Newsday (New York): A SCARE OVER CONNECTICUT; A Cheney close call;
Collision-avoidance alarm sounds, forcing Air Force Two pilot to suddenly climb to avoid another plane

Air Force Two, the military plane carrying Vice President Dick Cheney, was forced to make an evasive maneuver to avoid another aircraft in the skies over Bridgeport, Conn., earlier this month, federal officials said yesterday.

As Cheney headed to Westchester County Airport in White Plains on Aug. 7, a collision-avoidance system in the cockpit of the Gulfstream jet designated as Air Force Two sounded an alarm and commanded the pilot to climb to avoid another plane, officials said.

The two planes came within 0.44 miles horizontally and 700 feet vertically, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, which immediately pulled the radar and voice tapes from the New York TRACON in Westbury and has since issued a report to the Air Force.

The FAA said the incident is not technically classified as a near-midair collision or a mistake on the part of the controller or pilot. But pilots say it's extremely unusual for the collision-avoidance system - a computerized device mandated on all commercial passenger planes - to sound the alarm to command an evasive maneuver.

"It's a white-knuckle event," said one veteran airline pilot who said he has never had the warning system sound for an evasive maneuver. It's likely that Cheney and the other passengers would have felt the G-forces of the sudden climb, and there have been cases of flight attendants being injured when aircraft are forced to make evasive maneuvers.

Cheney's press office declined to comment.

The incident was not announced by the FAA, but officials confirmed it after Newsday learned what had happened.

Air traffic controllers at the New York TRACON in Westbury pointed out that the controller in charge of Air Force Two that day was a supervisor who had been called in on overtime, and said the incident shows the FAA has left the facility understaffed. The TRACON, where controllers guide aircraft to and from New York area airports, is authorized for 270 fully trained controllers but has only 207. That number is expected to dwindle as controllers retire in the next few years unless the FAA steps up the pace of hiring.

The supervisors called in to work on a radar position are required to work aircraft only eight hours a month to keep current, said Dean Iacopelli, the local chapter president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. "They only dabble in it," he said. "There is a real staffing crisis here."

But the FAA says that staffing wasn't an issue. "We use overtime to meet staffing needs, particularly in the summer so controllers can take vacation," said Arlene Salac, a FAA spokeswoman in New York, adding that the FAA has launched a study of staffing needs of air traffic control centers around the country and plans to issue a report to Congress in December.

The supervisor who was controlling the traffic did not make a mistake, Salac said. Because the two aircraft were not in a tightly controlled section of airspace, no separation standards applied; instead pilots and controllers are instructed to watch out for each other. The aircraft that Cheney's plane was trying to avoid was an unidentified plane that was not talking to air traffic controllers.

"The Air Force Two pilot and the controller had the traffic in sight at all times," Salac said.

The plane carrying Cheney and some family members to a fund-raiser in Harrison was headed west toward the airport and descending from 11,000 feet to 6,000 feet as the second aircraft was heading east at about 7,300 feet. Iacopelli said a controller sitting next to the supervisor, who was in charge of Air Force Two, first pointed out the other airplane when Air Force Two reached 8,500 feet, yelling, "Traffic for Air Force Two."

The FAA says that when Air Force Two reached 7,400 feet, the supervisor controlling the plane warned Air Force Two about the other plane, and the pilot responded that he was aware of it.

But at 11:19 a.m., the collision-avoidance system in the cockpit of Air Force Two sounded an alarm and commanded the pilot to make an evasive maneuver and climb to avoid the other plane. The computerized system sounds an alarm only when it recognizes that another aircraft is close enough to be a danger. The pilot of Air Force Two quickly climbed to 8,000 feet to avoid the other airplane.

The FAA doesn't generally investigate such instances, but because the plane was carrying the vice president, the agency put together a report to send to the Air Force.

Controllers typically pay special attention to Air Force One and Air Force Two, which are designated on their radar scopes as planes carrying the president or vice president.