Word: radars
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...danger posed by the outdated air-traffic-control system is compounded by a shortage of the special radar needed to help planes cope with bad weather...
Pilots know that weather causes about 40% of aircraft accidents and about 65% of air-traffic delays longer than 15 minutes. Thankfully, technology can defuse the threat. Doppler radar can predict and pinpoint rapid, dramatic shifts in wind by bouncing beacons off different air masses...
Today most people think that Doppler radar wind-shear-detection systems have been installed in every airport. In fact, only 16 are installed and working. Some $350 million worth of parts for Doppler wind-shear-warning radar (promised after a horrible 1985 crash in Dallas) moldered away when truckloads of equipment went to dusty warehouses instead of to the airports most in need. Other systems are installed but haven't been switched on. Seven of the remaining 47 scheduled for production haven't even been delivered...
...years since the Dallas crash, other wind-shear accidents have cost passenger lives. Two unsolved crashes in Pennsylvania and North Carolina have been tentatively attributed to wind shear that might have been avoided with Doppler radar. After a USAir flight crashed in Charlotte, North Carolina, in July 1994, the NTSB said the delay in installing the radar had cost the lives of 37 onboard. Charlotte was supposed to get the radar system in early 1993. As an airport in the South (where wind shear is particularly common), it was No. 5 on the FAA list. But the inevitable delays...
Some of the stories, Weintrob recalled, were too outrageous to believe at first. Crews on a jet complained about a broken weather radar system 31 times before it was fixed; when a Boston flight had a stuck landing gear, the plane was diverted to the Washington area, but on the way, the landing gear started working again, so the crew continued to fly without taking the plane in to be serviced; mechanics used duct tape to patch planes; a mechanic wielded a hammer and chisel to fix a sensitive engine part, and later that engine had to be shut down...