America's most dangerous airports

Size--in terms of flight volumes--does present problems, however.

Busy Los Angeles International reported 95 incidents, including eight serious ones since 2001, giving it a No. 4 ranking on our list. Boston's congested Logan clocks in at No. 5 with 53 incidents, two serious, and Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, which handles more than a half-million flights a year, has had 49 incidents, three serious, at the facility in the last five years, earning it a No. 6 ranking on our list.

At busy Newark International Airport in New Jersey, No. 7 on our list, gate space is tight. In August 2005, an arriving Continental Boeing 737 pulling into its assigned gate couldn't gauge clearance and sliced two parked Embraer jets.

Chicago's O'Hare International, the nation's second-busiest airport, ranked eighth, with 68 runway incursions between 2001 and 2006. Three near-collisions at O'Hare in March 2006 pushed the National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA to launch investigations into whether the runway layout was flawed. A $6 billion runway expansion should help, but the project's 2013 completion is behind schedule.

Bad weather and poor runway design give Chicago the distinction of having two airports in the top 12--O'Hare and the much smaller Midway International.

At Midway, built in 1923, a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 skidded across an icy runway in December 2005. The 737 ripped through a fence and plowed onto a city street. The runaway jet killed a 6-year-old boy and injured a dozen others. Runways at Midway are about 2,000 feet shorter than those at newer airports.

Since 2004, the FAA has spent $1 billion per year on modernizing the nation's air traffic control network. The goal is to develop a comprehensive network, using satellites to map aircraft, alerting pilots and controllers of any potential for collisions. Right now, controllers rely on a patchwork of electronic and visual tools to map an aircraft's whereabouts.

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One problem: The FAA says it will cost $510 million to upgrade 38 major U.S. airports. Some of that cost would presumably be passed onto passengers and airlines. And the system, if it gets funded, won't be completed until 2011.

Mary Schiavo, an aviation litigator and the former inspector general at the U.S. Department of Transportation, doesn't have much confidence in government bureaucrats' ability to solve the problem. "We've lost control. … The problem is too big for the FAA to handle," she says tartly. "Maybe we should hire Microsoft."

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