Air Traffic Safety Remains Status Quo : More Planes in San Diego, but Upgrades Since ’78 PSA Crash Help Control Danger

Despite increased air traffic, San Diego’s skies are as safe or safer today than they were eight years ago, when 144 people died after a PSA jetliner collided with a small private plane and crashed into a North Park neighborhood, pilots and aviation officials familiar with the area say.

But improvements made since that crash--at the time the worst disaster in U.S. aviation history--cannot ensure that another midair collision, like the one in Cerritos a week ago, will not occur in San Diego.

“I’m confident that flying in San Diego is safe,” said Bob Vaughn, the Federal Aviation Administration official who heads the region’s air traffic control outpost. “That’s not to say that an accident can’t occur. To think otherwise is stupid. But as far as our part goes, it’s safe. I have no fear of flying in the San Diego area.”

John Galipault, director of the Aviation Safety Institute in Worthington, Ohio, said he believes that flying in San Diego is much safer than flying in Los Angeles, mainly because of changes made since the PSA crash.

“I think that there has been an improvement,” Galipault said. “That was forced on everybody, thank God. It’s too bad the energies put into that one weren’t put into L.A. and the others.”

Experts say San Diego is a tricky place for pilots to navigate because of the area’s hilly terrain, the collection of several small airports near each other and the presence of a major Navy air base. Near-collisions happen at a rate of about one a month, federal records show, and many involve close calls between military aircraft and general-aviation planes.

In hopes of minimizing the danger, the FAA imposed changes after the Sept. 25, 1978, crash that were aimed at more clearly dividing commercial air carriers, military jets and private planes. Further adjustments are planned for next year.

At the time of the PSA crash, the commercial air lanes over San Diego were like high-speed suburban parkways--dangerous to the little guy but open to anyone with the nerve to give it a go. Now, the air lanes are more like interstate highways, with small planes kept out of the way of faster traffic, much the way bicycles and pedestrians are barred from the freeways.

Since 1980, San Diego’s sky has been divided into 19 odd-shaped compartments that make up what is known as a terminal control area. The TCA has borders through which aircraft are not to pass without clearance from an air traffic controller. The ceiling of the TCA is at 12,500 feet. The floor of each section can be anywhere from the land or sea surface to several thousand feet above sea level.

In most cases, planes flying in the TCA must be equipped with a two-way radio and an electronic device that sends a message to the controller’s radar screen identifying the aircraft and showing its altitude.

If a plane enters the TCA without permission and a controller is unable to contact it, controllers try to track the plane to its destination, where the pilot is met and questioned by an FAA representative. Pilots can have their licenses suspended or, in rare cases, even revoked for such transgressions.

The other major change since the PSA crash was the installation of instrument landing systems at Montgomery, Gillespie and Palomar airports. The new systems mean private pilots can practice instrument landings at the suburban airports, out of the way of the major carriers landing and taking off at Lindbergh.

John O’Brien, director of air safety for the Airline Pilots Assn., said San Diego, from an airline pilot’s point of view, is as safe as it was in 1978, but no safer. He said the changes put in place since the PSA crash have helped maintain the same level of safety despite the increased air traffic that has come with an 80% jump in the number of private airplanes based in the county. The numbers have climbed from an estimated 2,200 airplanes in 1978 to more than 4,000 today.

O’Brien said it will be impossible to make dramatic improvements here without building a new airport--something virtually no one expects to happen in this century.

“Without that, there’s very little adjusting that can be done to the air space and the air routes to improve safety,” O’Brien said.

Reports of near-collisions over San Diego have climbed steadily during the last five years, in part because the FAA has encouraged pilots to more vigorously report the incidents. In 1981, pilots reported six near-crashes over San Diego. They reported 4 in 1982, 10 in 1983, 11 in 1984 and 19 in 1985. Pilots reported 9 near-collisions in the first five months of this year, and none since. The number of so-called critical near-collisions, when planes come within 100 feet of each other, has remained fairly steady, ranging from two in 1982 to five last year.

Over the last two years, the FAA, commercial carriers, the military and general aviation pilots have hammered out changes in the rules that govern San Diego’s airspace. The adjustments, which should take effect next year, are supposed to make it easier for private planes to fly through San Diego airspace without encountering military or commercial air traffic.

The major change will be in the area around Miramar Naval Air Station. Up to now, Navy planes on practice runs northeast of Miramar have flown much of the time through unrestricted airspace, entering the TCA only as they came out of the east on final approach to the Navy runway. Under the new configuration, a much larger area of the sky east of Miramar will be part of the TCA, and the Navy jets will stay within an area off-limits to private planes without clearance. A large area northwest of Miramar not used by the Navy or commercial carriers has been trimmed from the TCA.

Another small change is proposed to make it easier for private planes to fly east of San Diego without having to penetrate the terminal control area. Currently, the eastern end of the TCA stretches over Interstate 8 in the foothills outside El Cajon, with a floor of 7,500 feet above sea level and a ceiling of 12,500 feet. Many pilots of small planes flying east out of Gillespie Field and navigating under visual flight rules prefer to follow Interstate 8, but to do so now they must fly between the tops of the foothills and the floor of the TCA, or else seek permission to enter the control area itself.

The adjustment due to take effect next year eliminates that section of the TCA, allowing general aviation craft a clearer, and presumably safer, route to the east.

Private pilots interviewed by The Times expressed satisfaction with the TCA and the changes planned for next year. They said the TCA, while restricting the movement of private planes, is helpful because it also confines commercial jet aircraft to a certain part of the sky.

“I think the TCA was the best thing that ever happened to us here,” said Buzz Gibbs, owner of Gibbs Flying Service at Montgomery Field.

Before the TCA was implemented, Gibbs said, commercial jets on their way to Lindbergh Field from the north would fly low over Montgomery Field and Mission Valley, and private pilots flying in the same area would never be certain where a big jet might turn up. Now the commercial carriers are kept in a corridor above 4,800 feet, and many fly as high as 6,000 feet as they make a big loop to the east before turning around for their approach to Lindbergh.

The changes planned for the area east of Miramar will have the same effect: They will keep the Navy jets within certain areas and the private planes in others.

“We were all afraid to go through there anyway, and now the jets are going to be held higher,” Gibbs explained. “They’re going to have a definite place where they’ll be, and we’ll have a definite place where we’ll be.”

A.C. Wood, who pilots the Cubic Corp. private jet and flies his own aerobatic plane in his spare time, said he believes the air control system as it is today in San Diego is fine. Wood and other pilots said they believe no system will ever be invented to eliminate the risk of midair collisions.

“These things will happen; I don’t care what you do,” Wood said. “It’s like putting up a fence and saying keep out. Not everyone’s going to keep out. . . .The only way you’re not going to have midairs is to only let one airplane in the sky at a time.”

FAA’s Vaughn said there is not much more that can be done to separate general aviation from commercial aircraft.

“There are some people who say we just won’t let the general aviation planes fly where the commercial air carriers fly,” Vaughn said. “Well, how would you feel if they said you can’t drive on Interstate 15 today because it’s going to be just used for buses and trucks?”