This story has come up in the national media's consciousness, in large part because of the union and its friends at New York City television stations. Unfortunately, it comes out as he said-the FAA said, because they haven't really taken the time to tell you more than the distance between the two airplanes, and that the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.

About 20-25% of the way through, you'll hear the incident in question between LAN Chile 533 and Cayman 792.

Runways are named for the magnetic headings to which they most closely correspond. The Cayman flight is landing Runway 22 left, heading southwest, while the LAN Chile flight was departing Runway 13 right, heading southeast. The logic is that the arrival will commit to the landing and turn off the runway, as the departure on the crossing runway passes harmlessly overhead. This works, until the arrival goes around after the departure has already left the runway, and at that point, you have the problem you hear on the radio.

The controller is babbling a little - I don't blame him, because he probably thought he was going to see a midair collision. Again, knowing their magnetic headings as above, the controller turns the Cayman to a zero-nine-zero, or basically due east, and the LAN Chile to a one-seven-zero, basically due south.

Those are forty-degree turns, and you don't issue a forty-degree turn to separate airplanes unless something has gone really wrong. A standard rate of turn is 3 degrees per second, meaning a wait of 13 seconds for the new heading under normal circumstances. Both of these pilots had to hear the panic in the Kennedy controller's voice, and may even have seen the lights on the opposite runway, so they probably exceeded the standard rate of turn in order to make this work. At the closest point, the union estimates a half-mile and 100 feet, based on a combination of the local controller's recall and the radar data. FAA's figures are somewhat larger, as much as 500 feet, but the point remains that this was a barely controlled incident. The controller made two really quick calls, and the pilots acted equally quickly to gain separation between themselves, but if someone else had tied up the frequency by calling the tower (he had several airplanes lined up for takeoff, on his frequency) or if he hadn't heard the Cayman pilot call his go-around. . .it would have been entirely in God's hands, instead of just mostly in God's hands. Traffic collision avoidance systems on these airplanes have only a vertical component, i.e., climb or descent, and there wasn't a lot of room between these airplanes and the ground for that to work on its own.

Of course, JFK's not the only airport in the country with simultaneous operations on intersecting runways. Memphis International, home of Federal Express, also has this issue, and in the last year, have seen a situation like this one. As with JFK, though, not permitting simultaneous operations would cripple the airport. If they all had to line up for takeoff and landing to the same set of runways, capacity for both departures and arrivals would drop by half, and the peak delays would go through the roof. Even if they waited until the aircraft reported wheels on the runway before clearing the departure, that's a loss of valuable time. Small wonder they went after Pete Nesbitt when he filed NASA safety paperwork on MEM's procedure. You can bet that they'll go after anyone at JFK who raises a complaint through official safety channels also.