The Biden Administration’s top transportation official made a stop in central Arkansas Wednesday.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spoke at Little Rock’s Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport as part of a multi-state tour of airport projects being funded by President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Speaking to city and airport officials, he noted the recent uptick in aviation-related incidents in which planes have sometimes narrowly avoided striking each other on the ground and in the air.
“While they remain extremely rare, it is a reality that we must confront that in recent months we’ve seen an increase in the number of those close calls,” Buttigieg said. “There are more mistakes than usual happening across the system on runways and gates, in control towers and on flight decks. That is something we must confront proactively, and we are.”
Clinton National Airport Executive Director Bryan Malinowski says the roughly $61 million project currently underway seeks to simplify the airport’s system of taxiways which planes use to taxi between runways and the passenger terminal.
“The Taxiway Charlie project will remove a hot spot, which in our case is the intersection of Runway 36 and 4L. It’ll eliminate possible incursions and safety risks. In addition, this project removes other non-standard taxiway to runway intersections and makes them safer,” Malinowski said.
The project to relocate the taxiway will eliminate a confusing intersection between the two runways, which could lead pilots cleared to take off on Runway 4L to mistakenly line up on the much shorter Runway 36.
The Federal Aviation Administration is also contributing $8 million to go toward a new utility plant and terminal improvements. Buttigieg said infrastructure improvements like those at Little Rock’s airport should help to cut down on “close calls” at American airports.
“There’s no single place where we’re seeing it happen… it’s been everything in the system all at once just a little bit more susceptible to these issues. We’re still going through data, but it’s clear part of this has to do with that swift return to air travel—which, while good news economically, means we have to keep up on the safety side,” Buttigieg said.
Passenger traffic at Clinton National Airport is up by 20% compared to last year, which saw a total of roughly 2 million passengers.
