DAL Delta Air Lines Inc

Federal accident investigators have called on jet makers and the Federal Aviation Administration to devise tougher safeguards against one of commercial aviation's most common safety threats: planes careening off slippery runways during landings.

The National Transportation Safety Board issued the nonbinding recommendations on Tuesday, responding to a March 2015 accident at New York's LaGuardia Airport in which a Delta Air Lines McDonnell Douglas MD-88 jet veered off a snowy strip, slid uncontrollably for thousands of feet and slammed into an embankment after touching down in stormy weather.

There were no fatalities among the 132 people on board, and investigators determined the probable cause was pilot error. But by urging more-stringent landing rules for all carriers and calling for development of possible new equipment intended to give cockpit crews real-time data about braking conditions, the safety board inserted itself into a long-simmering dispute over runway safety between the world's two largest airplane manufacturers.

Boeing Co. and Airbus Group SE are at loggerheads about a fundamental point when it comes to preventing landing planes from rolling off the sides or ends of runways: the need for joint U.S.-European technical standards to combat this type of accident, partly by mandating ways to enhance pilot awareness about the dangers of such events.

Runway excursions, as they are called, have been the first- or second-most frequent category of commercial-aviation accidents globally for well over 15 years, prompting the two plane makers to use different tactics to try to combat the hazards.

Starting seven years ago, European Airbus has focused on marketing a proprietary system, now installed on about 430 airliners, that automatically assesses speed, altitude, flight-control settings and other variables eight times a second to provide cockpit warnings that a plane won't be able to stop safely on a runway.

Chicago-based Boeing hasn't developed its own offering to provide similar alerts, but is working with partners on a range of voluntary approaches. Boeing doesn't support mandating new cockpit-warning technology and is opposed to efforts by its arch rival—in conjunction with European regulators—to impose common engineering standards.

But in its final report on the Delta accident, the safety board called on the FAA and industry to develop new equipment and procedures able "to routinely calculate, record and convey the airplane braking ability" required to safely slow or stop a jetliner during its landing roll.

If such systems turn out to be "technically and operationally feasible," according to the NTSB, the FAA should work with manufacturers to ensure they are installed and the resulting data is received and can be "easily interpreted" by pilots, airport operators and air-traffic controllers. The safety board years ago issued a similar call, and now classifies the response as "unacceptable" because FAA didn't adopt its recommendations. But a summary of the report also notes "these systems are still under development and evaluation."

An FAA spokeswoman declined to comment. Delta said it would "use the NTSB guidance to further enhance the safety of our global operation."

The report asserts that the current system of pilots passing on runway condition reports using radio transmissions is too subjective, and sometimes lags behind changing conditions on the ground.

In discussing the La Guardia accident, the NTSB said a lack of timely reports from pilots about the runway's condition "created some situational stress for the captain." A "snowier-than-expected runway" with its proximity to Flushing Bay "most likely increased the captain's concerns about his ability to stop the airplane," the safety board concluded.

Investigators cited mistakes by the captain of Flight 1086 from Atlanta in using excessive reverse thrust—far beyond levels recommended by Boeing and Delta—which degraded the effectiveness of the rudder and ended with the "inability to maintain directional control."

In a statement Tuesday, the union that represents Delta pilots said it was disappointed by the emphasis on pilot error at the expense of highlighting the general "lack of timely and accurate runway condition measuring and reporting information available to pilots."

The board also criticized the captain for waiting some six minutes to order an evacuation of the damaged aircraft. Once the command was given, flight attendants failed to organize the required rapid evacuation, according to the NTSB, which said it took six more minutes until the first passenger got off the twin-engine, narrow body MD-88. The entire evacuation process stretched over 17 minutes, partly because cockpit-cabin communication systems weren't working.

The NTSB also urged the FAA to set up an advisory committee to analyze issues related to crew behavior during evacuation procedures, and eventually issue industrywide guidance to improve such performance in the future.

Write to Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 14, 2016 21:15 ET (01:15 GMT)

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