New precautions for Logan runways

BURLINGTON -- The Federal Aviation Administration and the Massachusetts Port Authority yesterday announced a series of changes designed to prevent runway episodes at Logan International Airport, and to reassure travelers heading into the busy holiday season.

After an intensive five-week investigation, the agencies agreed to these measures:

Speeding approval and construction of a 9,300-foot taxiway that would keep planes going to and from gates from crossing runways in use by other planes.

Placing strict limits on planes taking off on runways not normally part of takeoff patterns; that scenario led to a close call on June 9.

Requiring ''back-to-basics" training for controllers, which could include checking how quickly they talk and how promptly they give instructions to pilots.

FAA and Massport officials also announced plans, with NASA aid, for a three-dimensional simulator representing Logan's tangle of runways and taxiways. Officials also said they will analyze Logan's taxiways to reduce their complexity. In addition, authorities will update pilot maps and charts.

There are also long-term plans to make Logan Airport a national test site for airport safety technologies. These, officials said, would include runway warning lights, similar to traffic signals, that would activate to warn pilots of any potential for a collision.

Logan recently installed flashing yellow lights at places on the airfield where there have been clusters of runway episodes.

The 40-plus recommendations -- some already instituted, others years away -- resulted from an analysis by more than a dozen Massport and FAA specialists who gathered at Logan last month to determine the causes of a rash of runway incidents.

There were 16 such incidents at Logan from Oct. 1, 2004 to Sept. 30. This was the highest reported total for any US airport and double Logan's total for the previous three-year period combined.

But the recommendations should not be viewed as a cure-all, and the investigation continues, said an FAA spokesman, Jim Peters. ''There are many different factors that contribute to a runway incursion," he said. ''We would be living in a dream world if we thought this would end them."

Though officials say that planes had little chance of colliding in most of the episodes, on June 9 two airliners carrying a combined total of 381 passengers and crew came within 106 vertical feet of each other as they sped toward take off on intersecting runways. Though no one was injured, the incident focused attention on runway near-collisions at Logan, which were not being made public by the FAA or Massport.

Officials at Massport, which operates Logan, offered last weekto pay almost $9 million to speed the installation of a ground radar system that works better at night and in bad weather. The system will not be online for at least another two to three years, said Thomas J. Kinton, director of aviation at Massport.

Construction of the proposed taxiway and other infrastructure changes in the FAA recommendations could also take years to complete, officials said.

While Massport and FAA officials united yesterday in unveiling the recommendations, they disagreed over the role that an $85 million runway played in some near-collisions.

Reiterating the testimony of FAA administrator Marion Blakey last week before a US Senate subcommittee on aviation, Harry West, the FAA's regional manager for runway safety, said that changes caused by construction had confused some pilots.

Kinton and Massport CEO Craig P. Coy, however, disputed that analysis. ''If we were to focus on construction we would be missing the point," Kinton said.

Kinton, speaking at a press conference at the FAA's regional headquarters, also questioned whether some of the episodes around the runway construction even qualified as near-collisions.

Depending on wind direction and speed, Logan uses different runway configurations for planes to land and take off. About 10 to 15 times a day, however, pilots ask to use a runway not in use, often as a quicker way to take off.

Under one standard configuration at Logan, typically when winds are out of the northeast, Runways 4R, 4L, and 9 are used. Then, pilots who request to use Runway 15R have to cross three active runways during takeoff. That scenario was reported for the near-collision on June 9 between an Aer Lingus Airbus A330 bound for Shannon, Ireland, and a US Airways Boeing 737 headed for Philadelphia.

Under the new restriction, which started in late July, takeoffs from inactive runways are allowed only ''when there is an operational necessity to use the procedure."

Kinton said the new restriction was a major safety improvement that will not slow air traffic at Logan. ''The flying public wouldn't even notice it," he said.

He also said new runway markings -- to be painted by next spring, two years before the FAA required them -- were important.

The recommendations, which were only partially released during the press conference but which were provided in full to the Globe, acknowledge that Logan's traffic is approaching pre-Sept. 11, 2001, levels, which could be another factor in some of the runway episodes.

Logan, with about 1,250 daily departures and arrivals, is the nation's 17th busiest airport.

The recommendations also ask the FAA to create a new ''cab coordinator" position in Logan's control tower to help the flow of communications. That position, however, is subject to negotiations with the air traffic controllers union.

Tom Coronite, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association at the Boston control tower, said that many of the recommendations, especially the back-to-basics training, have been on the union's agenda for the past year. The union, which is negotiating a new contract with the FAA, also has asked that more controllers be hired in Boston and elsewhere.

Coronite compared the near-collision problem to a troubled intersection where motorists continually drive through a stop sign.

''Do you make the stop sign bigger, or do you try to figure out what it is about the intersection that makes people go through the stop sign?" he asked.

''While runway markings are good and something that need to be explored, we need to know what the human factors are as well."

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