Delta Air Lines will restart its voluntary Aviation Safety Action Program as soon as March after going more than a year without it because of a dispute with its pilots union. Both the FAA and the NTSB lauded the return of the program, which is widely credited with reducing accidents in the airline industry, Bloomberg reported. The programs allow flight crews to submit reports for any safety lapses during flights, including things like runway incursions. The program is separate from an anonymous incident-reporting database maintained by NASA. Under the airlines’ ASAP programs, officials use the ASAP reports to modify procedures and shape training programs so that safety lapses don’t happen again. But pilot unions have said airlines were using the reports to punish some pilots who had written up safety lapses. Unable to reach agreements with their unions, several airlines dropped their ASAP programs: first Delta in December 2007, then American and Comair in October 2008 and US Airways in December 2008. American, Comair and US Airways have not yet restored their programs.

The NTSB’s report on a Dec. 20 Continental Airlines flight that swerved off the runway at Denver International Airport as it tried to take off provides few clues into what might have happened. The one-paragraph preliminary report indicates that winds were 24 knots with gusts to 32 knots and that the Boeing 737 would have been taking off with a crosswind of about 60 degrees. But no other planes had difficulty taking off from the same runway with that crosswind before the Continental crashed, and the crosswind component was within the limits for the Boeing 737-500. There were no deaths and just 37 injuries in the crash; the plane careened off the runway as it reached takeoff speed, sliding into a gully. One engine and the landing gear separated; the other engine caught fire and scorched the right side of the fuselage after the crash. The NTSB’s preliminary report provided no information on cockpit communications during the takeoff roll and no details on the plane’s mechanical condition.

An American Airlines Boeing 757 that made an emergency landing in West Palm Beach, Fla., Wednesday, may have had a problem with a cockpit window heater that has affected at least five other 757s since 2004. The plane was flying from San Juan, Puerto Rico to Philadelphia when the cockpit filled with smoke, the NTSB said in a news release. As the plane descended, the inner pane of the first officer’s window shattered. Photographs taken after landing showed the heating unit attached to that window burnt and partially melted, with cracks in the window radiating from it. Last year, the NTSB recommended the FAA mandate different heating systems in all Boeing 747, 757, 767 and 777 planes. While the FAA never followed up with that, it noted that Boeing recently issued a voluntary service bulletin that would address the issue in many of the planes.

This year was the worst on record for commercial airline delays throughout the country, prompting the FAA to institute flight caps at Kennedy International Airport in New York. JFK has been the root of many of those delays, with chronic over-scheduling and a lack of runway capacity backing up flights across the nation on some days. Incidents like the Feb. 14 ice storm that shut down JFK and left hundreds of passengers stranded in planes on the tarmac gave commercial aviation a bad name for many. There were some bright spots, though. Ultra low-cost carrier Skybus started up service from a hub in Columbus, Ohio, with flights to airports sometimes far away from the cities it claimed to serve. With the first ten seats on each flight priced at $10, the airline quickly gained a following. Virgin America finally started flying in 2007 out of its San Francisco hub after resolving the federal government’s concerns that too much of the airline was owned by a foreign company. The planes feature seatback entertainment options and colored mood lighting, among other perks. After a false start several years ago with Boeing’s Connexion program,
several airlines this year started testing in-flight wireless Internet access. The trend appears to be catching on, with JetBlue, Virgin America, Alaska Airlines and other domestic carriers launching, testing or expanding the service in 2008. Each airline is handling it differently, with some charging for the service and others providing some options, like instant messaging and e-mail access, for free.