Crowded Skies

Three days after the worst air accident in the history of the Los Angeles area the questions still outnumber the answers.

The pilot of a single-engine private plane that collided with an incoming Aeromexico DC-9 was flying in skies that are out of bounds for small planes without special equipment and special permission from traffic controllers at Los Angeles International Airport. He had neither, but a theory under investigation is that he had a heart attack after he took off and before the collision. If he was in the wrong place because he blacked out as a result, it might be that no number of technical fixes and new rules would spare lives in similar circumstances in the future because of the odds against its happening even once, let alone twice.

The traffic controller at Los Angeles did not see the doomed small airplane, but he did spot a second small plane flying out of bounds and warned the Aeromexico jet and its 64 passengers and crew members. What was the second small plane doing there if, as the private pilots’ association says, there are enough rules to keep the busiest skies in the United States safe for people who fly because they want to as well as for people who fly because they have to?

Then, too, is it common for traffic controllers to be responsible for so many shining dots on their radar screens designating aircraft that--as seems to be true in this case--communicating with one plane means losing track of a jetliner?

Spokesmen for general aviation--government jargon for anything with wings that is not an airliner--take a rigid right-to-fly position against tighter rules, particularly after tragedies when the evidence ultimately says that existing rules must be tighter.

They argue for the right to be in skies full of other airplanes on the basis that pilots watch out for other aircraft and see them in time to avoid collisions. Any pilot knows that the skies regularly play tricks on the sharpest eyes; that would account for nearly 400 near-collisions that have occurred around U.S. airports so far this year--many involving airliners full of passengers.

Experiments are under way with collision-avoidance devices that bounce signals off other airplanes in an area to show a pilot things that he cannot see himself. They are years from being ready. And until that kind of mechanical help is available, the government must not hesitate to expand the forbidden zones around airports to provide a broader margin of safety that on Sunday was tragically thin.