Fatigue at Fault in Atlanta Mishap?

A Florida-bound Delta Air Lines flight aborted a takeoff last month as it screamed down an Atlanta runway at 160 mph at the same moment incoming flights descended toward a dangerously close parallel runway.

The Boeing 757 blew out three tires in the Jan. 10 incident, but none of the 167 passengers or six crew members was injured.

Two air-traffic controllers were required to undergo retraining as a result of the incident, which one controller labeled as one of the most serious at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in recent years.

The incident was highlighted Tuesday by Gary Brittain, the Atlanta control tower's representative to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, a 14,000-member union battling with the Federal Aviation Administration over pay and staffing levels.

Brittain, speaking to reporters in a conference call, attributed the controller error to stress caused by understaffing and controllers working too many overtime shifts.

But the FAA, which operates the tower, denies that it is understaffed and described the aborted takeoff as a rare, but not unheard-of maneuver.

"In this case they [the controllers] made a mistake, but they caught their mistake,"

Brian Lentini, the Federal Aviation Administration's Georgia district manager for air traffic, said during an interview.

Lentini said the aborted takeoff is not considered a more serious "operational error" because the plane never became airborne. The Atlanta airport experienced six operational errors last year, mostly because of planes violating the minimum spacing permitting by the FAA.

Had Delta Flight 1606 bound for West Palm Beach taken off at 4:30 p.m. on Jan. 10 it would have encountered clear skies - and four other aircraft descending head-on to a parallel runway about a half-mile away. That is far too close for the minimum separation the FAA requires, which varies by altitude.

"We think we could have expedited his climb and kept the aircraft from having a collision," Brittain said. "There would have been near misses but we think we could have separated them in a last-ditch, panicked effort."

A preliminary report on the incident by the National Transportation Safety Board said the problem occurred as controllers were changing the runway configuration from landing and departing from the west to landing and departing to the east. A controller cleared Delta 1606 for takeoff, but then saw an incoming plane that had landed on the adjacent runway. The controller immediately ordered the Delta flight to abort. The report notes the flight was traveling at about 160 mph,

just seconds shy of becoming airborne.

Retired Delta pilot Ken Adams said aborting a flight at that speed is a dicey maneuver. He said he probably had one abort every 10 years in the 32 years he flew for the airline before his retirement five years ago.

"Anytime you are over 100 mph it starts to add to the pucker factor," Adams said. "It gets incrementally worse."

Adams said he thinks the plane was technically moving too fast to abort. He said the pilot had only a split-second to make a decision.

"Technically he should not have aborted," Adams said "But it would have been dangerous for him to take off in that situation too. He obviously made the right decision because no one got hurt."

The FAA said the incident does not point to any systemic problems in the Atlanta tower and argued controllers are adequately paid.

"The agency would never create an unsafe situation," said FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen. She said the average controller in Atlanta makes $135,000 per year.

Brittain, however, argued that a rash of retirements is straining the experience level at the tower and forcing veteran controllers to work extra shifts. Both controllers involved in the Jan. 10 incident had recently worked overtime shifts, he said. The two have more than 10 years of experience each.

Bergen said there are now 35 fully certified controllers at Hartsfield-Jackson and four more in training. By the end of May, she said, there will be a total of 48 controllers.

"The people we are hiring come from other air traffic facilities that are not as busy, or they will come from the military," she said.

The federal government and the air traffic controllers have a long and sometimes tortured history. President Ronald Reagan - in one of his defining moments - fired thousands of controllers during a bitter strike in the early 1980s.

A Delta spokeswoman said no aircraft were in danger of colliding during the incident, and that it didn't cause any delays to other traffic. Passengers were transported from the immobilized jet to a spare aircraft to resume their trip.

"We followed our procedures," said Delta spokeswoman Gina Laughlin. "The flight crew made the decision that was in the best interests of our passengers."

Jim Tharpe writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Staff writer Russell Grantham contributed to this article.

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