close Wednesday to another plane that had just taken off.

“(The pilot) went 90 degrees into the wake turbulence, and that's just like running into a tornado,” Hubbard said.

He said the airport has reduced staffing in air traffic control towers from 84 several years ago to 59 controllers, and Hubbard blamed the near-misses on controller fatigue.

Air Traffic Controllers at the Grantley Adams International Airport staged a major sick-out yesterday.

They were complaining about under-staffing, work pressure and out-of-date equipment.

The airport's administrative staff and instructors were pressed into service to fill the vacuum and an emergency meeting was set up for this morning with the minister and other relevant authorities with a view to settling the dispute.

A spokesman for the controllers who requested anonymity said that for too long the air traffic control section had been undermanned and overworked.

"We are tired. We are sick. We have been working long hours the whole year," the spokesperson said.

Given the greater frequency of airline flights and a larger volume of work, Barbados needs at least 72 air traffic controllers to manage the airport, "but we now have 34 doing the job of 72", the spokesman said.

Air traffic control supervisors in Dallas, caught in 2005 hiding instances in which planes had passed too closely, switched to blaming pilots for the incidents when they were actually the controllers’ fault, aviation officials said.
“Needless to say, the report is disturbing,” said the acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, Robert A. Sturgell. “We’re not going to stand for this.”

A very interesting interview by an ATCO in the TIME magazine.

Dallas air-traffic controllers hid dozens of safety errors that allowed planes to fly too close together, federal officials said.
Air-traffic officials blamed pilots for the errors when air traffic managers were actually to blame, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said. Though most of the incidents were not serious, a handful were classified as significant safety risks, said Hank Krakowski, the agency's newly appointed chief of air traffic.
The revelations marked the second time in the past two months that federal whistle-blowers raised safety concerns at the FAA. The FAA admitted in March that inspectors overseeing Southwest Airlines allowed the carrier to fly planes that had not received critical safety inspections. A subsequent review of all airlines' maintenance triggered massive groundings after additional safety violations were found, disrupting travel for hundreds of thousands of people.

For an excruciating half hour, the intelligence agencies' worst fears of a rogue plane trying to attack a VVIP flight seemed to have come true on Tuesday evening when PM Manmohan Singh's plane was coming in to land at IGI airport from Ranchi.

The VVIP IAF plane, which flies in sterile airspace with no other aircraft being allowed anywhere near it, had locked into instrument landing system to touch down at IGI after 6pm. At this moment, the Air Traffic Control (ATC) suddenly noticed a blip on the radar — indicating an unidentified aircraft — very close to the PM's Boeing 737.

The ATC immediately alerted the aircraft which disengaged from ILS and was asked to take a go-around (circle over airport) till security and aviation agencies were able to pin down the cause of the blip. Finally, the plane landed safely, 15 minutes after its scheduled time, at IGI.

Air traffic controller mistakes that allow planes to fly too close together are occurring at a faster rate in Tampa and at airports nationwide than a year ago, Federal Aviation Administration data released Monday show.
FAA controllers reported six "operational errors" at Tampa International Airport between Oct. 1 and Sunday, compared with three for the same period a year ago, the FAA data showed.
Nationwide, controllers at airport terminals and terminal radar approach control centers, which oversee aircraft approaches and departures out to about 60 miles from airports, reported 423 operational errors for the first 6 1/2 months of the current fiscal year, compared with 713 for the entire fiscal year from October 1, 2006, to Sept. 30.