FAA admits controllers wrongfully blamed pilots

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The Federal Aviation Administration yesterday admitted that air-traffic controllers in Dallas intentionally blamed their own mistakes on pilots — the latest round of revelations about safety lapses at the embattled agency.

FAA officials said they are changing the way they supervise air-traffic controllers nationwide as a result of the improper error reporting at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

"Most of them were on the minor side, but not all of them," Hank Krakowski, the FAA's chief operating officer for air traffic, said of the reporting errors.

The errors most often consisted of inadequate distances between aircraft.

One incident involved an airplane crossing the path of another plane without air-traffic controllers informing either pilot.

Under new procedures announced yesterday, managers at local air-traffic-control stations would no longer have authority to assign blame for errors in reports to the FAA. Instead, reports would be turned over to an independent group within the FAA that delivers them directly to the agency's head of aviation safety.

The FAA is introducing new technology at airports nationwide to monitor air-traffic-control errors. The first computerized system is scheduled to be installed at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport this year and at other U.S. airports nationwide by the end of 2009.

The system would "take some of the judgment calls" out of reporting flight errors, Mr. Krakowski said.

The agency also is introducing a self-reporting procedure that allows air-traffic controllers to report their own mistakes without risk of penalty.

"It will help to remove a punitive safety culture," Mr. Krakowski said.