"FAA and air industry don't want collision avoidance system."

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two minutes a near miss became a fatal collision.

If the two planes had been equipped with a relatively cheap electronic device both pilots would have been warned of the danger, and the accident would never have occurred. This device, known as the Aircraft Collision Avoidance System (ACAS), developed by Honeywell Corporation, has been available since 1975.

In 1976, a study commissioned by the FAA determined that ACAS would have prevented all mid-air collisions and near misses of the past several years. But the FAA did not order ACAS installed in all planes. It did not even inform a Con -gressional committee on air safety that such a device was available.

When an FAA employee, James Pope, chief of the Industry and Liaison Division, pushed too vigorously for adoption of ACAS he was assigned to Seattle—as far from Washington as possible.

In an interview on the TV show "Sixty Minutes," James Pope explained the reason for these irrational actions by officials responsible for air safety. A segment of the interview went as follows:

Mike Wallace: "You are saying that ACAS five years ago, six years ago was proven workable, effective, do-able?"

Pope: "That is exactly what I saying."

Wallace: "The FAA itself acknowledged that...and then turned thumbs down? The question is Why?"

Pope: "The question is answered by an acronym NIH, 'not invented here.' If the FAA did not invent it they are not going to made to bar unscheduled aircraft from busy airports, at least at rush hours. The pro -posal was met with a storm of opposition from the 260,000-member Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA).

Like the National Rifle Association (NRA), AOPA wields heavy political clout. Owners of private planes are scarcely candidates for food stamps. Among its members are the major corporations, which own executive jets.

When these people spoke, the FAA listened and halted attempts to further control private planes. "After all," one observer asked, "how can you tell the chairman of the board of General Motors he can't fly his executive jet wherever and whenever he likes?"

Meanwhile, the recruiting of equipmentmaintenance technicians has been slowed by federal budget cuts. The FAA has 6500 technicians nationwide, down from 11,800 in 1978. Cut-throat competition has caused the airline companies to likewise skimp on maintenance.

Our airways must be taken out of the hands of both the FAA and the airline corporations. Control must be lodged in a democratically elected commission of representatives of flight crews, controllers, other unions in the airline industry, and the flying public.

So long as profit-seeking anarchy prevails, the traveling public will face death in the skies. Only when the airlines are nationalized under control of the workers will rational and safe air travel be assured. i

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