The NTSB wants the FAA to take quick action that could prevent another mid-air collision over the Hudson River like the one earlier this month that killed nine people. Establishing mandatory altitudes for airplanes and helicopters to fly at while in the congested river corridor is one move that could help, the board said in a letter to the FAA. Requiring all aircraft to monitor and transmit on a common traffic advisory frequency could also make a difference, the letter says. The NTSB wants changes to air traffic control procedures so that controllers would be required to either tell aircraft to switch to the advisory frequency or else clear aircraft to enter the Class B airspace above the river corridor. At the time of the collision, the Piper Lance that was involved had asked for flight following and was being handed off from one controller to another, while the sightseeing helicopter was making position reports on the existing common frequency. The FAA has said it will wait to act until it sees the report from a working group of controllers and safety experts that it convened two weeks ago. That group is expected to complete its work this week, the New York Times reported.

The FAA is moving forward with its controversial plan to pull National Weather Service forecasters from its en route centers, but not without concerns from other government agencies. At a congressional hearing last week, officials from the FAA asserted they would only proceed with the plan if a nine-month trial run was successful, the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization reported. But the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan research arm of Congress, expressed concerns, given that the FAA and the NWS haven’t come up with specific, shared goals for the project. “Any changes to the current structure could degrade aviation operations and safety – and the agencies may not know it,” David Powner, a GAO director, was reported as saying. Currently, the FAA spends $12 million per year to have 84 forecasters stationed at en route centers nationwide for 16 hours each day. Under the proposed consolidation, the agency would instead pay to have a smaller number of forecasters on call 24 hours per day, working out of two offices that would be in contact with all centers. The FAA says not only will the move save money (it won’t say how much), but it would make nationwide forecasts more consistent. The weather service says it will back the plan as long as it can still deliver accurate and timely forecasts.

A pair of runway incursions three weeks apart at Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport has investigators looking at the training process for new air traffic controllers. In the June 3 and June 26 incidents, the same controller in training was on position, though backed by different certified controllers supervising the trainee, CNN reported. In the first incident, a Southwest flight and a Continental Express flight were cleared to take off from the same runway at the same time. The crew of the Continental flight saw the other airplane and stopped, avoiding a collision by about 500 feet. In the second incident, an ExpressJet flight was cleared to taxi across the same runway that a CommutAir flight had been cleared to take off from. The ExpressJet plane stopped before crossing the runway when it saw the other plane. FAA officials said the responsibility for the incursions will lie with the two certified controllers who were watching the trainee when the incidents occurred. The air traffic controllers union said the trainee had completed less than a third of the required training hours on that position had received only 11 hours of training in June. The union attributed that low number of training hours to the large number of trainees, which has made it hard at some airports to pair certified controllers with trainees.

The initial report by French investigators into the June 1 crash of Air France flight 447 in the Atlantic Ocean shows there were communication problems between air traffic controllers in Brazil and Senegal at the time of the crash. Flight 447 never made contact with air traffic controllers in Senegal monitoring a wide swath of the Atlantic, but for several hours, the controllers in Dakar assumed the flight had flown through their airspace and into Cape Verde’s airspace, the French report says. About three hours after taking off, flight 447 sent a string of automated messages over ACARS to Air France that the autopilot had disconnected and that there were several failures on the primary flight displays. For several hours after that, controllers in Dakar and Cape Verde called each other and talked about estimates for where the flight would be, but neither ever had contact with flight 447. Four hours after the burst of ACARS messages that lead up to the crash, and without contact from flight 447, the Dakar controller told the Brazilian controller that the flight had passed into another control area. In the course of its investigation, French authorities found that three other flights in the area at the time deviated as much as 80 miles around large thunderstorms that may have played a role in the crash. Two of those flights also had trouble reaching controllers in Dakar over high-frequency radio. So far, 50 bodies have been recovered from flight 447, as well as an assortment of parts of the plane, including the vertical stabilizer, a bathroom door, parts of the crew rest area and part of a galley. The flight data and cockpit voice recorders have not been located, and officials have said they may never be found since the signals would be faint by now.

A new computer system the FAA says will eventually handle all radar, communications and flight plan information at en route facilities got its first real-world test last week. Controllers at Salt Lake Center switched to the En Route Automation Modernization system for four hours early Thursday morning, handling a total of 170 flights on the new system during that time, the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization reported. While the FAA called the test successful, it also said that engineers will spend the next few weeks addressing unspecified “problem areas.” Prior to the ERAM test, Utah’s congressional delegation wrote letters to the FAA urging the agency to delay the test until several known large bugs were resolved first, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. The rollout of ERAM has been delayed for months at Salt Lake Center and Seattle Center as Lockheed Martin, which developed the program, has tried to iron out problems with the hardware and software. So far in lab tests, it has been unable to run for more than about a day without needing to be reset.

The ranks of air traffic controllers are swelling quickly as the FAA has kept hiring new controllers at a brisk pace, and as older controllers are putting off retirement in hopes of getting a better labor contract soon. The FAA has hired 5,500 new controllers in the last three years, creating a burden at some facilities where as many as 40 percent of the controllers are uncertified trainees who must work alongside certified controllers, the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization reported. In the previous fiscal year, which ended in September 2008, the FAA hired 2,196 new controllers. The agency now counts 15,400 controllers in its workforce and says it will continue to hire about 1,500 controllers per year for the next few years, though it does not expect air traffic operations to surge upward anytime soon. The FAA found itself in a staffing crunch in late 2006 and 2007 after it imposed work rules that controllers opposed. That prompted some controllers who had been hired after the 1981 PATCO strike to start retiring early, leaving the remaining controllers at many facilities to work mandatory overtime. Because it can take three or more years for new controllers to become fully certified, it may still be a while before staff evens out at some facilities.

A team of mediators overseen by Jane Garvey, the FAA’s administrator during Bill Clinton’s second term, will begin negotiating a new contract with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary, said last week in making the announcement that securing a new contract and improving the working relationship between the FAA and its workers was one of his highest priorities, the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization reported. But neither side is saying anything specific about what they hope a new contract will look like, or exactly when it would go into effect. NATCA responded to LaHood’s remarks with a short but positive statement, praising LaHood for his “leadership and commitment” in addressing the issue. Controllers have been working under imposed work rules since 2006, when contract talks broke down and the FAA, at the Bush administration’s direction, enacted new rules. Those rules cut base pay for new controllers, limited raises for veteran controllers and made taking time off more difficult. As a result, many controllers started retiring early, causing staffing shortages nationwide that forced controllers at many facilities to work six days each week.

Up to 40 percent of the controllers at some of the nation’s busiest air traffic control facilities are developmental trainees, a new government report has found. And on average, a quarter of the controllers at any given facility are trainees, the Los Angeles Daily Breeze reported. That’s causing a new set of staffing problems, since it could be a year or more before those trainees are fully certified. At Los Angeles International Airport, a fifth of the controllers are trainees, while at Socal Approach, nearly a third are in training. That means experienced controllers are working more hours as they train new controllers. At LAX last year, controllers clocked nearly 5,900 hours of overtime, versus 600 hours of overtime the year before. The FAA is handing out bonuses of $25,000 or more to experienced controllers who transfer to busy, short-staffed facilities, and to controllers who stay on an extra year instead of retiring early. While the number of trainees is climbing steadily and will continue to do so for the near term, the number of serious operational errors at many busy facilities is lower than at this time last year.

It’s been nearly three years since the Bush Administration’s FAA imposed work rules on its air traffic controllers. But assuming the Obama Administration’s pick to head the FAA, Randy Babbitt, is confirmed, working out a new contract with the union would be the agency’s No.-1 priority, National Public Radio reported. Babbitt is a former aviation consultant and lobbyist. Before that, he was the president of the Air Line Pilots Association. Government officials are already saying the new contract with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association will include raises and better work rules. The current rules lowered the base pay for new controllers and froze salaries for many others. Goal number two for Babbitt’s FAA will be the continued modernization of the nation’s air traffic control infrastructure. But how that project will move forward is unclear, since the transition to ADS-B is costly for the government, airlines and general aviation.

Pilots over much of southern Florida can now take advantage of ADS-B coverage to get information on weather and planes flying near them – if they have the right cockpit equipment. A company with a $1.8 billion contract from the FAA has been installing Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast stations in Florida for the last year and now has much of the system there up and running, the Tampa Tribune reported. But even as the equipment goes into operation more places and with much of the eastern seaboard covered, the costs for new cockpit gear could leave pilots and airlines reeling. For a typical general aviation plane, a Mode S transponder starts at around $3,600. Add on a display for traffic and weather information, along with installation, and owners would shell out as much as $30,000 today to make use of ADS-B. For commercial airliners, the full equipment package would cost at least $160,000 and possibly much more. Some operators in Florida and elsewhere are already seeing the benefits of ADS-B, despite the costs. One flight school has the equipment in all 100 of its planes, allowing managers to track the progress of training flights. And UPS, the first airline to equip its fleet, has found it can increase the number of arrivals at its Louisville, Ky., hub by as much as 15 percent. Plus it can take advantage of optimum descent profiles that save fuel and cut emissions when the conditions are right.