US aviation authority takes advice it trashed 6 years ago on preventing collisions

Washington

THE US Federal Aviation Administration is implementing recommendations it rejected six years ago that could have prevented pilots from nearly landing last month on a taxiway crowded with jetliners awaiting take-off in San Francisco.

The National Transportation Safety Board in 2011 recommended a software upgrade to ground radar systems that would sound a warning whenever a plane is going to land in the wrong place. But the FAA dismissed the recommendation, declining to even study whether it was feasible, according to government records.