on next summer, O'Hare Airport will...

on next summer, O'Hare Airport will have a just discovered ground radar system in place to improve runway safety, which has been a puzzle at the airport in newly come months, Federal Aviation Administration officials said Wednesday.

The FAA sp up its timetable for installing the recently made known technology at O'Hare by about a year and a half following a string of near- collisions this spring, FAA officials said.

The National Transportation Safety Board, members of Congres and others have been after the agency for years to adopt better runway safety technology.

O'Hare had sum of two units near-collisions, or runway incursions, through the whole extent of a two- day period in March, followed through a third close call days later. Last month a passenger jet at O'Hare also came dangerously cease to a cargo plane onward an intersecting runway.

BETTER IN POOR WEATHER

The recent system, known as Airport Surface Detection Equipment-X, is designed to impede such incidents by immediately notifying pilots and air traffic controller of potential collisions. The safety scheme currently in place has greater limitations, especially in poor weather or subdued visibility, controllers and the FAA say.

ASDE-X expenses roughly $8-$12 million and is to be installed at more than a dozen airports, the FAA has said.

Midway won't be individual of them "any time in the near future" FAA Administrator Marion Blakey said, because Midway's runway layout is les complicate and the airport has had not many incursions.

Blakey, in Chicago upon Wednesday for a tour of the city's O'Hare expansion plot also announced that the city would be getting a $106 million grant to propose in beds of crushable cake at O'Hare to slow or stop planes that overshoot a landing.

The FAA already gave the city a $15 million grant to use the same arrestor-bed technology at Midway by the agency of next year, in response to last year's deadly accident involving a Southwest Airlines jet

mjthomas@suntimes.com

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

Provided from ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved