A recent close call between two private planes flying near New York City has heightened concerns about collision avoidance technology just as federal lawmakers voted down a major aviation safety bill.
On Feb. 13, a Learjet corporate aircraft carrying eight people was headed for Teterboro Airport in New Jersey when its traffic-alert system warned its crew to descend immediately to avoid an accident, according to a radar and audio recording of the incident whose basic elements were confirmed by the pilot and the Federal Aviation Administration, whose air traffic controller was handling it.
The plane descended, narrowly avoiding a midair collision with a smaller plane.
“We saw the aircraft cross from left to right, right across the nose of our aircraft,” said Derek Long, who was piloting the Learjet, in an interview with The New York Times.
“That’s really the closest you can come in an airplane without having an incident,” he said when reached by phone Monday evening.
In recent days, Mr. Long’s near miss — which was posted, without identifying him, on a YouTube aviation channel on Feb. 16 — became a talking point among advocates for an aviation safety bill that the House rejected by just one vote on Tuesday afternoon.
The Senate passed that bill, known as the ROTOR Act, unanimously in December. But it encountered stiff resistance from key Republicans in the House, who pulled support away from the bill ahead of a planned Tuesday vote by promoting a last-minute alternative. Their efforts were fueled by a late-stage objection from the Defense Department, which had previously endorsed the legislation, but reversed course on Monday and described it as unnecessarily costly and a potential hindrance to national security.
Many of the ROTOR Act’s supporters, who include family members of victims of last year’s midair collision of an Army helicopter and an American Airlines flight near Washington, said the measure would help prevent disasters by equipping more aircraft with tools similar to the ones that averted a crisis near Teterboro.
The ROTOR Act required nearly all aircraft to install location-tracking technology that functions like a public announcement system, notifying the cockpit to the existence of other nearby air traffic. The technology provides alerts just like the traffic collision avoidance system, known as TCAS, did during Mr. Long’s flight. But TCAS systems are significantly more expensive than the broadcasting system specified in the ROTOR Act. And importantly, TCAS does not provide collision-avoidance alerts at altitudes lower than 1,000 feet, while the system called for in the legislation does.
The Teterboro incident makes the effort to carve out exceptions to certain technologies required in the act “more frustrating,” Doug Lane, who lost his wife and eldest son in the crash over the Potomac River last year, wrote in a text to The Times.
“This is why we have been pushing for the next generation” of technology, said Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board.
The N.T.S.B. has launched an investigation into the Teterboro incident and has requested data from the F.A.A. to further the inquiry.
A statement issued Monday from the Defense Department cited “significant unresolved budgetary burdens and operational security risks affecting national defense activities” as its objections to the ROTOR Act but did not provide further details.
But the department is said to be concerned about another location-broadcasting system addressed in the act, called Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast-Out, or ADS-B Out. That system lets other pilots, controllers and airspace users know an aircraft’s location in real time. The effort to limit when aircraft can turn off ADS-B Out has been a source of tension between lawmakers and the Defense Department since the bill’s inception.
Most military flights are equipped with the technology. But because ADS-B signals can be picked up by anyone with a Wi-Fi connection, the Pentagon has argued that allowing its aviators to fly with the system activated is a national security risk — even when their flights are routine training exercises.
The Army Black Hawk that crashed into the American Airlines flight above the Potomac was on a training exercise and was not using ADS-B Out. The ROTOR Act’s sponsors, Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, and Senator Maria Cantwell, the Washington Democrat, have argued that such flights are not a national security risk, but are, in fact, a public safety risk.
Mr. Long, the director of flight operations for the coatings and sealant manufacturer Stockmeier Urethanes, said he was expecting a routine trip when he and his co-pilot departed Clarksburg, W.Va., with the company’s chief executive, Chris Martinkat, and five other passengers onboard two Fridays ago. It was a clear, sunny day, and a one-hour, five-minute hop to New Jersey.
But shortly before they were set to land, the trouble started.
First, the controller who was working their flight gave a traffic warning that another plane was two miles away and at 11 o’clock on the horizon, traveling southbound at 3,000 feet. The lack of specific directions to help him stay safely separated from the plane, and the fact that the other aircraft was at the same altitude, immediately put Mr. Long on edge, he said.
About 15 to 20 seconds later, while Mr. Long and his co-pilot were scanning the airspace for that flight, their TCAS called out “traffic, traffic,” he said, letting them know there was potential for a collision.
Mr. Long said he spotted the plane in question — a small Cirrus — with his left-side peripheral vision another 15 to 20 seconds later, just as he was getting an emergency notification from his collision-avoidance system. Designed to provide quick directions for avoiding a crash, it blared, “descend, descend.”
He did that by shoving the yoke, or controls, forward. The move was violent.
“We’re clear of the traffic now,” Mr. Long said to the controller over the radio moments later, in a communication that was captured in the YouTube recording posted by VASAviation. “That was not — cool. We’re climbing back to 3,000.”
“Country Road 91, I gave you the traffic call,” replied the controller, using the Learjet’s call sign. “I kept getting stepped on,” he added, referring to a situation in which radio communications get bleeped out by other microphone users pressing their speaker buttons at the same time. Stepped-on communications were a problem just before the D.C. collision, investigators found.
Once his plane was on the ground, Mr. Long explained to his unnerved passengers just how close the two planes had come — and how lucky they all were.
Mr. Long asked the controller for a phone number to call the control hub to report the incident. The hub is at the Philadelphia International Airport tower but dedicated to a portion of Newark Liberty International Airport’s traffic.
Having heard that the F.A.A. did not always thoroughly vet reports of near midair collisions, Mr. Long said he also contacted an aide to Senator Shelley Moore Capito, the West Virginia Republican, to request that she follow up with the F.A.A. on Stockmeier’s behalf.
Mr. Long said he respected the air traffic controllers in the F.A.A.’s system but believes that they are overloaded and exhausted.
As an experienced firefighter, emergency medical technician and law enforcement and homeland security officer in Upshur County, W.Va., Mr. Long said he has seen a lot. Two years ago the state awarded him a medal of valor for creating a safe perimeter around an active shooter on a roadway and evacuating a wounded sheriff to a hospital while being shot at himself.
Still, the close call on Feb. 13 unsettled him deeply.
“I was rattled,” he said.
In a statement, the F.A.A. said it “immediately” began investigating the incident after it occurred. “Safety is the F.A.A.’s top priority; we take every event seriously and act swiftly on any findings to further strengthen safety,” it added.
In a conversation Monday, Mr. Long said, the facilities manager in the section of the Philadelphia tower dedicated to Newark told him that the Cirrus had come within about 200 feet of his corporate jet.
He said it felt about that close when he was watching it pass in front of him.
Mr. Long said that while he had not been following any specific legislation in Congress, he hoped lawmakers would take a lesson from the crash in Washington or near misses like his and make safety improvements.
“If we can give the controllers the tools that they need, it’s better than what we saw out the front windshield, that’s for sure,” he said.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.
Kate Kelly covers money, policy and influence for The Times.
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