Cover Story "Be Careful Out There"

By Ed Magnuson

The Northwest DC-10 was speeding toward takeoff at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport when the warning came from the flight engineer: "There's a whale on the runway!" Another Northwest wide-bodied DC-10 had just left a taxiway and poked its nose into the path of the oncoming plane. "I see it," replied the amazingly cool captain of the departing aircraft. He abruptly jerked his jumbo jet into the air. His wing cleared the fuselage of the crossing plane by a mere 50 ft. There were 501 people on the two jets. They had barely avoided what would have been the world's second worst air disaster, akin to the 1977 collision of two Boeing 747s that killed 582 people on a fog-shrouded runway at Tenerife in the Canary Islands.

What went wrong under clear skies at Minneapolis last March 31? Two air- traffic controllers, sitting side by side in the terminal tower, each failed to realize what the other had done. One had cleared the taxiing plane to cross the runway. The other had told the second plane to roll toward takeoff.

Whether on the ground or in the air, the high-speed collision of two aircraft is every pilot's worst fear. Yet each day in the U.S. the worry grows. "Near midairs," the safety experts' term for when two planes come dangerously close to each other in the air, are increasing at an alarming rate: 311 in 1982, 475 in 1983, 589 in 1984, 777 in 1985, at least 812 in 1986. Commercial airliners were involved in 35% of the 1986 incidents. What the air-travel industry too gently calls "runway incursions" are also on the rise: 102 in 1985 and an estimated 112 last year.

"Hell, every week that goes by, it's almost accepted as a common event, a near midair!" complains Captain Hank Duffy, the outspoken head of the 39,000- member Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA). Says Duffy: "Near midairs, runway incursions, delays -- every indicator in the system says that we're hanging by our fingernails."

In a candid memo to United Airlines pilots last month, Captain Lloyd W. Barry, United's senior vice president for flight operations, warned, "I am increasingly concerned about the ever present threat of a midair collision. Within the last twelve months, United crews have averaged 6.3 near-misses per month. Any of these incidents could have resulted in a catastrophe had it not been for the professional skill of our pilots or, in some cases, just plain good luck."

The close calls in the sky are by far the most worrisome trend in the nation's overburdened, understaffed air-safety system. The chilling reality of what can happen when luck turns sour was illustrated last Aug. 31 over Cerritos, Calif., when an Aeromexico DC-9 and a private Piper aircraft collided in the congested "birdcage" of controlled airspace around Los Angeles International Airport, killing 82 people. Many aviation experts like Duffy fear that what is still one of the safest air-transportation systems in the world is slipping dangerously as air traffic grows relentlessly through the unfettered competition of deregulation. The experts voice three major concerns:

--"There are not enough controllers, and too many of them have a low experience level," claims John Galipault, president of the Aviation Safety Institute, a private foundation in Ohio. The number of controllers is down from 16,300 to 14,700 since President Reagan fired striking members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) in 1981; more significantly, only 62% of them are qualified at "full performance level," vs. 80% before the strike. United Airlines Captain Mel Hoagland declares bluntly, "The air-traffic-control system is at the ragged edge of coming unraveled for lack of fully qualified controllers."

--"We have a lessening of the experience level of flight crews," contends Jim Burnett, chairman of the highly respected National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates civil aviation accidents. The number of hours the average airline pilot has spent in jetliners has dropped from 2,234 in 1983 to 818 in 1985. "The demand for pilots is high, and the supply is going down," observes NTSB member John Lauber. "The carriers are getting closer to the FAA minimum training standards."

--Some of the most economically troubled airlines are deferring maintenance whenever possible, and a few have been heavily fined by the FAA for violating safety standards. The impact of these varied trends, says Patricia Goldman, vice chairman of the NTSB, is that there is a "narrowed margin of safety."

Most of the critics cite the 1978 deregulation of airline competition as the villain in this erosion of confidence in the system. While deregulation has reduced fares and opened air travel to enormous numbers of new passengers, the era of do-or-die rate-cutting competition has pressured carriers to slash costs and take risks. No one claims that safety rules have been relaxed. Indeed, the vast majority of controllers, pilots and federal inspectors are working hard and competently to avoid accidents. But, says Jerome Lederer, founder of the private Flight Safety Foundation, "from now on the problem will be to discern who is obeying the rules. When passenger safety vs. profits is involved, these are questions of conscience." One pilot, speaking anonymously, sums up what he perceives as the all too common attitude in airline executive suites: "It's a business. Make the buck and take the chance."

Yet all the gloom overlooks an important bottom-line statistic: 1986 was among the safest ever for U.S. air travel. There was not a single fatality among the large American carriers even though they flew a record 6.2 million flights. That is a remarkable turnabout from the previous year, which set a worldwide high of 1,835 airline fatalities, 526 of them on U.S. carriers. For all of civil aviation, including airline, business and private flying, 1985 was dismal: 2,773 accidents that caused 1,231 deaths in the U.S. alone. For 1986 the number of U.S. accidents fell to an estimated 2,580, with 860 fatalities.

To Donald Engen, the Federal Aviation administrator, this reversal in fatalities is what really matters in air safety. "I can't deal with somebody claiming that 'the margin of safety has decreased,' " says Engen. "I deal with real facts, the accidents in hundreds of thousands of hours flown. These rates are continuing to go down. It happened in 1986 because we made it happen." Indeed, the number of fatal accidents in U.S. civil aviation in 1986 was 1.09 for each 100,000 hours flown, a decrease from 1.2 in the year before.

The FAA's vigilance in policing shoddy maintenance practices led the Government agency to ground 61 commuter and air-taxi carriers for varying periods (some permanently) in 1986, as well as 60 the year before. In its most spectacular gesture, the FAA in March fined Eastern Air Lines $9.5 million for , 78,372 alleged safety and maintenance violations. Pan Am has been jolted by FAA fines of $2 million, while American was assessed $1.5 million.

Not everyone agrees, however, that the decrease in fatalities last year stemmed from better management by the FAA or anyone else. "Our emphasis on safe operations has given us an incredible skein of good luck," observes William Jackman, vice president of the Air Transport Association, the airlines' trade group. "We've got to be the luckiest industry in the world."

And while ALPA's Duffy views Engen as "one of the best administrators we have ever worked with," he disagrees with the FAA boss on a key point. "You don't judge how the system is operating by the number of accidents," Duffy says. "The indicators predict where the accidents are going. When you are having more near mid-airs, well, it's just a matter of time before two planes will slam together, as they did at Cerritos."

The most severe critics of the air safety system are the airline pilots, who, it has often been noted, are the first to arrive at the scene of an air accident. A survey of ALPA's members in September showed not only that midair collisions are the pilots' biggest concern but that 66% of them feel that the problems of air-traffic control are more serious than the public realizes. In the opinion of 43% of pilots, deregulation has had an adverse effect on airline safety. Declares Pilot David Linsley, a 20-year veteran at United: "The system is not as safe as it used to be, not as safe as it should be, not as safe as it could be and not as safe as it will be -- or the pilots will shut it down."

American Flight 557 approached Chicago's O'Hare on Oct. 31. As it descended from 10,000 ft., a single-engine Cessna suddenly appeared ahead of it and passed just 300 ft. below and a mile to one side. Snapped the startled American pilot: "Center, did you just have an aircraft pass us in the opposite direction?" Controller: "I have an old track I don't see . . . there, target's back up now. I'm sorry about that." Pilot: "Well, that was very, very close."

Certainly, one reason for the increase in near midairs is that air traffic has soared under deregulation. Flying accounts for nearly 90% of all interstate travel; the annual number of airline passengers has jumped from 292 million in 1978 to 415 million last year. The number of airlines, including cargo, express mail and charter service, increased from 150 to about 400, and ! the roster of passenger carriers grew by 97 (to 157). The FAA offers another explanation for the rising number of near midairs: its reporting system has improved. In 1983 the FAA began installing what controllers and pilots call a "snitch" alarm system. Aircraft now move across a controller's green radar screen as a blip of light in the middle of a round white "halo" or "doughnut," representing an area that has a diameter of five miles. The aim of the controllers is to "keep green" between the doughnuts. Whenever two circles begin to intersect, indicating that two planes have violated the horizontal separation standard of five miles, an alarm sounds, the doughnuts flash and a teletype clacks out the incriminating data. The controller must file a report on the incident, as must the pilot if he is suspected of being at fault. Anyone found responsible can be suspended from duty.

The automatic snitch may make it appear that the skies are growing more dangerous because more reports are being filed. In the past, say some pilots, regional offices of the FAA often failed to pass near-miss reports along to Washington because they wanted to tell their bosses only what headquarters wanted to hear: that the system is safe.

Critics counter that the FAA's stricter reporting system may just be catching up to the frightening reality in the skies. Moreover, the FAA has loosened another requirement: until 1985 planes that passed within 1,000 ft. of each other vertically were considered too close, and the incident had to be reported; now the vertical-separation standard is just 500 ft. Under an accurate system, this change should produce fewer, not more, close-call reports. Some pilots object to this reduction in the near-miss distance, noting that if two airliners are six miles apart but headed toward each other at 550 m.p.h., they could collide in 20 seconds.

There are indications that some controllers may be cheating the snitch system to avoid the burden of paperwork and explanations. The FAA investigated a near miss on Feb. 16 between a Sky West Airlines flight and a private Beech Bonanza near Santa Barbara, Calif. The planes had come within five miles, but the snitch was not triggered. The investigators discovered that a controller had dropped the Bonanza from his screen in the belief that there was no real chance of a collision despite the proximity of the two aircraft. This action, reported the FAA, "disabled the computer's ability to recognize the conflict."

, Some pilots object to the snitch alarm as a superfluous electronic Big Brother, but few approve of controllers defeating the system. Charges a veteran American Airlines captain: "Dropping a plane from the screen is playing fast and loose with human life to avoid being pinpointed for a mistake. It's unconscionable."

Such self-protective steps presumably are rare, but there is little doubt that the nation's air controllers are straining to handle their workload. A survey by the Government's General Accounting Office last March produced some disturbing findings: an overwhelming 91% of controllers complained that the system does not have enough qualified controllers, 70% reported that they handle more traffic in peak periods than they should be required to accept, 69% claimed that their heavy workloads adversely affect air safety. In the fiscal year before the 1981 strike, controllers put in 377,000 hours of overtime; in 1985 they worked an extra 908,000 hours.

Moreover, the controllers are not optimistic about the immediate future. More than half rated the quality of training for new controllers as either "less than adequate" or "poor." The GAO discovered that the top of the controller hierarchy is aging and restive. Of 450 supervisors in the survey, 75% said they hope to retire within a year. "A lot of us are tired, overworked, stressed and demoralized," explained one veteran.

Some of the rank-and-file controllers have started procedures to establish a new union to replace PATCO, which was smashed in the 1981 strike. The Administration's dismissal of 11,500 strikers, although politically popular, is still hotly argued from a safety standpoint. Claims Ray Brown, an ALPA executive and air-safety consultant, about the Administration: "Instead of listening to the message, it killed the messenger. Now the message has resurfaced because the new people are expressing the same problems."

One example of the manpower problem is the situation at the Chicago Air Route Traffic Control Center in Aurora, Ill., which handles an airspace that includes O'Hare, one of the world's busiest airports. On paper, the center has more controllers than its authorized strength of 350. But only 183 have reached full-performance-level status. Where it was once standard for controllers to be at their positions for only four of the eight hours in a shift, the norm at Aurora is now six. Coupled with mandatory overtime, this pace, contends one Aurora controller, "is burning most of us out."

! The ATC computer systems, many of them 20 years old, are also burning out. The Aurora control center lost a backup computer on Aug. 3, and while it was being repaired, the main computer went down for nearly four minutes on Aug. 4 and for an hour on Aug. 5. A control center in Albuquerque was knocked out for 40 minutes on Nov. 6. The busy Washington center lost all its radar and computers for 20 minutes on Nov. 29. When this happens, pilots have no choice but to fall back on "see and avoid" flying practices. But that is sometimes difficult to do in today's instrument-filled "glass cockpits," which require pilots to keep their heads down much of the time. Flights are diverted to open airports and long delays develop. At the New York area radar facility on Long Island -- which controls Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark airports -- one controller says, there is "some sort of equipment breakdown two or three times a month" during which "everybody scrambles into high gear."

The pressure on controllers can vary from place to place. A few in low- traffic regions or in centers that are adequately staffed contend that they fight boredom rather than stress. That was not at all true of a frantic controller at the Los Angeles center at Palmdale, who, according to one airline captain, announced on a smoggy day: "There is more traffic than I can point out to you. Please be careful out there."

While relations between controllers and pilots usually remain professionally courteous, there are subtle tensions between the two groups. Christine West, a controller hired just after the strike, works in the New York radar-control facility. West is proud that "we do pretty close to twice the amount of work with half the staffing we had before the strike." But she is critical of many pilots. "We have their lives in our hands, but they relate to us like we were the enemy," she says. "It can be stressful when you're taking insults on a frequency and you have to be professional and cannot explain your reasons for doing something."

Keith Morris, another controller at the same center, complains that pilots talk too often on their radios and do not listen carefully to the controllers. When any pilot close to a control center presses his mike button, it blocks other nearby flight crews from hearing the controller. "It is not unusual to sit on a radar position and have a pilot respond that he's blocked over and over again," says Morris. "Radio discipline has become atrocious."

Pilots have beefs about the controllers. Contends Duffy: "Our pilots make calls to controllers and nobody answers. You can tell when one is under strain when his supervisor comes in and overrides him. More controllers are making errors. They are often fatigued. We just don't want to be handled by tired controllers." The basic problem, in the view of Delta Airlines Pilot Joseph Dorsey, is that "there are too many new people on both ends of that radio."

On Sept. 23, 1985, a Henson Airlines Beech commuter plane missed Shenandoah Valley Airport in Virginia by six miles as it tried to land through clouds and fog. The crash killed the two crew members and all twelve passengers. The NTSB investigation blamed navigational errors by the crew. But it cited a list of contributing factors: the cockpit was so noisy that the captain and first officer had either to shout or to use hand signals to communicate; both were relatively inexperienced; and Henson's training in its aircraft, which have differing instrument layouts, was inadequate. The crew members, who had flown together only twice before, were undergoing personal tensions that may have created stress. The captain, 27, was about to be married and was awaiting a job interview with Eastern Air Lines; the first officer, 26, had been with Henson only two months, duty that took her away from her husband, and she was planning further examination of a lump in one breast.

Veteran airline pilots may be even more critical of the lack of experience among some of their younger flying brethren (and, increasingly, sisters). A generation of crack pilots trained in military transport and combat aircraft is fading into retirement. According to the Aviation Safety Institute, only 40% of today's pilots came out of the military. Yet the demand for more top- rated airline pilots keeps rising. Their ranks, which have been growing steadily during the past few years, now number greater than 81,000. More pilots and fewer fully qualified controllers, says a senior captain at United, is a "prescription for catastrophe."

The expanding number of pilots is exacting a price at some airlines, especially the feeders, which are requiring less experience and lower qualifications than they did in the past. Newcomers are being promoted from the flight engineer's chair to the right-hand seat (the first officer's) and then to the left seat (the captain's) after logging fewer flying hours. "The , apprenticeship system doesn't exist anymore," claims ALPA's Duffy. Three major airlines -- United, American and Piedmont -- are for the first time hiring pilots who are past the age of 50.

In the tight market, pilots searching for higher pay often jump from the smaller to the larger airlines and from one type of aircraft to another. Crews have less time to learn to work together. Caught at the bottom of this turnover spiral are the commuter airlines. Henson Airlines, based in Salisbury, Md., for example, lost 54 of its 195 pilots in 1985.

"The place where you are going to see the system break down first is the commuter airline," says Pete Pedigrew, a captain with Pacific Southwest. Tony Levier, an industry-safety expert, is in agreement. "A lot of these airlines are operating on shoestrings. They may meet the FAA regulations on paper but not in reality." On some commuter flights, both cockpit seats may be occupied by inexperienced officers. That, too, observes John Lauber of NTSB, "can be a lethal combination."

On the large airliners, passengers have another reason to be uneasy. After studying 30 cockpit flight-crew members, Dr. Martin Moore-Ede, a professor at the Harvard Medical School, discovered that on long high-altitude flights, the cockpit crew is sometimes asleep. The pilots, copilots and navigators he interviewed admitted that they have either nodded off on the job or had to struggle not to do so an average of 16 times a month. This usually happens sometime between 4 and 5 in the morning. In other research, Moore-Ede discovered an incident in which a transcontinental flight missed its Los Angeles destination and flew 100 miles over the Pacific because everyone up front had fallen asleep. Controllers awakened them by sounding chimes in the cockpit. NTSB's Lauber confirms that napping occurs and suggests that the problem could be eased if regulations banning all sleeping could be relaxed to permit snoozing by one officer at a time during a high-altitude flight.

A mechanic at O'Hare found a damaged duct on a DC-9's engine in April and reported to his supervisor that it would pose a fire hazard if the engine overheated. The supervisor nonetheless cleared the aircraft to take off for Pittsburgh. The horrified mechanic called FAA but could not reach an official before the plane left Chicago. In Pittsburgh, FAA grounded the aircraft while the engine was replaced. The pilot had not been warned that he was flying with a potential fire problem.

In the complex world of aviation technology, equipment can and does fail. Still, insists FAA Chief Donald Engen, "any accident, when you dig in, always comes back to human beings. Accidents just don't happen -- they are caused." Airlines need a skilled force of mechanics and technicians to maintain their incredibly complex aircraft. A Boeing 747, for example, contains 4.5 million removable parts, 135 miles of electrical wires and more than a mile of hydraulic tubing. The major airlines are spending as much as or more than before on maintenance of their fleets. But to deal with any carrier that lacks the will or money to meet the Government's stiff standards, FAA must have enough inspectors to scare the corner cutters and punish the violators. Yet while the volume of traffic has exploded, the Reagan Administration's early budget cutting produced a reduction in the number of FAA inspectors from 1,748 to 1,494. Only in the past three years has the force been rebuilt to its present 1,813 inspectors.

NTSB Chairman Burnett contends, furthermore, that FAA inspectors too often develop a cozy relationship with the airlines they are assigned to monitor. Inspectors and airlines, says Burnett, go through a "choreographed dance." One example: Eastern had a string of problems with missing O rings on engines in its L-1011 jumbos that caused seven forced landings. At a hearing on the problem, Burnett asked the top FAA inspector watching Eastern whether he ever checked the airline's maintenance procedures. No, said the inspector, but he had discussed the problem with Eastern's vice president for maintenance. Burnett's acid response: "Vice presidents don't put on O rings."

The Eastern violations became so numerous because each flight with a claimed maintenance problem counts separately. One Eastern plane flew five years before the airline repaired a landing-gear-assembly link that had been the subject of an FAA warning. Only when the gear failed on a landing at Norfolk, Va., was a fix made. FAA also cited Eastern for placing tape over a 4-in. crack in the leading edge of a horizontal stabilizer and making 156 flights in that condition. Most of the violations, however, appear to have involved the failure to document procedures that differed from standard practice, although not necessarily compromising safety.

Pinched airlines tend to defer repairs on items that do not require immediate grounding of a plane. One pilot admitted that he flew his jet even though in his cockpit 14 red tags were hanging from parts on which needed maintenance work had been deferred. While this may be legal, John Galipault of the Aviation Safety Institute insists that one airline assigns mechanics to fly in what repairmen call "hangar queens," airplanes that develop frequent problems. When a minor ailment arises, the flying mechanic "signs off" on the paperwork needed to permit the plane to keep operating, even though no repair is done.

The pressure to keep the multimillion-dollar jets and their paying passengers moving is high at most airlines. Contends Galipault: "People in this business are asked or told to do things they know are not only wrong but dangerous. Then they have to ask themselves whether to sell out and save their job or risk it for what they know is right and safe." For too many, the choice appears to be difficult.

The crash at Reno of a Galaxy Airlines Electra that killed 70 people, many of them fans returning to Minneapolis from the 1985 Super Bowl game in San Francisco, turned out to be a horror story of multiple mistakes. NTSB investigators found that on the ground at Reno, the headsets between the ground supervisor and the cockpit did not work, so hand signals were used. After the pilot started two engines, a ground handler discovered that she could not disconnect an air hose used in the starts. The supervisor began frantically signaling the pilots to stop so the hose could be freed. Distracted, the ground crew failed to close a small (8 1/2 in. by 11 in.) access door at the hose connection. The crew neglected to run through the required checklist before takeoff. They heard a thumping noise during takeoff, but despite published warnings about this possibility, they did not realize the door was loose.

Trying to determine if the racket came from an engine problem, the captain reduced power on all four engines, although it would have been safer to check one of them at a time. The loss of speed took the Electra close to its stall point, but the first officer was not monitoring airspeed and altitude as he should have been. The plane stalled and struck the ground. The NTSB criticized the lack of crew coordination and concluded dryly, "The captain attempted both to determine the cause of the vibration and fly the airplane simultaneously, which he was unable to do." In fact, the open door would not have been a hazard if the sound had been properly diagnosed.

What should be done to restore the safety margins? The controller shortage offers only one relatively quick fix: rehire more of the fired PATCO controllers. Many have not found comparable-paying jobs and would be eager to get back at their consoles. But FAA Chief Engen, reflecting the Administration's position, says, "No way." According to the GAO survey, 60% of the current controllers and 85% of their supervisors oppose such a move, though a majority of those at some of the busiest traffic centers say they would have no objection. In fact, about 500 of the less militant PATCO members have been quietly rehired. Many airline pilots would like to see more of the former controllers brought back "with a wink and a nod" to strengthen the system. The pilots argue that the fired PATCO members bear few grudges against the recently hired people. "All this animosity is the rhetoric of 1981 and 1982," argues Jim Holtsclaw, manager of the FAA facility in Los Angeles.

Congress last year approved a request by Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole for funds to add 1,000 new controllers over two years. Dole claims, with little support, that the "system was way overstaffed before the strike" and that new "air-flow" procedures have made it possible for fewer controllers to handle more flights safely.

The air-flow plan has indeed reduced the number of aircraft stacked in the skies in bad weather around major airports. Instead, the delays are taken in "gate holds" on the ground; planes are not allowed to leave until they have a chance to land promptly at their next stop. This prudent procedure caused more than 70,000 holiday travelers around the nation to be delayed last week when fog closed Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport, a major airline hub. While the air-flow controls may annoy passengers eager to get going on their trips, pilots and controllers prefer it to in-air stacking because it leaves fewer airborne planes to worry about.

As fuel costs have gone down and delays have increased, however, the airlines are pushing to get their planes aloft closer to schedule. They want more departure and arrival routes established so that more of the sky space is utilized. They would also like to reduce the 15-mile minimum spacing between following airliners so that more traffic can be moved in the same time. Planes heading toward a landing at 220 m.p.h. thus are about four minutes apart.

Most safety experts argue that the already strained system is not able to accommodate either more stacking, closer flying or more routes to be controlled. But the FAA seems ready to bow to some of the airline pressure. The agency's regional traffic managers expect to meet in February, and may consider a ten-mile interval in time for the summer season.

The need for more FAA inspectors is obvious. In the view of Jim Burnett, it may even be more important for FAA inspectors to develop a new attitude toward their work. "They must take a more aggressive posture," he says. Specifically, Burnett would like to see more spot inspections to detect any cheating on maintenance rules.

The NTSB has also urged the FAA to require pilots and copilots on commuter airlines to be checked more frequently on their instrument flying. The safety board urges faster development of a program to provide flight simulators to train these pilots and asks that the commuter carriers be required to provide at least one experienced pilot on each flight, rather than have two newcomers work together. No single move, however, could ease the worries of pilots and passengers alike more than installing collision-warning devices on airplanes. After years of indecision and delay, the FAA is finally moving to put such a system in place.

Safety experts advocate such short-term and relatively inexpensive improvements as clearer runway markings, tighter control over carry-on luggage that can hurl about a cabin in a crash landing, and greater fire resistance in airline cabin fabrics.

The FAA's Engen says the country urgently needs more airports and runways. But airport expansion around many major cities is almost prohibitively expensive and politically difficult if, indeed, suitable land can be found. This seems mostly a dream.

More modestly, the FAA is starting to install new computers at its en-route control centers. It has also proposed a $24 billion long-term airport and air- traffic control modernization program. Where the money will come from has not been decided. The FAA's critics want the agency to use some of the $8 billion that has accumulated in an aviation trust fund, which comes mainly from an 8% tax on all airline tickets. This reservoir of cash has been hoarded by the Administration to keep the federal deficit from looking worse than it is.

Though final Administration and congressional approval of the modernization plan remains uncertain, the need is clear. The expansion of air travel will continue relentlessly: domestic airline traffic is expected to * grow by 5% in each of the next four years. Unless more steps are taken soon to remedy the serious shortcomings in the nation's air-traffic system, the recent good luck of millions of sky travelers could run out.

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CREDIT: TIME Chart by Renee Klein

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DESCRIPTION: Color illustrations (three): Shows air traffic in billions of passenger miles; Total number of air traffic controllers and those at full performance level, in thousands, 1980-1986; Pilots, average experience of new hires by major airlines in 1983, 1984, 1985.

With reporting by Jerry Hannifin/Washington and Lee Griggs/Chicago, with other bureaus