Air crashes to rise unless flight control improves

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WIRE:03/09/2000 05:51:00 ET Air crashes to rise unless flight control improves

WASHINGTON, March 9 (Reuters) - The world will have a major air disaster every seven to 10 days by 2010 unless air traffic control systems are modernised, an aerospace executive has warned. In the next 10 to 20 years aviation will keep growing, meaning more planes, more departures and more congestion.

Norman Mineta, vice president for special business initiatives at Lockheed Martin Corp, said if air traffic control systems were not updated to meet the demand, there would be six or seven air catastrophes annually in the United States and one every seven to 10 days worldwide.

"That's absolutely unacceptable," said Mineta, who was a U.S. Congressman from 1975-95 and worked on aviation issues. He was addressing the Federal Aviation Adminstration's (FAA) annual Forecast Conference late on Wednesday.

Currently, he said the United States had the highest level of aviation safety today. "The risk of dying is one in every two million flights," he said.

But he criticised the FAA as "nearsighted," adding: "This is not a problem of funds, but the insufficient release of funds."

He said aviation was a significant engine for economic growth: "We need to give it room to grow...Without any room, you're creating a bottleneck and guaranteeing gridlock in the skies."

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20000309_686.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), March 09, 2000


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