Written by Charles Miller, a director of the Alliance of Residents Concerning O’Hare 

Further corrorborating the gloomy forecasts in the two previous messages to Aviation Watch, here is some interesting info from Aviation Week (AW) & Space Technology, August 2, 1999.

Air Cargo Management Group's managing director reports that wide-body freighters in service and on order have more than doubled since 1995.

Korean Airlines (KAL) has leased another 747 freighter and is increasing service to the Americas from 35 to 39 times a week.

Most of the following is not about forecasts, but is information which I feel deserves wide dissemination and is from the same issue of AW.

Showing how the revolving door in the industry/congress system works it is reported that Air Force General Joseph Ralston, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is putting off political ambitions that would have taken him back to Alaska where once held a command. He had planned to be groomed and be successor to Sen. Ted Stevens, the powerful Republican [and, incidentally, vigorously anti-environmental]. Ralston will become supreme allied commander in Europe next year. He has "endeared" himself for 15 years to senators of both parties and could get things done "behind the scenes." He also became a close friend of Defense Secretary Wm. S. Cohen over the years when the latter was on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Another USAF official reports that Cohen won't go to the restroom without Ralston's advice.

AW brings up an issue new to me, the subject of which is Runway Incursions, occurring in three categories:

1. Vehicle/Pedestrian Deviations
2. Operational Errors
3. Pilot Deviations [It is noteworthy that these are not considered errors.

Category #1 incidents ranged from a low of 65 in 1995 to a high of 91 in 1998. Category #2 incidents ranged from a low of 28 in 1993 to a high of 73 in 1997. Now, get this: Category #3 incidents ranged from a low of 66 to a high of 183 in 1998. And this article reports an incident similar to the near collision at JFK as reported earlier, one which occurred at Chicago's O'Hare on April 1, 1999. This frightening "incursion" involved a KAL 747 with more than 360 passengers flying over the nose of an Air China 747 freighter that had taxied onto the active runway. The KAL flight cleared the freighter by a mere 25 - 50 feet. (The JFK incident involved only a smaller 757 operated by Icelandair taking off and an Air Chance 747 freighter crossing the active runway.)

The FAA's efforts to reduce such incursions seem to be ineffective. While costs for Amass (Airport Movement Area Safety System, an enhanced radar system) were estimated to be $60 million at 34 airports by 1996, they have escalated to an estimated $90 million [What else is new?]. Such equipment is installed and being tested now at only three airports, Detroit, St. Louis and Atlanta. The article indicates serious deficiencies in the system. Its initial use will be limited to monitoring traffic only on active runways, but not on taxiways or runways that intersect them. Additionally, reliability for 24 hour, week-long operation has not been met. Adding to that, the system performs poorly in heavy rain, when the system is most needed.

In an article with the usual litany of complaints by airlines about FAA shortcomings two alarming proposals were described. First, Lahso (Land and Hold Short Operations) is an arrangement whereby a landing flight is cleared to land provided that it stops short of crossing a runway being used by a departing flight. Lahso is in use, at least at O'Hare, where a near-collision between a British Airways 747, taking off just about two years ago had to abort, blowing out its tires, in order to avoid a United 737 which landed, but failed to hold short as directed by the controllers. Not mentioning where Lahso is in place, it was stated that the FAA plans to increase its use. Second, is a proposal that would eliminate the need for pilots to read back clearance instructions received from air traffic controllers, confirming instructions.

Viewers of Aviation Watch in Sydney will be all too familiar with problems connected with the Kingsford Smith Airport there, but the rest of us have probably no concept about how serious they are. It seems that it abuts areas with some 1.5 million people and the noise creates such political difficulties that a swing vote can unseat a legislator. Flight tracks are shifted away from his constituents, dumping noise on to another's constituents. The overflight issue has caused a clamor for every house in Sydney to be insulated. [When the new, third runway opened in 1995, it was predicted that flights would double by 2020. However, flights doubled in just one year.]

Responses to the problems are too complex to place in these pages, but one interesting aspect of aviation surfaced in the article, and that is the subject of crosswinds, about which this correspondent knew little. The ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) guidelines specify a maximum of 15 knot winds [about 16 mph] for crosswind operations and 5 knots for tailwinds. In Sydney runway swapping to shift noise has caused some aircraft to be requested to land with crosswinds of up to 25 knots, producing "undesirable effects."

Chicago, which was named the "Windy City" in the last century because of braggadocio amongst its residents, is the windy city for atmospheric reasons, too. ICAO=92s crosswind standards should cause us to wonder how a future O'Hare Airport with four parallel, east-west runways would safely operate in crosswind situations, when no adequate alternates would be available.