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"Aviation is growing so explosively that we are not even now properly prepared to predict its full measure," says FAA Administrator William ("Bozo") McKee. "This is no exercise in abstract thought. There is an immediacy to the need. The jumbos [Boeing's 490-passenger 747 jets] are coming in 1969, and the supersonic transports will follow. Not only the airways, but the airports must be ready."
Evasive Action. Although today's FAA airways are the most extensive and best-controlled in the world, they are far from foolproof—even with their current traffic load. On two occasions in 1965, for example, airline pilots, confused by optical illusions, took violent evasive maneuvers to avoid airliners that were actually separated from them by 1,000 feet of altitude prescribed by FAA controllers. Such unnecessary evasive maneuvers were cited as the probable cause of the collision over New York's Westchester County between an Eastern Airlines Constellation and a TWA 707 jet. Although both planes were damaged, the 707 limped safely to JFK, and the Constellation managed to crash-land, killing four. In the other accident, the pilot of an Eastern DC-7B approaching JFK maneuvered so violently in order to avoid a Pan American jet that was actually 1,000 feet above him that he lost control and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 84 aboard. All four planes were under FAA surveillance, but the pilots chose to believe their eyes, rather than their instruments.
Other problems are posed by the FAA's lack of control over the flights of many of the nation's private aircraft. All commercial airlines and some of the larger and speedier private planes use the airways, operating under instrument flight rules (IFR) even in clear weather to take advantage of the separation and protection afforded by FAA controllers. But many small planes fly by visual flight rules (VFR), permissible when visibility is greater than three miles. Pilots flying VFR are responsible only for seeing and avoiding other aircraft, and are not even prohibited from entering busy FAA control zones.
Earlier this month, a TWA DC-9 on a proper IFR approach to the Dayton airport collided with a twin-engine Beechcraft being flown under VFR on a bright, cloudless day. All 25 aboard the jet and the pilot of the private plane died. A few days later, an American Airlines jet flying IFR toward Newark Airport narrowly missed a small plane flying VFR in the same area.
Potential aerial collisions were uppermost in the minds of a group of air-traffic controllers who last week publicly charged that aviation in the U.S. is reaching a "point of public peril." Speaking for the National Association of Government Employees, which represents some 3,000 of the 14,000 air-traffic controllers employed by the Federal Aviation Agency, ex-Controller Stanley Lyman charged that economies in the FAA had resulted in "seriously underequipped, undermanned, undercompensated and underadministered" traffic-control towers and centers. "We are fortunate that we don't have the collisions now," said Lyman.