The runway collision this week between an Airbus superjumbo A380 and a commuter jet at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport has renewed aviation experts’ concerns about safety on the tarmac with massive new aircraft.
As the Associated Press reports, none of the 586 passengers or crew on either aircraft was hurt in the Monday night incident, in which Comair’s Bombardier CRJ-700 plane was spun around violently after being clipped by the wing of an A380 belonging to Air France.
The primary issue with the A380, which first was flown commercially in 2007, are its dimensions. With a wingspan the size of a city block and the height of a seven-story building, the A380s can’t be treated like a normal plane. In fact, the Comair jet almost managed to slip under the A380′s wing.
“It’s the sheer size of these aircraft and the congestion at these airports that’s the problem,” Allan Tamm, an aviation consultant, told the AP. “It’s a serious concern for all these airports trying to accommodate these aircraft.”
Because of size restrictions, many U.S. airports have applied for waivers from the Federal Aviation Administration to handle the A380 and the similarly jumbo Boeing 747-8 jets. Currently, eight U.S. airports are permitted to handle both A380 passenger and cargo jets, and another three facilities are approved for A380 cargo aircraft only.
But Tamm worries that many facilities seeking the exemptions are unprepared. “A lot of these airports are only marginally ready,” he said.
Kennedy airport has an FAA-approved 36-page manual on A380 safety. Under the guidelines, Kennedy authorities can clear the taxiway of all other planes while an A380 is present, though some aviation experts say that is unfeasible.
Runway collisions were the focus of a safety crackdown in the 1980s, after a number of deadly incidents in the U.S. and abroad. In response, the FAA improved training on runway safety for air traffic controllers and clarified traffic signs for pilots on the taxiway.
In 2001, the FAA began to install warning systems that assess data from radar to prevent runway collisions well before there is an immediate danger, although implementation of the systems has been slow and uneven.
It’s not so much the size of the A380 that was the problem. The issue @ JFK was that the Comair jet stopped, unnoticed by controllers, while the aft end of the jet was still on the taxitrack.