Up There, It’s Always ‘Rush Hour’ : Orange County Among Most ‘Flown-Over’ Areas in Nation

Between 160 and 170 times a day, big passenger jets take off and land at Orange County’s John Wayne Airport. Another 30 to 50 times each day, smaller commuter airliners fly in and out, as do hundreds of light planes.

Add to this hundreds more planes, including national and international jetliner flights that pass through Orange County airspace en route to airports in Los Angeles County and more distant destinations, such as Sacramento, Seattle and Mexico. And along with that traffic are dozens of military flights daily out of El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, helicopter flights out of the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station, and airlifts of troops and cargo from bases elsewhere.

In short, Orange County residents are among the most “flown-over” people in the nation, say Federal Aviation Administration officials.

“Orange and Los Angeles counties basically get air traffic from all directions, 360 degrees around the compass, so there’s a big problem,” said Fred Mauck, a supervising air controller at Coast Tracon (Terminal Radar Approach Control).

Although much of Orange County’s air traffic is required to stay in two-way radio communication with controllers, a lot of it is not.

Right Turn Over Tustin

For example, most of the jetliners en route to John Wayne Airport enter Orange County airspace at about 5,000 feet as they cross the coast at Huntington Beach, near the Bolsa Chica wetlands. The jets descend to 4,000 feet as they pass over Santa Ana and make a right turn over Tustin for their final approach to John Wayne.

The jetliners communicate with air traffic controllers all the way in. But until they reach the interchange of the Santa Ana and Garden Grove freeways, the jets share airspace with small planes that do not have to be in two-way communication with anyone, and do not have to be equipped with transponders, the electronic devices that help controllers see the planes on radar.

As jetliners approach the turning point over Tustin, other commercial jets from Las Vegas, Phoenix and other points east line up over Santa Ana Canyon, turn left and descend over Tustin to start their final approach into John Wayne. For part of their journey over the mountains from Riverside County, they also fly through unrestricted airspace.

Above this air traffic, at altitudes ranging from 7,000 to 18,000 feet and above, jetliners en route from Mexico, Arizona and other points southeast cross between Saddleback Mountain and Prado Dam, and descend over north Orange County and Cerritos as they head toward Los Angeles International Airport.

Meanwhile, aircraft from San Diego, Mexico and other points south cross the coast near Laguna Beach, pass directly over John Wayne Airport, make a right turn as they descend over Costa Mesa and Santa Ana, and then make another right turn into John Wayne.

According to the pilots of private planes, it’s not likely that small craft will venture near one of the big jets. Most fly below or above the level of the jets. And they say that they try to avoid the doughnut-shaped Airport Radar Service Area (ARSA), where two-way communication is required, south of the Santa Ana River.

Although this seems like a way to avoid useful communication, pilots say that it also separates their planes from the jets flying through the radar area.

Even then, outside the radar area, most pilots communicate with controllers when they are in the area of the big jets.

“On a pilot’s chart it looks like ARSA ends at the Santa Ana River, but in reality we talk to almost everyone whether they’re in the ARSA or not,” said Marion Davis, manager of Coast Tracon. “That means more work for us, but we’d rather have it that way, for safety’s sake.”

The workload for Coast Tracon controllers has increased dramatically. Overtime has risen tenfold, from 200 hours in the quarter ended Dec. 31, 1985, to an estimated 2,100 hours in the current quarter, ending Sept. 30. Much of the increase is due to the abrupt resignations of five controllers and a severe staff shortage, but it’s also related to the radar system, which took effect last January. Before ARSA, two-way communication with pilots of small planes occurred much less frequently.

One step to safeguard against midair collisions would be designation of a Terminal Control Area (TCA) around John Wayne Airport. A TCA is stricter than a radar area, because planes entering that particular slice of sky must not only gain permission and be in two-way communication with controllers, they must also reduce speed to 250 m.p.h. and be equipped with a transponder encoded to provide altitude data on ground radar screens.

The small Piper Cherokee Archer II that collided with an Aeromexico DC-9 at more than 6,000 feet over Cerritos last Sunday was in a TCA without permission and had not been in communication with Los Angeles controllers, according to National Transportation Safety Board officials.

John Wayne Airport doesn’t have a TCA, partly because the FAA doesn’t think the volume of air traffic--or safety problems--warrant it. But there also is strong opposition to the idea among pilots and their organizations.

“If they put up a TCA around John Wayne, that would be the end of us,” said Dan Paulson, a flight instructor based at John Wayne. “It would be too difficult to have training flights around here. The flight schools would hate it, and recreational fliers would go nuts.”

Paulson and other pilots say that John Wayne Airport has an outstanding safety record, and that the 59 near-collisions in Orange County reported by pilots to the FAA since 1981 are statistically insignificant, considering the millions of miles of air travel flown annually through local air space.

Controllers agree, but say they still worry because some air traffic is difficult to track, never shows up on radar, or vanishes from radar for a few seconds, or sometimes several minutes, before reappearing.

They say computers and radar equipment fail occasionally, causing some of their problems. But they add that aircraft vanish from radar screens when they fly directly over a radar site, where a radar beam’s lateral sweep can miss them altogether.

One such “blind spot” exists in the airspace over Seal Beach, one of the country’s busiest air traffic corridors, where pilots have reported six near-misses since 1981. Jetliners approaching Long Beach come in low over Seal Beach, as do light planes carrying sightseers up and down the coast. Moreover, aircraft from the Los Alamitos Armed Forces Reserve Center and Meadowlark Airport in Huntington Beach converge with the other air traffic.

Dana Point is also a problem area, according to controllers, because sightseeing planes hugging the coastline fly at roughly the same altitude as F-18 jet fighters as they streak across the shoreline toward their landings at their base in El Toro.

Two-way communication with Coast Tracon is required in the Dana Point and El Toro areas at critical altitudes. Still, El Toro has had 13 close calls in the past five years.

“You can’t put up a barrier and keep pilots out,” Paulson says. “There’s always going to be somebody who breaks the rules and does something stupid. That’s why there’s really no better system than see and be seen. I’ve known pilots that have gotten lazy about that, because they think radar will take care of everything, that the controllers will save them. But it doesn’t work that way. You have to do a careful job of looking out the window.”