Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 7, 1994 TAG: 9407070139
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A new-generation wind shear-detecting radar was scheduled for delivery to Charlotte/Douglas International Airport nine months before Saturday's crash, but it has been stalled for more than two years by haggles with a landowner over the price of property for a site, according to Federal Aviation Administration records.
Charlotte is one of many cities to experience delays in procuring the Terminal Doppler Weather Radar because of problems with property acquisition, the environment, archaeological sites or public opposition, FAA officials said. Others include two of the country's busiest airports, LaGuardia and Kennedy in New York, where ``not-in-my-backyard'' opposition to putting the 120-foot-plus tall radars in local neighborhoods is being championed by Sen. Alfonse M. D'Amato, D-N.Y.
Whether the radar could have helped the crew of Flight 1016, which crashed Saturday after a short hop from Columbia, S.C., with the loss of 37 lives, will not be known for months.
But it is known that an unusually violent and sudden rainstorm hit the airport just as Flight 1016 approached the runway. Most such storms produce some wind shear, which is a shift in wind speed and direction. There are many varieties of wind shear.
About one in 15 such storms produces a violent wind-shear event called a microburst - a rapidly moving column of cold air that fans out as it strikes the earth. If a plane flies into a microburst, it is hit first with strong head winds, slowing it down, then strong tail winds, robbing it of lift.
The Terminal Doppler Weather Radar can ``see'' microbursts, wind shifts, ``gust fronts'' and precipitation intensity in real time, displaying them on easy-to-read color screens with second-by-second updates that controllers can relay to pilots.
It is superior to current Doppler radar because of its ability to spot small phenomena quickly. And it is a giant leap ahead of all current airport weather-detection systems, including the Low Level Windshear Alert System such as the one in use at Charlotte, a system of wind sensors that is limited in scope and sometimes unreliable.
The Terminal Doppler Weather Radar already has proved its life-saving abilities. During development at Denver, it detected a microburst so intense that four airline pilots immediately broke off their landings.
The $373 million radar system, built by Raytheon, is one of the success stories of a $1.5 billion FAA weather-detection program. It has experienced fewer technical problems and production delays than several other elements of the program.
However, installation has been stalled at several airports, mainly over finding installation sites. Land problems arise mainly because the towering units must be installed eight to 12 miles from the airport, be generally in line with runways and be on the opposite side of the airport from the normal approach of weather.
Charlotte, now 38th of 47 cities on the FAA's list to get a Terminal Doppler Weather Radar, initially was fifth with a delivery date of October 1993. Because of the land problems, it was pushed down the list and now has a December 1995 delivery date. Normally, it takes three to six months after delivery to make the radar operational. Unless there had been other delays, the original schedule would have had the radar operating today.
Don Turnbull, the FAA's program manager for the radar, said Charlotte fell victim to the FAA's policy of getting the radars in the field as rapidly as possible.
``Whoever we can get the land for moves to the top of the list,'' he said. ``Whoever has problems moves to the bottom of the list.''
Turnbull said the landowner wanted far more money for the property eight to nine miles northeast of the airport than the government could pay. The FAA has found another site, for which it made an offer last month.
by CNB