How Funding Cuts and Overworked Air Traffic Controllers Contribute to Aviation Accidents?

CGTN Europe spoke to David Learmount, Flight Global Consulting Editor.

Transcript

00:00David, what are your contacts telling you, and what do you think happened?

00:06Well, first of all, let me compliment Jim on his report just there.

00:10He's hit a few really important points.

00:13The lack of capacity, or at least the fact that Washington-Reagan, which is a small downtown airport,

00:20is trying to do too much work, there's too much air traffic around there,

00:24so the risk is high because they're overloading it all the time.

00:28But one thing which has come out of the released information already

00:33is the fact that the air traffic controller who was on duty at the time

00:39was talking to the helicopter pilot and, of course, the pilot of the aircraft that collided with it,

00:46and he was relying upon the helicopter pilot having sighted the aeroplane and to stay clear of it.

00:55The helicopter pilot said he did sight it, but he clearly didn't.

01:01So he must have seen something else, locked his eyes onto the wrong aeroplane,

01:06or locked his eyes onto the massive area of lights of the city on both sides of the river.

01:12So that looks as if it's going to be a contributory factor here.

01:16What will the black boxes tell us?

01:21The black boxes, as the head of the National Transportation Safety Board

01:26has said in her public address, in fact, yesterday evening,

01:31the black boxes will confirm an awful lot of information, she said,

01:36a lot of data we already have coming from radar data and air traffic controllers and video,

01:44loads and loads of data we already had.

01:47The black box recorders will give us precision

01:51and they will give us confirmation of what we think we already know.

01:56Your thoughts on those reports, on near misses and understaffing at air traffic control at this airport?

02:06Well, I've put out a blog on this subject, and the thing I concentrate on is the fact that the American FAA,

02:14which is the government agency which is also responsible for air traffic control,

02:21as well as safety oversight of the whole system,

02:25it's a government-funded body and it isn't being funded enough.

02:29It's got too few air traffic controllers all over the country,

02:32and it's really got its back against the wall.

02:37A load of American studies recently have been pointing out very, very clearly

02:43that the greatest risk to air traffic control safety,

02:47the greatest risk to safety of airlines and the military in the USA right now,

02:53is a collision on an airport or very, very close to it.

02:58So they predicted it, and now we've got it.

03:01David, good to see you. Thank you for that.

03:03David Learmount, the consulting editor at Flight Global.