.... MEDFORD MAIL TRIBUNE. KIEDFORD. OREGON MONDAY. JULY 2. 1962 J
Grand Canyon Crash Brought Stay Air Traffic Control Improvements
Editor'i noit: It was on merce Dcpartnient. reliable air safely source.--, an i require spending another S51HI . improvements. In devoting '"' Wo 'ven have psychia- inslea.l of liie present ohso- incidents involved actual dan-
Saturday Six VCars man Uct 1 Trnmon... Bvn3ncinn nr1 3i-flri f nr! iv nr. ,villir h.r a mnlolv l,n r.f r.. l.i a tril illWrvi,'u-ipi m.,. i-h.i l., I. ..j .t i J . n.. . I
hav
Saturday lix years ago last
week, that two airlineri col
lided over the Grand Canyon
and lent 128 persons to their
dealhi. The following diipatch
umt up the accomplishments
and the failures in solving the
air collision problem since
that disaster.
By ROBERT J. SERLING
UPI Aviation Editor
Washington - lUPli - What
happened on June 30, 1956, at
21.000 feet over the Grand
Canyon, led to major reforms
and improvements in the na
tion's air traffic control sys
tf ni.
Unfortunately, however,
the traffic has grown faster
than all the necessary reforms
and improvements could be
applied.
In the six years since a Uni
ted DC7 and a TWA Constel
lation collided over Arizona,
the achievements are many
and impressive. They include:
Establishment of the in
dependent, well-heeled Feder
al Aviation Agency in place
of the old financially starved,
politically harrassed Civil
Aeronautics Administration
which was part of the Com
Tremendous expansion of
the Federal government's Air
Traffic Control System partic
ularly In use of long-range,
en route radar to separate
traffic safel) and in the ac
tual number of controllers
from 8.036 in 1956 to 17,625
as of today.
Better coordination be
tween military and civil traf
fic, especially at the higher,
en route altitudes used by
jets.
Improved cockpit visibil
ity in every plane, particu
larly airliners built since the
1956 crash.
Enormous increases in
the use of instrument flight
rules which put planes under
control from the ground
(about 90 per cent of commer
cial airline flights now are
under IFR compared to about
30 per cent at the time of the
crash over Grand Canyonl.
Menace Worsens in Spots
These accomplishments,
however, do not hide the un
pleasant fact that the collision
menace not only exists but
in some ways is even worse
as traffic continues to expand.
There still are. according to
Price of Coffee in
America Critical
To Latin Americans
By A. ROBERT SMITH
Mail Tribune Washington
9 Correspondent
Washington (Special) The
price of a cup of American
coffee is more critical to a
J. x rtl tin American
f countries than
Mil trhether they
i receive Ameri
ca aid uraear
the n AMI
ai for fYos
mm
Sewn. Vaygw
) Vfcviea, chair
man of the La
tin American subcommittee
on Foreign Relations, made
that clev in a recent speech
in ehich he summarized
some of the obatecles to econ
omic prop's south of the
border.
Generally, Morse thinXs
the- Allience for Progress has
registered some isains but that
it hes a ton's way to aw in
rcaliownn vesfcr afe e
smie oMtiwa2r asril pas.
rarity c tfce giiwwge peauesja
of Latin America.
He seid the failure thus far
to tori out price stabilisa
tion agreement for such cri
tictl Latin exirorts as coffee
htm ceiiacl iietreas in some
countries. That price c Colom
bia, coffee., for eyantase, he
dropped from M to 41 cents
i pound in tlje past five years
- and every cent per pound
mean g lnjs of $7.5 million
In Colombia, for coffee pro
vides about 77 ir cent of
that country's export income.
Other Latin countries are
dependent upon eother single
commodities for a hevy share
r)f thair ineojrft Venezu
ela, 92 per cent from oil; Bo
livia, 62 per cent from tin;
Ecuador, 57 per cent from
bananas; and Chile, 66 per
pent from copper.
Penny Per Cup
If the price of coffee could
through stabilization be re
stored to BO cents, Morse said
the cost to American coffee
drinkers would amount to
about a penny per cup. But it
would mean an additional
$400 million a year in earn
ings for Brazil and $50 mil
lion annually for Colombia.
The success of the program,
said Morse, is dependent upon
"the willingness of recipient
nations to undertake funda
mental reforms of their insti
tutions and social patterns
and to mobilize to the fullest
extent possible their own do
mestic resources."
"Many of those who con
trol the major resources of
some Latin countries fall into
a state of shock whenever
thee 1 mention" f 'social re
form," which tl.ey falsely
confuse witri violent upheav
al. The usuae result of each
such 'shock wave' is that an
other 1Q0 million or so wings
off to Switzerland. Thus it
occurs that a privileged min
ority who fear revolution
above all things so act, in
their fesr, as to make revolu
tion more likely," said Morse.
He said estimates of the
flight of capital abroad range
from 9S to 10 Hllion, which
is one-third to one-half the
total M0 biHion contemplated
in aid urstear the Alliance for
At Wk SOmk thMe, United
Staa6 awMl European invest
ment in Lajin America has
dropped sharply below expec
tations. In contrast to S300
million a year in the fifties,
U. S. investment was down to
91 million in 180 and S190
million in 1M1.
M lastearffjiakj
"It is up tf the Latin Ameri
can governments to make
their countries more attract
ive to private capital aid it
ct baj said that the efforts
thus far made are encourag
ing for the future," the sen
ator said. "Recent expropria
tions and nationalistic finan
cial regulations adopted in a
number of countries have
tended to frighten off new in
vestors." On the positive side, Morse
said in the first year of the
Alliance, as the U.S. commit
ted $1 billion in aid. "meas
ures of progress and reform
have been begun throughout
the continent, ranging from
the mobilization of domestic
resources fo new education
and housing programs . . .
(and) new programs of lax and
land reform, housing, educa
tion, agriculture, power and
luiblic sanitation ?te being
launched in most of the Amer
ican republics."
6 PROOF ECHO SPAING OlSt CO.. LOUISVILLE. KY.
BOURBON Ji yar oU
iiiiiiMiW
Th succest of tft"A"
mm mm
ASM
683'
fifth
6 .
8
.sio( Jlnim, J
1 1 BOURBON
!l$sM
average of nearlv six near
collisions daily. Most involve
private aircraft operating un
der visual flight rules with no
positive control from the ATC
system. But the FAA itself
admits too many also involve
aircraft operating IFR with
controller errors responsible
for some of them.
The most obvious and fre
quent question asked is why
should there be a collision
menace after six years and
millions of dollars in federal
spending supposed to solve
the problem?
The FAA since it came into
existence in 1958 has spent
$51.5 million in research to
perfect an automatic or semi
automatic system of control
ling air traffic. FAA Admin
istrator Najeeb E. Halabv re
cently warned that such a
system still is about five years
away and probably will
million before a completely
modern system is actually
working.
The chief blame, according
to impartial experts, is the
lack of any orderlv plan for
automated ATC. "Wandering
research" one critic called it
the failure to settle on a
single system and then ham
mer awav until it is perfect
ed. Part of this is due to the
very human tendency lo de
lay equipment decisions be
cause "there might be a bet
ter device jusl around the cor
ner." Only in the past few
months has FAA's massive re
search program stopped wan
dering and started concentrating.
Research Thwarts Svstum I
ATC research itself has
generated not only delays in
long-range modernization but
in badly needed immediate
the maioritv of funds lo
svstem of the future, some
of the needs of the present tiol incidents We're trying to
have been ignored. The chief establish any correlation be
sufferer is the controller, who itween working conditions and
commits errors that are as errors lor example we have
much the fault of inadequate some evidence that most nils-
tools as a human mistake. And
most of them are committed
in the crowded, busy termi- controller
nal areas where en route traf
fic begins to pile up.
There has been widespread
publicity recently about con
troller errors, such as the one
that put two airliners into a
holding pattern at the same
interviewing men who lete method of hand-written
been involved in con- slips of paper This achieve-
ment, however, appears to lie
several years away.
Even with obsolete tools,
the controller's record since
the ballooning traffic of the
past six years has been re
markable. In llitil, there were
278 "1 n c i dents" involving
some kind of controller error.
The projected figure for Iil(i2
is '258. The ATC system han
dles about 200.000 flights dal
ly. And not all the so-called
takes are made in tlje first
hour of a work shift, when a
cold,' rather
than in the seventh hour
when he may be fatigued."
Thomas. Bain and Carmody
all agree thai the most press
ing equipment need is for
more accurate altitude re
porting. Present radar can
incidents involved actual dan
ger. A controller must report
any instance when two planes
are brought within less than
their required 10-minute sep
aration and a nine minute
separation is investigated us
closely as a nine-second one.
Thomas figures the average
center controller makes one
mistake every 14 years; the
average tower controller one
error every 45 years. )
"I wish all professions I
were lhat good," says the i
head of ATC's 17,000 men. !
SHIP IT LASME
to or Irom Oakland, San Fran
c'ico, Lot Angeles and orhtr
California points.
Call
Jack
Fitzgerald
TWIN GOES HOME
Patricia Lowe, the larger of a set of
former Siamese twins, is shown as she left the hospital with
her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Lowe, in San Francisco.
The other child, Prudence, will be able lo go home in a week
or so as she must still receive cortisone injections to help her
gain weight. Dr. Pieter de Vries. who headed the team of
physicians which separated the girls, said the ll week old
twins are "doing fine." (UPI)
altitude for more than 40 min-jtell only speed and direction.
It cannot distinguish altitudes.
The first major breakthrough
in solving the collision men
ace will come with the de
velopment of a device that
automatically sends an alti
tude signal from aircraft to
utes. And the FAA. for the
first lime, is taking a really
close look at controller prob
lems. It has one group of trouble-shooters,
headed by for
mer airline executive Gordon
Bain, looking at the present
system itsell lo see wnal im- Vround radar, and records
mediate improvements can bej,hat altitude visually on the
made. It has another group, rad.,r Sl.0pc It presently is
directed by veteran ATC ex- ,he highest - priority project
perl Charles Carmody, gath-!in FFA . mdl,slrv research.
ering suggestions from con- . , .
, ,, ,1 . Need Handoff Personnel
(rollers themselves.
I 1 he second most immediate
need is more manpower for
i radar handolls - literally
; keeping aircraft under cen-
Alreariy their work is jell
ing into some concrete ideas
on what can be done to reduce
controller mistakes in the in
terim period between today's
ATC system and what will
come in the future. For ex
ample: - Controllers need more
specialization. They literally
have too much to remember.
A controller in a major cen
ter must know virtually every
word in 10 procedure man
uals stacked a fool high.
Controllers need more re
fresher training and in a for
malized classroom, rather
than the present "on-the-job"
briefings they get to inform
them of new procedures, me
thods and equipment.
Receive Close Examination
Dave Thomas, head of
FAA's Bureau of Air Traf
fic Management, says no
field of human endeavor is
being examined more closely
than ATC and the men who
operate it.
"In the personnel explosion
that followed Grand Canyon,"
he explains, "we concentrated
on getting more controllers
into the system as quickly as
possible. Now we must con
centrate on keeping them pro
ficient. "When one makes mis
take, we're trying to find out
ter to another. It was the lack
of such handoff continuity
that played a role in the col
lision of two airliners over
New York in 1060. FFA's next
budget calls fy 1.100 new
controllers and 800 of them
would be earmarked for hand
off duty.
The third major require
ment is an electronic system
for keeping track of flights,
m
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