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Air traffic controllers in Atlanta should have grounded a Greensboro-bound airliner that nearly collided with another airliner Friday for an immediate investigation, industry observers said Monday.

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Federal Aviation Administration investigators believe an Atlantic Southeast Airlines flight bound for Greensboro ignored orders from the control tower to stop its taxi across the runway, coming within seconds of running into a Mexico-bound Delta Air Lines jet, FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said.

"We consider this to be a pilot deviation," she said Monday.

Bergen said FAA controllers in the tower at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport do not have the authority to send planes back to their gates after a near miss.

"The investigation began immediately," she said. "The pilots will be interviewed. We have voice tapes. We have ground radar data. There's no delay in investigating these incidents. Safety is our top priority."

But Joseph Gutheinz, an investigative consultant on FAA and NASA cases and a criminal defense attorney in Houston, said the FAA should never have allowed the two planes to take off without talking to the pilots about their fatigue levels and testing them for drugs and alcohol. It's a dangerous example, he said, of a broken air travel system with overworked traffic controllers and overscheduled airlines.

"The airline could have stopped this too," Gutheinz said. "It's not just the FAA. I'm assuming that this is a good pilot who made a mistake. I'm not so concerned about what the pilot did, I'm concerned about what the FAA did or didn't do and what the airline did or didn't do."

ASA would say only that it is cooperating with the FAA in the investigation and declined to discuss any other details of the incident, said Kate Modolo, the airline's spokeswoman.

The incident happened at 10:10 a.m., Bergen said. The ASA flight was taxiing out to its runway and was told to "hold short."

The pilot read back the instruction, and the controller cleared the Delta flight for takeoff, she said. But the ASA flight moved onto and past the runway, coming to within 1,600 feet of the plane that was going 100 mph for takeoff, according to wire reports.

Such incidents are not rare, according to a report released by NASA on Dec. 31.

An $11 million survey of the airline industry between 2001 and 2004 asked pilots whether they've nearly experienced a ground collision with another aircraft while both were on the ground, and 257 said yes.

The NASA report was analyzed by the Coalition for an Airline Passengers Bill of Rights.

Air traffic controllers are worried that old equipment and overtaxed workers will lead to a big accident someday, regardless of pilot error, said Kate Hanni, founder of the coalition.

"This situation could have been averted," she said. "It could have been that it didn't have to get that close. That close was a very near miss."

The FAA is seeing an unprecedented rate of retirements and has programs underway to fill those positions.

Airlines are scheduling flights to the limit, Hanni said.

"Schedule: that's the primary issue," she said. "I believe it's the airlines' pressure on air traffic control. What's been happening is the airlines have been intentionally and persistently overscheduling for time spots."

In the end, airlines and the FAA share the blame for tight schedules, Gutheinz said.

"It's going to get somebody killed one of these days because they are too sensitive about maintaining the flight schedules."

Contact Richard M. Barron at 373-7371 or richard.barron@news-record.com