FAA is set to improve ground radar at Logan

After a worrisome string of runway problems at Logan International Airport over the past year, the Federal Aviation Administration said yesterday that Logan will be one of 14 of the nation's busiest airports to get an advanced ground radar system to better detect impending collisions on runways at night and in bad weather.

The existing ground radar systems did not warn air traffic controllers earlier this year during two near-collisions: on the night of June 9 at Logan and in the fog and rain July 6 at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. In both cases, pilots performed emergency maneuvers to avert possible disasters.

FAA officials said yesterday that they did not know when Boston's system will be upgraded, though the plan is to complete the installations nationwide by 2011.

US Representative Michael E. Capuano, a Somerville Democrat who on Oct. 20 asked FAA Administrator Marion C. Blakey why the more advanced safety system wasn't being installed at busier airports such as Logan, urged yesterday that the system be installed in Boston as soon as possible.

''Airport surface detection equipment is greatly needed at Logan, particularly in light of the recent runway incursions," he said. ''I urge the FAA to move speedily to make this critical safety technology available."

The first airport to receive the new system will be Seattle's, in January. Other airports on the initial list include Midway and O'Hare airports in Chicago, Los Angeles International, LaGuardia and Kennedy in New York, and Ronald Reagan and Dulles airports in Washington, D.C.

Shortly before FAA officials announced the move, leaders of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association held a press conference demanding that the system be installed. The union leaders said afterward that the system should be installed at even more airports.

''The thing we like about it is, it works," said John S. Carr, the union's president. ''We want it to give us eyes in bad weather."

FAA officials acknowledge that the existing system often cannot detect near-collisions on intersecting runways such as Logan's and that it is often turned off by controllers in bad weather because of a high number of false alerts.

The head of the National Transportation Safety Board said in September that the current system is not dependable enough and that only pilots' actions ''bordering on the heroic and luck" had averted disasters.

FAA officials were working to correct flaws in the existing system, but decided instead to use the new system at larger airports and the older system at smaller airports, many of which don't have ground radar. The new system was first deployed at four airports in 2003, including T.F. Green in Warwick, R.I., and researchers found that it worked better, especially in bad weather.

The system -- Airport Surface Detection Equipment, Model X -- costs $8.5 million to purchase and install at each airport. It feeds an airport's radar system with data from on-the-ground sensors that can locate and identify ground vehicles and aircraft using their transponders. Controllers in the tower see a continuously updated color map of the airfield, showing all planes and vehicles on the ground, as well as aircraft flying within 5 miles of an airport.

Over the next year, the FAA plans to enhance the system with visual and audio alarms to warn controllers of possible collisions. The agency is also testing warning lights on runways that would be visible to pilots and mesh with the new ground radar system.

The existing warning system did not work during at least three of Logan's 16 runway incidents reported to the FAA since Oct. 1, 2004, including on June 9, when two passenger jets carrying a total of 381 passengers and crew came within seconds of colliding on takeoff.

Logan -- the nation's 17th busiest airport, with 1,250 daily arrivals and departures -- had no officially reported runway incidents between Oct. 1, 2003, and Sept. 30, 2004.

Logan's 16 incidents since Oct. 1, 2004, is more than double the total for the previous three-year period combined.

The FAA sent a team of about a dozen specialists to Logan last month to try to determine what was causing the increase in runway incidents. The results of that probe are to be announced next week.

Officials with the Massachusetts Port Authority, which operates Logan, requested the federal investigation after an American Airlines jet aborted its takeoff on Oct. 4 when errors by a pilot and a controller allowed an American Eagle regional jet to cross onto its runway.

Before the investigation, officials had found no link among the 16 incidents, though they say that Logan's five intersecting runways and the short distances from those runways to gates are possible factors.

While the FAA says that most of the runway incidents at Logan were unlikely to have resulted in a collision, the NTSB continues to investigate the June 9 event, which officials describe as one of the closest calls at any US airport in recent years.

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said she did not know whether the newer system could have prevented that incident.

Still, Massport spokeswoman Danny Levy welcomed yesterday's announcement. ''This is a step in the right direction," she said.

The ground radar system is different than the one that tracks planes in flight. That system covering Logan failed over Columbus Day weekend, delaying thousands of passengers nationwide, but was fixed when the FAA installed a new radar antenna.

Mac Daniel can be reached at mdaniel@globe.com.