(CBS News) – The Federal Aviation Administration has released a disturbing new safety report.
The FAA says there are an average of three near-collisions on airport runways in the United States every day.
The incidents are called runway incursions and one of the most recent happened last December at Chicago’s Midway Airport.
Pilots on a Southwest Airlines jet about to cross a runway narrowly avoided another jet barreling toward them.
Nearly 1,000 runway incursions happened last year in the U.S., with seven of them being considered very close to catastrophic.
That is actually an improvement. The FAA says in 2000, there were nearly 70 catastrophes.
Thirty-five major U.S. airports have installed new ground radar in an effort to avoid incursions.
