The Collision Near Runway 29
One of the big news stories last week was an accident at Newark Airport, when a United Airlines jet came in too low for a landing and hit a bakery truck driving on the New Jersey Turnpike. (Initial reports about the incident suggested the plane hit a light pole which then hit the truck, but subsequent videos show the plane’s landing gear actually touched the truck’s windshield.) Shocked newscasters reporting on the accident all seemed to be asking a variant of the same question:
“How could this have happened?”
But for me—and I’m guessing for many of those who regularly travel the same portion of the Turnpike as the bakery truck—the better question would be:
“How could this not have happened sooner?”
In fact, just a week before the incident, I was driving along that exact stretch of the highway and complaining (yet again) to my husband about a huge jet looming alarmingly close above our car. As it turns out, I wasn’t overreacting; sometimes the planes are in fact within touching distance of the traffic below them.
While researching my historical fiction novel, which is set in Newark, it’s been fun to learn a few lesser-known facts about the airport’s early years. Among other things:
It was Charles Lindbergh’s first transatlantic flight in 1927 that inspired Newark’s leaders to set aside their initial skepticism about aviation and build a municipal airport;
The site selected was swampland at the time, which had to be raised with landfill to eleven feet above sea level;
The airport opened in August 1928 and had the first hard-surfaced runway of any commercial airport in the United States; and
Newark’s commercial success was what convinced then-Mayor Fiorello La Guardia that New York City needed to get into the aviation game.
Unfortunately, it’s been less fun to read about Newark’s safety record. Accidents related to the airport were documented by the Newark Evening News as early as March 1929. But one of the most disturbing episodes in the airport’s history was best described in one of Judy Blume’s adult novels, In the Unlikely Event, which was published in 2015.
Blume grew up near the airport in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and is famous for her books for children and young adults, among them Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. She’s also had the honor of having one of the service areas along the Garden State Parkway named after her, sort of the New Jersey version of being awarded a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.
In the Unlikely Event is a fictionalized version of real-life events that occurred in Elizabeth from 1951-1952, when Blume was 14 years old. As she said in an interview, over just 58 days during that “crazy” winter, three passenger airplanes “fell out of the sky”: one a block or two from Blume’s junior high, although luckily on a Sunday; one almost through the window of the girls’ public high school, just missing it; and the third on the playing field of the only orphanage in town. A total of 119 people died.
After the third accident, the airport was closed for four months, as officials debated the wisdom of continuing operations so close to highly populated areas. Ultimately, however, the pressure for profit and progress overcame concerns over public safety as it so often does, and almost 75 years later, here we are—with Runway 29 mere feet from one of the busiest roads in the nation and no room for error.
I’m no aviation expert, and I’m sure there are more treacherous approaches to other runways at other airports around the world. Certainly, coming into JFK over the water can be harrowing for people in window seats, who often cannot see solid ground until the plane literally touches down. In these less-than-optimal conditions, we rely on skilled pilots and overburdened air traffic controllers potentially making up to 5000 decisions a day. But despite their difficult landing options, urban airports like Newark are too entrenched to be shut down or moved now. As the New York Times pointed out back in 1952, in an editorial titled “The Airport Problem” that advocated for the “Newark Field” to be reopened: “It is not possible to remove landing fields to entirely uninhabited areas.”
Even so, they could probably be made safer. Which will never happen unless we stop acting surprised every time dangerous conditions lead to an all-too-predictable dangerous outcome. This time, we got lucky, and no one got seriously injured when the plane hit the truck. But we shouldn’t have to count on luck to keep us from being crushed by a giant 767. Or wait for some future tragedy to motivate real reform. Reports have identified multiple other close calls on Runway 29, so the warning flare’s been fired. Hopefully, someone somewhere is paying attention.