Chicken in the Air

When a Lufthansa Boeing 737 with 42 passengers aboard had to take swift evasive action to avoid being rammed by a U.S. Air Force Phantom over Rudesheim on a clear day last July, it seemed like one of the normal hazards of flying in West Germany's overcrowded airspace. But that same day a British airliner approaching Hamburg had a near miss with another jet fighter. Ten days later, another British plane was buzzed by an unidentified Phantom not once but three times, the last pass coming within 100 yds. That could hardly have been accidental.

The West German Air Traffic Controllers Association last week defied its country's official-secrets act and published a list of more than 100 dangerously near misses in the two months from mid-June to mid-August.

German air lanes are crowded not only by private planes and gliders but by the military aircraft of seven air forces: West Germany's own, the U.S., British, French, Dutch, Belgian and Danish. Commercial pilots have charged that fighter planes deliberately use passenger craft as targets for dummy runs, which is like playing chicken at the speed of sound. By refusing to allot more personnel and modern equipment to air traffic control, Bonn is playing a similar game of chicken with passengers' lives.

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