Tempe Town Lake is really noisy. The Tempe Town Toilet is in the flight path of Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix which is really busy with about 1,500 aircraft arriving and departing each day. That's means a loud noisy jet deafens your ear drums flys over the Town Toilet over once every minute! Check out this audio/video of a jet landing rattling your ear drums as it flys above Tempe Town Lake

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Sky Harbor ranks No. 5 in worst runway safety

Republic staff and wire services
Nov. 25, 2005 12:00 AM

It's not a record you want to brag about: Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport joins three others in Southern California for having the worst runway-safety records recently among the nation's busiest airports, a review of federal aviation data shows.

At issue are runway incursions that occur when a plane or vehicle on the ground gets too close to a plane that is landing or taking off.

At Sky Harbor, about 1,500 aircraft arrive and depart each day, making it the nation's fifth busiest.

Since 1999 there have been 39 incursions, placing Sky Harbor at No. 5 for the worst runway-safety record, trailing Los Angeles International Airport; John Wayne Airport in Orange County; Long Beach Airport; and Chicago O'Hare International Airport, according to the data.

A Sky Harbor spokeswoman said Thursday there would be no immediate comment.

Federal officials are most concerned by the situation at LAX, where commercial jets have come close to crashing at least twice since 1999, the first year of data reviewed by The Associated Press.

The problem persists because LAX's airfield has built-in flaws: It's too tightly packed and arriving aircraft must cross runways used for takeoffs.

Southern California has long been the nation's epicenter for runway incursions.

Among the country's 25 busiest commercial airports, John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Long Beach Airport and LAX ranked one, two and three in runway-incursion rates since 1999. Rates are measured by incidents per 100,000 flights.

The three airports also topped the list for the total number of incidents, regardless of size.

Nationwide, the number of incursions has dropped about 20 percent from its 2001 peak. Airports in Boston, Philadelphia and Newark had unusually high numbers of incursions in fiscal year 2005; those in Denver, San Francisco and New York's La Guardia had none, according to federal records.

Still, federal attention has focused on LAX because the incursion rate has remained consistently high.

"I don't feel there's an enormous safety problem there right now (but) the numbers do concern us," said Dave Kurner, the Federal Aviation Administration's regional runway-safety program manager.

Spokeswomen at Long Beach and John Wayne airports said most of their runway incursions involved small, private planes. LAX, however, mostly serves commercial aircraft, giving it the greatest potential for a catastrophic accident.

Aviation officials call the geographic clustering a coincidence.

"There's no common theme or thread, nothing unique to Southern California," FAA spokesman Donn Walker said.

After years of planning, LAX plans a permanent fix: a $250 million airfield renovation that officials say should eliminate most of the violations.

LAX has seen six to 10 incursions annually since 1999, though FAA officials caution those numbers can be misleading.

None of LAX's eight incursions in 2005 posed an imminent collision risk, Walker said.

That wasn't always the case, though. In November 1999, the pilot of a departing United Airlines Boeing 757 pulled up early to avoid barreling into an Aeromexico MD80 that had mistakenly taxied into its path.

In an August 2004 incident that chillingly echoed the 1991 crash, the pilot of an arriving Asiana Boeing 747 swooped about 200 feet over a Southwest jetliner that an air traffic controller had positioned on the runway where the jumbo jet had been cleared to land.

Looking down from the LAX control tower, the potential for problems is obvious as a succession of arriving jets nose up to a stop line before reaching the inner runway as other planes roar down it.

"I always equate it to the same act of faith as pulling up to a traffic signal and you've got a green light and you see somebody pulling up in the other direction," said Mike Foote, the air-traffic controllers union representative at LAX. In other words, you assume - and hope - they'll stop.

Authorities have tried to address LAX's problem by installing new technology in the control tower, and placing "hot spot" warning signs on the LAX charts pilots use.

Additionally, LAX has spent $8 million on better airfield signs, lighting and markings, spokesman Paul Haney said. And, next year, the airport is scheduled to get a new ground radar system that will give air-traffic controllers precise information about the locations of planes on the airfield.

A major airfield rejiggering should also give air-traffic controllers greater control over the planes they guide. The project faces environmental lawsuits, but the airport hopes to settle those and begin construction early next year.

Reporter Brent Whiting contributed to this article.