After Hudson air crash, NTSB aims for reforms on alerts

The National Transportation Safety Board is recommending a post-"Miracle on the Hudson" reform that would make it possible for air traffic controllers to alert each other when a plane is having an emergency.

The NTSB announced the recommendation in a letter written from Chairman Deborah A. Hersman to Federal Aviation Administration Administrator J. Randolph Babbitt.

The NTSB's investigation of US Airways Flight 1549's emergency landing in the Hudson River continues, but the NTSB believes a change is needed in the radar data processing systems so controllers can designate a flight as "in an emergency situation," Hersman said.

On Jan. 15, Flight 1549, which took off from LaGuardia Airport bound for Charlotte, N.C., experienced a double bird strike that robbed the Airbus A-320's engines of sufficient thrust to keep flying. Capt. Chesley Sullenberger and First Officer Jeffrey Skiles were too busy trying to land the crippled jet to turn on the emergency transponder, according to facts set out in the preliminary NTSB investigation.

The change would allow controllers to communicate an aircraft's emergency situation. The transponder signal sends unique information from the plane to controllers in towers at other airports and radar facilities.

By allowing controllers to designate a plane as being in an emergency, everyone who needs to know could alert other aircraft they could avoid the troubled aircraft. The emergency transponder code would also pop up on area controllers' radar screens, according to the NTSB.

Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said the NTSB's recommendations would improve safety.

"It is technologically possible to implement the NTSB's recommendations," Church said. "The benefit for controllers is that everyone in the facility would know at the same time that there is an emergency aircraft in the airspace. It would stand out on everyone's radar scopes."

Jim Peters, a spokesman for the FAA, said the agency would "carefully review the recommendation and respond."

All 155 aboard survived Flight 1549's water landing.