NTSB says controller should have warned plane before midair crash
Recommends faster aircraft fly at higher altitude
WASHINGTON - An air traffic controller should have warned the pilot of a small plane about aircraft in his path before he collided with a sightseeing helicopter over New York’s Hudson River in an Aug. 8 crash that claimed nine lives, federal safety officials said yesterday.
The National Transportation Safety Board also recommended that helicopters and small planes be separated in the busy Hudson River air corridor where the collision occurred, a low-altitude pathway used by about 200 helicopters and small planes daily. The call for fast-moving planes to operate at a higher altitude than helicopters is one of five safety recommendations the NTSB issued yesterday in a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The FAA had no comment.
A second recommendation called on the FAA to emphasize the need to remain attentive to air traffic controllers. Questionable behavior during the collision led to the suspension of an air traffic controller and his supervisor at Teterboro Airport in northern New Jersey, where the plane originated.
“The NTSB is concerned with the complacency and inattention to duty evidenced by the actions of the [Teterboro] controller and supervisor,’’ Debbie Hersman, NTSB chairwoman, wrote, indicating that the male controller was joking with a female friend by phone when the collision occurred.
The controller’s supervisor was running a personal errand and couldn’t be found immediately after the accident.
Teterboro Airport has had its share of problems in recent years. Two men were injured in the crash of a small plane there last week. A 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office found 23 runway incursions - incidents in which aircraft and vehicles stray into areas designated for takeoffs and landings - from fiscal 2001 through 2007. That was two fewer than nearby Newark Liberty International Airport, which handles about three times as many flights.
Patrick Forrey, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, defended the controller and accused the NTSB of rushing to assign blame.
“The bottom line here is that the controller is not responsible for contributing to this tragic accident, and he did everything he could do,’’ Forrey said.
Controllers typically focus on airliners operating in controlled air space, rather than the small helicopters and planes in the Hudson River air corridor. The plane’s pilot, however, had specifically requested to be followed. The NTSB letter indicates he was on a radio channel used by controllers when he was over the Hudson, instead of the channel local pilots use to tell one another where they are in the corridor between New York and New Jersey.
The letter notes that the controller’s workload was light and should have enabled him to provide more information to the pilot about air traffic in the area.
Aviation specialists welcomed the NTSB’s proposed separation of slow-moving helicopters, which carry commuters and sightseers through the Hudson air corridor, from faster planes. The 1,100-foot-high corridor is not subject to the same flight plans and air control as the airspace above it, which is frequented by larger airliners.
Hubert “Skip’’ Smith, an associate professor emeritus of aerospace engineering at Penn State University, predicted early on that the midair collision would lead to the separation by altitude.
“It’s important to separate helicopters and planes because they’re so different and move at very different speeds,’’ Smith said yesterday. “The helicopters are mostly engaged in local traffic, carrying sightseers and commuters, whereas the planes are mostly passing through.’’
