Published: March 07, 2008 11:20 pm      

FAA: Airline incident not a ‘near miss’

SOMERSET — Air traffic controllers said two planes with more than 100 passengers were involved in a near miss over western Somerset County, but the Federal Aviation Administration on Friday called the report exaggerated.

The FAA accused the controllers’ union of trying to frighten the public to gain leverage in contract negotiations.

“There was no near miss or nosedive,” FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Ishman Cory said from Chicago. “There was never any danger of collision.”

The FAA sent an e-mail to The Plain Dealer of Cleveland, alerting the newspaper to what she called an “operational error” at 9:33 a.m. Tuesday.

Cleveland control is responsible for air traffic over western Pennsylvania.

The closest the aircraft got to each other was 3.05 nautical miles and 400 vertical feet, said the e-mail obtained by The Tribune-Democrat.

The standard separation for planes is 5 miles and 1,000 feet.

“The onboard traffic and collision avoidance system alerted on both aircraft,” the e-mail said.

One plane then reportedly flew up and the other flew down.

“We feel the union is trying to get attention for political gain,” Cory said.

Delta Flight 1654 was en route from Cincinnati to New York, carrying 57 passengers. The other plane, PSA Flight 2273, was flying from Wilkes-Barre to Charlotte, N.C., with 70 people aboard.

The incident happened when an traffic control trainee told the Delta pilot to turn into the path of an oncoming plane, officials said.

The trainee at Cleveland Air Traffic Control Center was working alongside two certified air traffic controls monitoring 14 aircraft. The two air traffic controllers have been sent for retraining, Cory said.

Melissa Ott, union spokeswoman at the traffic control center in Oberlin, Ohio, took issue with Cory’s comments. She said the issue is controllers are overworked.

If one of the aircraft had not dropped 400 feet, they would have passed within 1.8 miles of each other, she said.

“I absolutely would call this a near miss,” Ott said.