Despite the criticism leveled at the FAA, air travel has never been safer. U.S. carriers have experienced only one fatal crash since 2001, when a Comair jet crashed on takeoff in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49 people in 2006. But as technological advances make other types of crashes exceedingly rare, many experts are predicting that the next big airline accident could happen on the ground, where the loss of life can be horrific: The worst aviation disaster in history was the head-on crash of two 747s at the airport in Tenerife in 1977, in which 583 people perished. The GAO report states that the NTSB has investigated several near-misses in recent years which "could have been catastrophic if they had not been averted through pilot skill and luck."

UNDERSTAFFED AND OVERWORKED

While air-traffic controllers aren't responsible for all runway incursions—they share the blame with pilots and errant airport vehicles—they argue that since their work conditions are completely under the control of their employer, the FAA, the buck stops in the tower. And one reason they're making more errors, they say, is fatigue caused by overwork. The GAO found that at least 20 percent of the controllers at the 25 air-traffic control facilities it surveyed were regularly putting in six-day workweeks, prompting it to recommend that the FAA take measures to address overtime and fatigue issues.

"Controllers are being asked to work longer hours to handle increasingly congested runways and airspace, in part because of staffing shortages," Rep. Jerry Costello (D-Ill.) told a February hearing of the House Aviation Subcommittee, which he chairs. "While the FAA may not admit that there is a crisis, I strongly disagree." Last August, at Los Angeles International, two jets carrying 296 people missed each other by 37 feet, prompting the city council to take the unusual step of passing a resolution calling on the FAA to add more controllers in the tower. Shortly thereafter, the agency stepped up its schedule for installing state-of-the-art warning systems at LAX. Jim Hall, a former chairman of the NTSB, told a congressional hearing last fall, "We are in the midst of an air-traffic controller staffing crisis, which has resulted in an exhausted, stressed-out, and burned-out workforce. This could be a dangerous trend that could jeopardize the many advances that have been made in aviation." The FAA's response is that the system is working as it should, the proof of which is that no passengers were injured in any of the reported runway incursions.

The roots of the current imbroglio can be traced to a single day: On August 4, 1981, 12,000 controllers walked off the job after their demands for shorter workweeks and higher pay were rejected. They were promptly fired by President Reagan, and the airlines were ordered to temporarily ground about a third of their fleets while new controllers were rushed through training and into the towers. In just three years, some 9,000 replacements were hired, creating a demographic bubble whose consequences are only now being felt as most of those hires come up for retirement (controllers are required to retire at 56, but are eligible to retire after 20 years if they are over 50, or at any point after 25 years of service). Things came to a head in 2006, when contract negotiations to renew the controllers' agreement fell apart, and the FAA imposed its own terms—freezing salaries, slashing pay 30 percent for new hires, and setting mandatory overtime and other rules that many controllers consider onerous or petty, such as a dress code. (The latter prompted a protest, with some controllers donning outrageous attire such as frilly dresses that technically fell within the new rules.)