Search for Safety

"Near-collisions in mid-air of disastrous proportions are being narrowly averted every day only by the emergency action of skilled pilots or by Providence." So Delaware's Republican Representative Harry G. Haskell Jr. told the House last week after digging into a Civil Aeronautics Board study that reported 452 near-misses between airborne planes during the last four months of 1956. Leading the list was Los Angeles, which recorded 22 near-misses. Other top danger spots were Washington (21 near-misses), San Francisco (14). New York (13).

CAB's figures came as timely support for the new air traffic plan drafted by Presidential Adviser Edward P. Curtis, vice president of Eastman Kodak Co. and former Air Force major general. The Curtis report calls for an all-weather, 24-hour control of all planes above a certain altitude, which would, in effect, control every commercial plane. To get the program started, the Administration last month sent to Congress the Curtis proposal for a three-man Airways Modernization Board composed of an impartial chairman and representatives of the Defense and Commerce departments. The technology and much of the equipment are available. The lack is administrative machinery. Military jets operate under one system, commercial planes under another. And the commercial system is further divided between CAB's regulatory powers and the Civil Aeronautics Administration's operational powers.

To administer a control system for the jet age, Curtis last week recommended that the Airways Modernization Board be succeeded eventually by an even larger civil-military Federal Aviation Agency, which would absorb CAA and part of CAB. Empowered to police every inch of airspace, the new agency would probably lead to a new Cabinet-level boss for U.S. aviation. Meanwhile, CAA is planning a six-year, $810 million program of buying new electronic control equipment. It also hopes to boost present personnel from 16,000 to 24,000 in the next three years, will extend its radio and radar control to all airspace above 15,000 ft. by 1962. Such a program should go a long way toward reducing the hazards of the air. Of the 144 mid-air collisions since 1948, only two occurred under instrument flying controlled from the ground. All the rest happened under visual flight rules.

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