WASHINGTON (Bloomberg) - US aviation regulators must take more steps to prevent about 30 serious runway near collisions each year, because the incidents suggest "a high risk of a catastrophic" accident, a government report found.

The absence of national leadership and a national runway safety plan are impeding progress at the Federal Aviation Administration, the Government Accountability Office said yesterday.

"We have regressed in this important area of aviation safety rather than progressed," representative James Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat, said at a news conference to release the report in Washington.

He chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

The report adds to criticisms from the National Transportation Safety Board and others that the FAA is doing too little on runway safety.

Near misses rose 12 percent to 371 in the year ended September 30 from a year earlier, though the FAA notes that the most-serious incidents fell to 24 from 31.

"Runway safety is one of the FAA's top priorities," agency spokeswoman Laura Brown said in a statement. She said the FAA's runway-safety program had cut the number of "serious" incursions by 55 percent since 2001.

The most-serious incidents fell about 30 percent in 2002, the GAO said. Since then, the annual total through the year ended September 30, 2006, varied from 28 to 37.

"As runway safety incidents declined, FAA's runway-safety efforts subsequently waned," according to the report.

One of the incidents involved two aircraft carrying 296 people that came with 37 feet (11 metres) of colliding at Los Angeles International Airport on August 16, according to the GAO. The report did not name the carriers involved.

The FAA hasn't updated its runway-safety plan since 2002, even though agency policy calls for the plan to be prepared every two to three years, according to the report.

"The lack of an updated plan has resulted in uncoordinated runway-safety efforts by individual FAA offices," the GAO said.

The FAA should take additional steps such as starting a voluntary program for controllers to report safety risks, the GAO said.

The FAA also should encourage the use of lighting systems that guide planes on airport taxiways and improve communication about runway conditions and weather information, the GAO said.

NTSB members on November 8 voted for the seventh straight year to recommend new technology to reduce runway near misses as part of its "most-wanted" list of safety improvements.