And like most of America's problems, it has its roots in Ronald Reagan.
On the afternoon of July 2, a Southwest Airlines pilot had to abort a landing at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. A Delta Air Lines 737 was preparing to take off on the same runway. The sudden maneuver avoided a possible collision by seconds.
Nine days later, in San Francisco, an American Airlines jet was accelerating down the runway at more than 160 miles per hour when it narrowly missed a Frontier Airlines plane whose nose had almost jutted into its path. Moments later, the same thing happened as a German airliner was taking off. In both cases, the planes came so close to hitting the Frontier aircraft that the Federal Aviation Administration, in internal records reviewed by The New York Times, described the encounters as ''skin to skin.''
And two and a half weeks after that, an American flight to Dallas was traveling at more than 500 m.p.h. when a collision warning blared in the cockpit. An air traffic controller had mistakenly directed a United Airlines plane to fly dangerously close. The American pilot had to abruptly yank the Airbus A321 up 700 feet.
The incidents highlighted in preliminary F.A.A. safety reports but not publicly disclosed were among a flurry of at least 46 close calls involving commercial airlines last month alone.
They were part of an alarming pattern of safety lapses and near misses in the skies and on the runways of the United States, a Times investigation found. While there have been no major U.S. plane crashes in more than a decade, potentially dangerous incidents are occurring far more frequently than almost anyone realizes a sign of what many insiders describe as a safety net under mounting stress.
So far this year, close calls involving commercial airlines have been happening, on average, multiple times a week, according to a Times analysis of internal F.A.A. records, as well as thousands of pages of federal safety reports and interviews with more than 50 current and former pilots, air traffic controllers and federal officials.
The incidents often occur at or near airports and are the result of human error, the agencys internal records show. Mistakes by air traffic controllers stretched thin by a nationwide staffing shortage have been one major factor.
In addition to the F.A.A. records, The Times analyzed a database maintained by NASA that contains confidential safety reports filed by pilots, air traffic controllers and others in aviation. The analysis identified a similar phenomenon: In the most recent 12-month period for which data was available, there were about 300 accounts of near collisions involving commercial airlines.
The number of such near misses in the NASA database which is based on voluntary submissions that are not independently corroborated has more than doubled over the past decade, though it is unclear whether that reflects worsening safety conditions or simply increased reporting.
''Honestly, this stuff scares the crap out of me,'' a longtime airline captain, who previously was a carrier fighter pilot, reported to NASA in November. An air traffic controller had cleared the pilots flight to land on what looked like ''a collision course'' with another passenger plane. (NASA redacts entries identifying details, such as the airlines and pilots names.)
''This has really opened my eyes to how the next aviation accident may play out,'' another pilot wrote to NASA after a close call on a runway in January.
''Is it going to take people dying for something to move forward?'' a controller wrote the same month after barely preventing a midair collision.
One problem is that despite repeated recommendations from safety authorities, the vast majority of U.S. airports have not installed warning systems to help prevent collisions on runways.
But the most acute challenge, The Times found, is that the nations air traffic control facilities are chronically understaffed. While the lack of controllers is no secret the Biden administration is seeking funding to hire and train more the shortages are more severe and are leading to more dangerous situations than previously known.
As of May, only three of the 313 air traffic facilities nationwide had enough controllers to meet targets set by the F.A.A. and the union representing controllers, The Times found. Many controllers are required to work six-day weeks and a schedule so fatiguing that multiple federal agencies have warned that it can impede controllers abilities to do their jobs properly.
''The staffing shortage is beyond unsustainable. It has now moved into a phase of JUST PLAIN DANGEROUS,'' one controller wrote to the F.A.A. last year in a confidential safety report that The Times reviewed.
''Controllers are making mistakes left and right. Fatigue is extreme,'' the report continued. ''The margin for safety has eroded tenfold. Morale is rock bottom. I catch myself taking risks and shortcuts I normally would never take.''
The controller concluded, ''It is only a matter of time before something catastrophic happens.''
For planes that can move at hundreds of miles per hour, distances that seem substantial can vanish in seconds. The F.A.A. therefore requires planes to maintain large buffers between one another. (The size of the buffers varies depending on factors like flight conditions and the type of plane.)
The F.A.A. and NASA records that The Times reviewed, as well as interviews with controllers and pilots, indicate that those standards are routinely breached. Only some of those violations are regarded as significant but they are happening with regularity.
They included a series of incidents that became public early this year. At Kennedy International Airport in New York in January, an American Airlines flight crossed into the path of a Delta flight that was accelerating for takeoff. The Delta pilot slammed on the brakes, barely avoiding a crash.
Three weeks later, on a foggy morning in Austin, Texas, an air traffic controller cleared a FedEx plane to land on the same runway as a departing Southwest flight. The planes, both moving at more than 150 m.p.h., came within less than 100 feet of colliding.
Over the next few weeks, there were similar incidents in Sarasota, Fla.; Burbank, Calif.; and Boston, where a JetBlue Airways flight aborted its landing to avoid colliding with a charter plane that was taking off without clearance from air traffic control.
In an attempt to improve safety and restore public confidence, federal officials opened investigations into the incidents, urged the aviation community to exercise ''continued vigilance'' and convened a safety summit.
''The absence of a fatality or an accident doesnt mean the presence of safety,'' Jennifer Homendy, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said at the summit, in March. She added, ''These recent incidents must serve as a wake-up call for every single one of us before something more catastrophic occurs, before lives are lost.''
While the string of headline-grabbing incidents was unnerving, there were other significant ones that have not been publicly reported. Preliminary descriptions were included in what are known as the Administrators Daily Alert Bulletins, which are distributed to a select group of F.A.A. employees and which The Times reviewed.
Mistakes by air traffic controllers caused some of the close calls. Others were pilots fault. Some incidents involved errors by both.
When back-to-back planes nearly smashed into the Frontier jet whose nose was edging onto the San Francisco runway in July, one of the underlying problems was the shortage of air traffic controllers.
The F.A.A.s internal reports into the incident found that the Frontier pilot made a mistake. But the controller monitoring the runway didnt do enough to mitigate the pilots error. Staffing during the incident ''was not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,'' the F.A.A. wrote. The controller who was supposed to be supervising colleagues was busy marshaling planes.
Officials at the F.A.A. already knew that San Franciscos air traffic control tower was understaffed. As of May, it had 20 fully certified controllers, according to data that The Times obtained from the agency via a public records request. That was 33 percent below the target set by a group of officials from the F.A.A. and the controllers union.
The situation in San Francisco was common. Ninety-nine percent of the nations air traffic control facilities 310 out of 313 had fewer fully certified controllers than the groups target levels, according to a Times analysis of the F.A.A. data and the agencys most recent ''Air Traffic Controller Workforce Plan.''
The roots of the current staffing shortage date to the early 1980s, when the Reagan administration replaced thousands of controllers who were on strike. Since then, there have been waves of departures as controllers become eligible for retirement. The F.A.A. has struggled to keep pace.
The F.A.A. has required many controllers to work six days a week. Halfway through 2023, some controllers had already clocked more than 400 hours of overtime, according to schedules reviewed by The Times.
On top of that, many controllers work a schedule where the starting time for their shifts rotates over the course of a week. On the first day, a controller might work an afternoon shift. From there, the shifts start progressively earlier, culminating with a 24-hour period in which the controller works both an early morning shift and, as few as eight hours later, overnight duty. Many controllers call the schedule ''the rattler'' because like the snake, it has a nasty bite.
The F.A.A. and the controllers union approved the schedule, which is designed in part to spread busy shifts across employees.
But many controllers said that, coupled with mandatory overtime, it has pushed them to the physical and psychological brink. Some said they hadnt sought medical or mental health care because they were afraid of jeopardizing the medical clearances they needed to remain in their jobs. Instead, they self-medicated with banned sleeping pills and alcohol. The result, they said in interviews and internal safety complaints, was potentially hazardous mistakes.
The National Transportation Safety Board and the Department of Transportations inspector general have found that ''the rattler'' increased the risk of controller errors. Since then, the F.A.A. has modified the schedule to address some concerns, but controllers said it remained grueling.
On a Sunday in late July, an Allegiant Air flight was cruising at 23,000 feet from Fort Lauderdale to Lexington, Ky. An air traffic controller in Miami who was overseeing the airspace instructed the pilot to turn east directly into the path of a private Gulfstream jet. A collision alert sounded, and both planes took evasive action. The Allegiant plane climbed so sharply that a flight attendant fell and suffered a wrist injury. The plane returned to Fort Lauderdale, where an emergency medical crew took the flight attendant to the hospital.
The close call made headlines. An internal F.A.A. document about the incident said that staffing at the Miami air traffic center ''was not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic.'' There was no supervisor on duty covering the airspace in which the incident occurred.
The Miami facility, which handles more than two million aircraft a year, faces chronic staff shortages. As of May, it had 201 certified controllers, far below the recommended level of at least 298.
''If there is a shortage of controllers for a shift, we slow traffic to match the level of staff and to maintain safety,'' said Mr. Lehner, the F.A.A. spokesman.
Pilots, air traffic controllers and federal investigators have warned repeatedly that Americas air safety system is fraying.
''I saw the nose of the jet with his lights illuminated at a close range. It looked like a cover photo from Flying Magazine,'' a commercial airline pilot wrote in March, after coming within 200 feet of crashing into another aircraft in the skies around Jacksonville, Fla. ''This conflict was too close to risk any single life we had on board, much less the 198 souls traveling collectively on us.''
In another report this year, a pilot narrated nearly colliding with two separate passenger planes after landing in Tampa on a foggy morning.
''I noticed a dark silhouette of an aircraft that appeared to be moving directly at us. It was extremely difficult to see, but I yelled STOP to the captain, The aircraft is going to hit us,'' the pilot wrote. ''The other aircraft never slowed down, and if we would have noticed it a second later we would have collided. There was a second aircraft following the first, and it did not slow down either, and it passed our wingtips within ft.''
The captain called the air traffic control facility. ''They stated that the two aircraft that almost hit us were not supposed to be there,'' the pilot wrote.
Collisions on the ground can be deadly if the aircraft are moving at high speeds, as they often are on runways.
The F.A.A. said it was trying to address the controller shortage. In its most recent budget request, it sought $117 million to train controllers and hire 1,800 new ones in the 2024 fiscal year, which begins in October. (The F.A.A. also requested more funding for technology and safety measures.)
The extra funding would not be a panacea. The F.A.A. expects to lose more than 1,400 controllers next year because of retirements and other departures. And new controllers must undergo years of training.
In the meantime, near misses continue to occur regularly.
Just after 5 p.m. on Aug. 7, a controller at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport cleared American Flight 1388 for takeoff to New York. The controller instructed it to turn right after departing the airport, but the American pilot incorrectly repeated the directions back to the controller, according to F.A.A. safety reports. The controller didnt catch the mistake.
After the plane took off, it banked left instead of right, directly into the path of a Southwest flight en route to Austin.
A different air traffic controller realized the planes were on a collision course. He radioed in urgent tones to the American pilot that the other flight was just to its left ''a Boeing 737 sitting right there.''
The two planes came within a third of a mile horizontally and 300 feet vertically of each other before pulling apart.
A midair catastrophe had been averted by seconds
Obviously not every close call means that they were on the brink of disaster, or theres no way we would have been this lucky, but an accident does seem inevitable.
In the abstract, air traffic controllers get paid reasonably well relative to the education requirements (~$120,000), but given the persistent staffing shortages, the 60 hour work weeks, and how absolutely critical the job is, its clearly not enough.
Obviously not every close call means that they were on the brink of disaster, or theres no way we would have been this lucky, but an accident does seem inevitable.
In the abstract, air traffic controllers get paid reasonably well relative to the education requirements (~$120,000), but given the persistent staffing shortages, the 60 hour work weeks, and how absolutely critical the job is, its clearly not enough.
The pay seems fine if they had a normal 40 hour week. Instead of increasing pay, just hire more controllers with that money and make sure they don't have to work wonky shifts and seldom need to do overtime...
Grinding down a tiny workforce w/ tons of overtime instead of just fucking hiring more people is a common problem across most fields...