Safe-zone violation at LAX

A massive Boeing 777-300 airliner was mistakenly assigned last week to a taxiway at Los Angeles International Airport that was too short to handle its fuselage, resulting in a minor runway incursion, federal officials said Friday.

Air traffic controllers and Federal Aviation Administration officials said the aircraft had a radar designation tag that was unknown to controllers when the All Nippon Airways flight from Tokyo landed June 19 at LAX.

The tag, which appears on radar screens, tells controllers what type of aircraft they are handling. A Boeing 777-300 is usually designated “B773,” but the tag for the All Nippon flight was “B77W,” a new international designation that controllers had not been told about, FAA officials said.

Because controllers did not know the exact Boeing model that had arrived, they said, they directed the pilot to a taxiway that was too small, causing the tail to jut 5 feet into a safety zone around one of the northern runways. A Boeing 777-300 is 242 feet long, about 33 feet longer than a standard 777.

As the All Nippon flight sat in the taxiway, an American Airlines MD-83 aircraft landed on the north airfield and rolled past the Boeing 777-300, according to the FAA.

Ian Gregor, an FAA spokesman, said the incident was designated a minor incursion because the All Nippon jetliner had intruded slightly into the safety zone and there was no chance the aircraft would have collided.

Gregor said the FAA initially attributed the incursion to controller error.

However, the agency backed off that conclusion after the LAX tower manager argued that controllers should not be blamed for failing to recognize a radar tag they had never been told about.

FAA officials said they will investigate why the All Nippon flight had used the new international radar tag.

“This is a strange and unique situation,” Gregor said, “I am unaware of anything like this happening elsewhere in the country.”

Michael Foote, a controller at LAX and a local representative of the National Air Traffic Controllers Assn., said he has asked the inspector general’s office of the U.S. Department of Transportation to investigate the incident.

Foote contended that the FAA may have tried to cover up the incursion by initially describing it as a “nonoccurrence” in a daily log and not changing the designation until he asked for a review.

He also asked the inspector general to determine whether there have been similar incidents elsewhere involving Boeing 777-300s.

Gregor said the FAA properly investigated the matter and ultimately concluded that it was a runway incursion.

“The suggestion that we did anything improper here is ridiculous,” he added.

Madeline Chulumovich, a spokesperson for the inspector general’s office, said the agency can neither confirm nor deny whether it has opened an investigation.

--

dan.weikel@latimes.com