Runway in Hawthorne Mistaken for LAX : Jumbo Jet Cast a Big Shadow Over Small Airport

The amateur pilot was tying down his small, single-engine airplane when he glanced up and saw the United Airlines 747 jumbo jet roaring toward tiny Hawthorne Municipal Airport. “I thought, ‘My God, don’t tell me this guy is going to put down here.’ ”

But the jet--landing gear down, flaps fully extended and engines rumbling at full power--skirted over the Hawthorne runway before pulling up in a sharp bank and heading off into the distance. According to various accounts, the jet was between 500 and 1,100 feet above the runway.

“It was quite an awesome sight,” said the amateur pilot, who did not want to be identified because he doesn’t want to get involved in a Federal Aviation Administration investigation.

The FAA is indeed trying to figure out how United Airlines Flight 812, en route to Los Angeles International Airport from Honolulu last week, almost landed at nearby Hawthorne field before the pilot realized his mistake and veered off safely to LAX.

A jet the size of a 747, which can carry more than 450 passengers, could not have landed safely at Hawthorne, FAA spokesman Russell Park said. Hawthorne’s 5,000-foot runway, which handles propeller-driven planes and small jets, is too short for a 747, and the plane probably would have smashed into something before it could stop, Park said. “It would not have been very pretty,” he added.

So far, investigators believe a combination of factors contributed to the incident, including apparent mistakes by both the pilot and air traffic controllers, none of whom have been identified.

For one thing, as the United pilot approached Los Angeles, he stayed in radio contact with controllers in the LAX radar approach facility instead of switching to controllers in the LAX tower, as he should have, said Richard A. Cox, manager of the radar facility.

That caused him to miss several instructions from the LAX tower, including an order to switch from LAX’s north runway to its south runway, which are both more than 8,000 feet long.

“When the change-of-route notice came over, he was still on our frequency, forcing us to relay the order and give instructions on altitude and bearing,” Cox said.

Meanwhile, the air traffic controller in the LAX tower who was in charge of Flight 812 was relieved by another controller during the jetliner’s approach, according to Richard B. Russell, a safety coordinator for the Air Line Pilots Assn. who attended a closed FAA hearing on the incident Tuesday.

Russell said the new controller should have realized that the United jet, by veering toward Hawthorne, was off course and should have notified the flight crew. It is not clear whether the controller tried to alert the pilot to the mistake.

“To change controllers in the middle of an approach is very unusual,” Russell said. “Actually, that’s something that’s not supposed to happen until the other controller is fully briefed. What happened in this case is that the new guy said, ‘I got it, I got it,’ when he didn’t.”

‘Don’t Know for Sure’

FAA spokesman Park said the United pilot probably misinterpreted tower instructions. “Once he got close and realized Hawthorne was too short for him, he pulled up and headed to LAX,” Park said. “Maybe that’s what happened. We don’t know for sure yet.”

The FAA has impounded computer data from the flight and is questioning the flight crew, Park added. The incident occurred about 6 p.m. last Thursday when visibility was about 1 1/2 miles.

Joseph Hopkins, a spokesman for UAL Inc., the parent company of United Airlines, would only say that the jet made a low pass over Hawthorne and did not go below 1,100 feet.

Tower personnel at Hawthorne Municipal Airport who witnessed the incident said they were not allowed to make any statements pending the completion of the FAA investigation.

Mix-ups such as the one involving the United jet have occurred in the past, largely because of the proximity of Hawthorne airport to LAX, which is about 2 1/2 miles away. Russell of the Air Line Pilots Assn. said the problem was further complicated earlier this year when new runway lighting was installed at the Hawthorne facility “making it stand out more brilliantly than ever.”