DETROIT, June 27 (UPI) -- A glitch in recently installed air traffic control equipment Thursday forced restrictions on landings on two runways at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
The Federal Aviation Administration has prohibited two planes from landing at the same time on the airport's two crosswind runways, which are only used about 5 percent of the time, because radar blips representing the planes are too close together.
FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro said the problem is on the monitors and there have been no near collisions.
The FAA order reduced landings Tuesday to 48 from 72 an hour.
Detroit is among the first airports to get parts of the FAA's new air traffic control system and union officials representing technical workers said the glitch is just one more indication the system is not ready to be rolled out.
"It should have been fixed before the system was brought online," Gil Alfaro, president of Chapter 100 of the Professional Airways Systems Specialists, told the Detroit News.
The new $1.7 billion system, which is over budget and four years behind schedule, also is in use in El Paso, Texas, and Syracuse, N.Y., where tracking problems also have been reported. Detroit is the busiest airport to use part of the system, whose 20-inch-by-20-inch monitors were installed June 9.
Molinaro said despite the glitches, the new system is more reliable than the old one. He said it displays more airplanes and shows weather patterns more clearly, as well as being more precise.
