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Runway Run-Ins
The Travel Critic · June 22, 1998

For a thrilling take-off, flight attendant Dave Row is partial to John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Calif. First, there's the abbreviated airfield that forces pilots to hold down the brakes, throttle up the engine and then peel out across the runway as if they're being catapulted from an aircraft carrier.

Then there are the strict noise abatement rules, which require planes to cut their engines while they're in a steep climb over Newport Beach. "I see passengers clutching their seat and looking at me to make sure everything is OK," he says. "Sometimes they scream."

Yeah, it's all fun and games until somebody gets hurt. Good thing no one has-yet.

What John Wayne and a handful of other domestic airfields have had, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, are close calls. They're referred to as "runway incursions," which basically means something is on the tarmac that shouldn't be there.

Incursions can be anything from a bird refusing to budge to two 747s almost grazing each other. These incursion reports, as imprecise as they may be, are one of the few measures of airfield safety, as far as I can tell.

Between June 1997 and May 1998, according to the FAA, there were seven reported incursions at John Wayne. Asked to comment about her airport's record, spokeswoman Pat Markley points out that none of the incidents became accidents, and further, "an incursion is a very wide category."

True enough. And Orange County hasn't got the worst record around. Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, for instance, had 11 incursions during the same period.

"As far as we're concerned, our airport is safe," insists Sandy Singer, a communications manager for Lambert. "We've only had one fatality at this airport, and that was back in 1994."

But no domestic airport can compete with San Francisco International at the moment. Although it racked up only eight incursions, it also got called on the carpet by the International Federation of Air Line Pilots' Associations in Montreal last month.

In a leaked internal report, pilots berated the way SFO handles landings on parallel runways, calling it "critically deficient." An unidentified pilot remarked, "it's been known for pilots to start aiming at the wrong runway and drift across in front of the other plane."

San Francisco spokesman Ron Wilson calls the charges unfair. "SFO is one of the safest airports in the United States. We haven't had an accident at the airport since 1926, and we've never had the death of a commercial passenger in the history of this airport," he says. "But this report has put a dent in our reputation."

Even the pilots' union is downplaying the report's significance. Union spokesman John Mazor says the leaked list was meant for internal consumption and not intended to be used as a source for ranking the world's most dangerous airports. He says the report was filled with "very cryptic pilot-ese" that's easy for a reporter to misinterpret.

"As far as we're concerned, there are no unsafe airports in the United States," he added. "If there were, they wouldn't be unsafe for long. Pilots would refuse to fly into them. But there is no such thing as a completely safe airport, either. They all have their problems."

You don't hear a lot about hazardous airports: any rankings you'll find are likely to be safe, safer, safest. Last year's National Civil Aviation Review Commission report on reducing accident rates surmised "Commercial aviation is an extraordinarily safe human endeavor. The risk of perishing in a commercial aircraft accident is about one in every two million flights."

Great. But is anybody watching these runway run-ins to make sure there aren't any alarming patterns emerging? It's difficult to say who is ultimately responsible for airport safety. Counties and cities usually maintain the facilities and runways. Air traffic controllers, who are employed by the federal government, direct the planes, which are piloted by airline personnel. If something goes wrong, it's usually because one or more of these parties failed to perform their duties.

Or it could be the weather, animals or private pilots. Gets kind of complicated.

The good news is that the odds of meeting an untimely demise on the tarmac are so low that it's not something worth worrying about.

So as I ponder the data on runway incursions, I may have second thoughts about using Dallas/Fort Worth, Newark, San Francisco and St. Louis, among others. But they'll just be thoughts, nothing more.

Truth is, I'd use the Orange County airport-or any other "high-incursion" airport-without hesitating, and so would most folks if the fare was right, or if they had business to do there. As long as the planes leave on time and the luggage ends up in the right city.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator and author of A Bridge to Nowhere: A Year in the Florida Keys. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.