Air Traffic Controllers See Potential Dead People

At SeaTac, air traffic controllers are complaining about "ghost" planes appearing on their "scopes" (that's lingo we picked up from Pushing Tin). The King Country Journal reports (via AP) that:

Controllers have been complaining since November that they often redirect planes because of "false targets" on the airport's radar. In announcing plans for the fix this week, Federal Aviation Administration officials agreed that better software was needed but denied there has been a safety issue.

"If at any point it's determined the system is uncertifiable or unsafe, we take that system out of service," FAA's district manager Dave Adams said.

Dan Olsen, a National Air Traffic Controllers Association union representative, said the FAA's patch would not fix the problem. [...]

"Fix the radar before someone is killed," Olsen added.

The ghosts are usually radar reflections of aircraft already being monitored, but since there's way to know for sure, the protocol is for traffic controllers to make sure blips don't collide, real or not. With 60 ghosts winking in and out of existence in November, and 29 in December, it's a reasonably frequent and alarming phenomenon.

The FAA claims the problem can be mostly eliminated with software, the union rep says its mainly a problem with the radar system itself. Guess which is more expensive to fix? We suggest the controllers simply try to talk with the ghosts, find out what they want. Or call an expert in.

Photo thanks to Flickr user Tony Hoffman.