Forty-six times in a single month, airliners came dangerously close to one another, either in the sky or on airport surfaces. The tally, drawn from voluntary safety filings and federal tracking systems, has intensified a debate about whether the national airspace system is keeping pace with traffic that has returned to pre-pandemic levels. With the FAA publicly committed to eliminating serious close calls and the NTSB pressing for faster adoption of cockpit alert technology, the gap between stated goals and operational reality is widening.
Why a single month of 46 near-misses demands scrutiny
The FAA has set an explicit goal of zero serious close calls, a target the agency links to its Surface Awareness Initiative and Arrival Route Verification programs. Against that benchmark, a month with 46 reported events is not a statistical blip. It signals repeated breakdowns in the layered defenses, from controller instructions to cockpit collision-avoidance alerts, that are supposed to keep aircraft safely separated.
One explanation worth testing is that the spike reflects not a true increase in separation losses but a surge in voluntary reporting. After NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation about fiscal year 2023 serious runway incursions, media coverage of near-misses intensified. Pilots and controllers who might previously have let a minor event pass unreported could have been more motivated to file. The federal overview of ASRS, run by NASA at Ames Research Center, emphasizes that the system is voluntary and non-punitive, meaning submission rates can fluctuate with awareness and perceived safety culture rather than with actual risk levels. Comparing ASRS submission volumes before and after Homendy’s testimony against FAA radar-derived separation data would help distinguish a reporting effect from a genuine operational deterioration. That comparison has not been published.
ASRS filings and NTSB investigations behind the count
Two primary data streams feed the close-call count. The first is the official ASRS database, a queryable repository of de-identified reports from pilots, controllers, dispatchers, and maintenance personnel. Because reporters receive confidentiality protections and immunity from certain enforcement actions, ASRS captures events that might never appear in formal FAA incident records. The second stream consists of FAA internal reports, including runway-incursion statistics published through Department of Transportation dashboards and loss-of-separation records available through the FAA Electronic Reading Room under the Freedom of Information Act.
Specific NTSB investigations illustrate the mechanics behind these numbers. Investigation DCA23LA125 examined a runway incursion and rejected takeoff at John F. Kennedy International Airport involving American Airlines Flight 106 and Delta Air Lines Flight 1943. The completed investigation documented failures in ASDE-X surface detection equipment timing and runway status light activation, producing a probable cause finding and contributing factors that pointed to gaps in both technology and procedure. A separate investigation, DCA23FA149, covered the near-collision at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport between Southwest Airlines Flight 708 and Federal Express Flight 1432. That case exposed limitations in visibility conditions and surface surveillance, showing how a FedEx cargo jet came close to landing on a runway already occupied by a departing Southwest aircraft.
The NTSB also issued preliminary reports on runway incursions at JFK and Burbank that referenced TCAS resolution advisories, the automated last-resort system that commands pilots to climb or descend to avoid a midair collision. When TCAS fires, the standard separation layers have already failed. Each of these cases fed into the broader tally and the growing institutional alarm about system performance.
Unresolved questions about the 46 close calls
Several gaps in the public record prevent a definitive reading of the data. The exact methodology behind the 46-event count has not been published in raw ASRS query results or in FAA Part 121 loss-of-separation FOIA releases. Without that breakdown, it is unclear how many of the 46 events occurred in the air versus on the ground, a distinction that carries different risk profiles and different remedies. Airborne losses of separation typically involve miscommunication between controllers and flight crews or errors in altitude assignment. Surface events, by contrast, often trace back to taxiway confusion, unclear hold-short instructions, or degraded visibility.
Controller staffing is another open variable. The FAA’s Electronic Reading Room contains workforce data, but the specific staffing levels at facilities tied to the cited month have not been released in a form that allows direct correlation. Chronic understaffing at busy terminal radar approach controls and airport towers has been a recurring theme in controller union statements and congressional testimony, yet linking staffing shortfalls to individual close calls requires facility-level data the FAA has not made public.
Direct statements from the pilots and controllers involved exist only as de-identified ASRS narratives. That anonymity is the system’s strength, encouraging candid reporting, but it also means no named individual can be held publicly accountable or asked follow-up questions. In her November 2023 Senate testimony, Homendy pointedly warned that the absence of catastrophic outcomes in recent incidents reflects luck as much as design, arguing that the system is “stretched to a point where the margin for error is thin.” Absent more granular disclosure, the 46-event figure functions more as a warning flare than as a fully contextualized data set.
Technology, training, and the limits of current safeguards
The close calls highlight both the value and the limits of existing safety technology. Surface radar systems such as ASDE-X and runway status lights can detect and warn of conflicts on the ground, but as the JFK investigation showed, timing delays or configuration issues can blunt their effectiveness. In the air, TCAS provides a last line of defense, yet it is intentionally reactive, intervening only after standard separation has already been lost.
Homendy and other safety advocates have pressed for broader deployment of predictive tools that would alert controllers and crews to emerging conflicts earlier in the chain. That includes cockpit displays with more intuitive traffic depictions and tower systems that fuse radar, flight plans, and surface-movement data into a single alerting picture. Training is the other half of the equation. Recurrent simulator sessions for airline crews increasingly include runway-incursion scenarios, but the realism of those scenarios varies by carrier, and there is no public benchmark tying training content to the patterns seen in ASRS narratives.
On the controller side, scenario-based training for complex runway configurations and low-visibility operations is widely used, yet again, the connection between what is practiced and what is actually going wrong in the field is obscured by the lack of detailed, facility-level incident breakdowns. Without that feedback loop, technology upgrades risk being layered onto procedures that have not been fully stress-tested against the types of errors now surfacing.
What a credible path toward “zero close calls” would require
The FAA’s aspiration of eliminating serious close calls is laudable, but the 46 incidents in a single month suggest that reaching that goal will demand more than incremental tweaks. A credible path forward would start with transparency: publishing a de-identified breakdown of each event in that month, including whether it was airborne or surface-based, the type of airspace or airport, the time of day, and whether automated systems such as TCAS or runway status lights activated.
That transparency should extend to staffing. Releasing controller headcount, overtime usage, and training status for facilities associated with recent close calls would allow independent experts to test the widely held assumption that fatigue and workload are key contributors. At the same time, the FAA’s own commitment to reducing close calls gives it a policy framework within which to justify such disclosures as part of a data-driven safety campaign.
Finally, the voluntary reporting culture that underpins ASRS must be protected even as the system is asked to do more. Encouraging higher reporting rates is essential to spotting weak signals before they culminate in accidents. But unless those narratives are systematically analyzed and paired with operational data, spikes like the 46-event month will continue to generate more alarm than understanding. Bridging that gap-between what the system knows internally and what it shares externally-may determine whether “zero serious close calls” remains an aspirational slogan or evolves into a measurable, attainable standard.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
