Also Cites FAA For Failure To Install TARDIS

It's been more than seven years since Chicago radio listeners learned that WGN morning man Bob "Uncle Bobby" Collins (shown below, right) and two other people had died following a mid-air collision. A federal judge ruled Friday Collins was only five-percent at fault for the accident, levelling the rest of the blame at the FAA and an air traffic controller.

Collins' plane collided with one flown by a female student pilot. Collins and his passenger died when his Zlin came down on the roof of the Midwestern Medical Center in Zion, IL. The student also suffered fatal injuries when her Cessna came down on a street.

The two families sued each other -- each claiming the other pilot had been at fault -- as well as the FAA. The NTSB ruled the probable cause of the midair was, "The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from the other airplane. Factors relating to the accident were the pilot's poor visual lookout, and the airport control tower local controller's failure to provide effective sequencing."

Christine Collins said she was pleased at the finding of the court. "My husband had been unfairly targeted as the cause of the accident, and I am very pleased that the judge found that was clearly not the case," she told her attorney, Bob Clifford.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that because 95 percent of the blame has been placed on a federal agency which is immune from lawsuits, the only money which can be collected by plaintiffs is a $1 million insurance policy carried by Midwest Air Traffic Control Services, a private contractor which ran the tower at Waukegan Airport.

US District Judge John Darrah decided the controller "failed to safely separate Collins' Zlin airplane and Hock's Cesna airplane," Darrah wrote. "When [the controller] realized he was unaware of the two aircrafts' positions, [he] failed to issue a safety alert and order Collins and Hock to abort their landings, when he had the opportunity to do so."

The air traffic controller had gone seven hours without a break, according to the ruling.

Judge Darrah was also critical of the FAA for failing to install a Terminal Automated Radar Display and Information System, or TARDIS, at Waukegan Airport until after the three fatalities... while Meigs Field, with less traffic, got one first.

TARDIS was developed in 1993 by FAA engineer Michael Risley using software he created, running on a standard desktop computer. TARDIS is put into small airports without their own radar systems, and uses data derived from nearby radar facilities to create a virtual radar display. It can reportedly be implemented for about $40,000 per airport, a small fraction of an actual radar system.

"Contrary to FAA-stated criteria ... the decision on whether or not to install a TARDIS at a particular location was primarily due to 'Congressional Interest' from local politicians who wanted a TARDIS installed in their district/state or after an accident at a facility," Darrah wrote.

FMI: Read The Probable Cause Report