The Federal Aviation Administration was told by the National Transportation Safety Board that it is not doing enough to prevent airplanes from colliding into each other on the runway. From the N.Y. Times: To underscore its case, the safety board cited an Aug. 19 near-miss in which a Boeing 747 on approach at [LAX] came within two seconds of hitting a Boeing 737 that had been mistakenly told to take off at the same time. The incident, which the board said was not reported by air traffic controllers, occurred on the same runway where, in February 1991, a USAir 737 landed on top of a SkyWest commuter plane, killing 34 people. The F.A.A. has installed a computer system at Los Angeles International and 34 other airports that is designed to warn of runway conflicts, but the safety board has repeatedly complained that the system is inadequate. The system sounds a warning in the control tower, not the cockpits, and in the Aug. 19 case the controller was busy making another transmission and did not issue new instructions for 10 seconds.... A collision was avoided on Aug. 19, the board said, because the captain of the 747, which was landing, saw the 737 moving on the runway that he was approaching. Board experts said that in poor weather or even on a clear night, the pilot might not have seen the aircraft.... Two seconds before the two planes would have collided, the tower controller revoked the Southwest plane's takeoff clearance and told the Asiana flight to climb to 2,000 feet. "I think we were very lucky on Aug. 19," said Ellen Engleman Conners, the chairwoman of the safety board. "Safety should never be dependent on luck." The board met Tuesday to complete its annual review of its "10 most wanted" safety improvements. Better runway safety was already on the list, having first been recommended in 1990, but the agency had categorized the F.A.A.'s response as acceptable, although incomplete. On Tuesday, the five members voted unanimously to recategorize the response as "unacceptable." The NTSB also flagged another problem: "the F.A.A. was wrong to skip short-term steps to prevent explosions like the one that destroyed Trans World Airlines Flight 800, a Boeing 747 that blew up off Long Island in July 1996. The board concluded that flammable vapors in the center fuel tank had been ignited by a stray spark." The F.A.A. is planning to publish a proposed rule next year for public comment; it would apparently require installation of a device that pumps nitrogen gas into the empty space in such tanks, squeezing out the oxygen and precluding an explosion even if a spark were present. The F.A.A. has dropped the idea of more immediate improvements, like injecting nitrogen gas on the ground, or not using air-conditioners when a plane is on the ground. On some passenger jets, the air-conditioners cool the cabins by giving off their heat to the fuel. In a nearly empty tank, this can create explosive vapors. --Matthew L. Wald, "Safety Board Faults F.A.A. Over Risks on Runways," N.Y. Times, Nov. 10, 2004, at A17.