"34 Close Calls Reported At Hopkins Airport"

[avalon]

The article below I believe is a bit deceiving as it states the "close calls" in the headline with reference to KCLE when it should be referring to "enroute traffic" 


http://www.newsnet5.com/travelgetaways/14041737/detail.html

[digger]

The article was done by the Associated Press, and appeared in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of publications. I thought it had a lot of good, valid information. It also had quotes from the FAA's Laura Brown and Marion Blakey. On balance, it should scare the heck out of anybody that might be thinking of travelling by air.

It was apparently someone at the local level that attached that headline to it. When you consider that most of the media knows less about aviation, and ATC in particluar, than the least experienced member of this site, the inaccuracy of the headline is no surprise.

[rpd]

I would not consider anything Blakey or Brown says as good or valid points.  Brown just babbles the FAA lines fed to her.  Everything is fine, everyone is happy, and safety was never compromised.  Blakey has the solution to all problems- NextGen.  Nevermind the fact all these aircraft need runways to land and depart on.  Go ahead and reduce seperation and spacing in the air, then hold at the destination for a runway.  All of this is beside the fact Blakey has taken a job with a company which is a major player in NextGen.  How convenient for her.  We could run airplanes 1 mile apart on final now with current technology, but the runway would not be clear.  You need at least 2-3 miles for the landing aircraft to taxi off the runway.

These jokers at the FAA don't have clue.

[digger]

I would not consider anything Blakey or Brown says as good or valid points.

Exactly.

 

[MathFox]

It's a pity that the people in charge are in such denial that they cook the statistics... If we compare the 2006 incident statistics under the old norm with the 2007 statistics under the new norm, we see that the new norm finds less incidents. (No, the FAA isn't doing better.)

Indications are that FAA is doing worse (it would be good to have comparable incident numbers over several years) but that real bad things haven't happened yet. A competent organization would take corrective action, improve operations, instead of employing a head-in-the-sand statistics cook-up.

[zmeatc]

A lot of the lower stats for this year is due to the FAA chainging the  rules for whats a deal and whats not. In enroute you need 5 miles and 1,000 feet. It used to be that if 2 planes came within 4.9 miles of each other it was a deal. Now if planes come within 4.9 miles its called a "proximity event" which is no longer counted as a deal. This all came into effect back in June of this year.