Whenever the wheels touch down at Honolulu Airport, I breathe a sigh of relief.
"I’m home," I think to myself. "I’m safe."
So it was a bit of a surprise when I read on Travel and Leisure magazine’s website that our airport is the fifth most dangerous in the United States. Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport was the most dangerous.
The article looked at runway incidents from 2006 to 2010, of which there were 30 for Honolulu. The piece cited a close call when a military cargo plane nearly strayed into the path of a commuter passenger jet in May 2007.
It is mentioned that the airport was getting wider taxiways and improved runway lighting as part of a $2.3 billion effort to modernize the state’s airports. It sounded like the writer contacted the state Department of Transportation about this.
Turns out he didn’t; otherwise he would’ve spoken to transportation spokesman Dan Meisenzahl. Meisenzahl has some harsh words for the article.
"I just think it was very irresponsible journalism for them to put us on the list and never even follow up with us on this," he says. Meisenzahl, as many of you might know, has been a longtime student of journalism, having last worked at KITV4.
"It really should be an embarrassment" to the magazine, he says.
He says the incident four years ago was due to pilot error and had nothing to do with the airport’s operations. Most of the 30 incidents cited in the report were also due to pilot error.
"What happened was the plane went a little too far, like a car stopping past a stop sign," Meisenzahl says. "It wasn’t like they were in the middle of the runway."
The methodology for the rankings took incidents, divided that by the total number of runway operations, and graded them based on how likely a death could’ve taken place.
Meisenzahl questions the methodology, as did comments under the article online.
"The incidents of near-miss ground traffic … do not indicate an unsafe airport," posted "JimGoddard3." "It is the approach and landing issues that should carry more weight."
Another commenter claimed he is a professional aviator who has logged more than 20,000 hours of flying in and out of many of the airports listed, and he said none of them should be considered dangerous.
In any case, near-misses and pilots going over the stop line are not acceptable, and Meisenzahl says the airport has addressed those issues. More signs and lights have been installed, and the Federal Aviation Administration tracks movement of vehicles on runways every day.
"We did this years ago," Meisenzahl says, "but the reporter for the article decided not to follow up with this airport or any of the other airports. It’s irresponsible and unfair to everyone who works at the airport."
Reach Gene Park at gpark@staradvertiser.com, or Twitter as @GenePark Opens in a new tab.
