National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) President Paul Rinaldi says “the most important piece” of a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) study on aviation safety is this: “The [Federal Aviation Administration] FAA has taken several steps to further improve safety at and around airports.”

The GAO study found an increase in the rate of reported runway incursions and other reported incidents of aircraft coming too close to each other. The FAA says a new system of more accurate incident reporting accounts for some of the increase.

As a result of this culture change, the FAA expected to see an increase in reported operational errors. More information will help us find problems and take action before an accident happens, which will help us build an even safer aviation system.

Rinaldi says controllers “are exceptionally proud of our safety record. The GAO reports, ‘the nation’s aviation system is arguably the safest in the world.’ We take that even further: our nation’s aviation system IS the safest in the world.”

He says the past several years NATCA has worked with the FAA and other aviation safety groups on improving runway safety and:

We take this report very seriously, and we are working every day to ensure Americans’ safety in the skies. This includes implementing procedural and technological changes to improve runway safety, collecting more data on safety incidents, finding ways to share usable safety information down to the local facility level and shifting toward risk-based analysis of airborne and surface aviation safety information.