Jetliner Takes Evasive Action Over County

Two jetliners had a possible close call over Orange County on Sunday morning, but Federal Aviation Administration officials said Wednesday that they are not sure the aircraft were on a collision course and that they are not classifying the incident a near-miss.

However, the FAA said it has labeled as a near-miss a more serious incident near Sacramento the same morning when a United Airlines jetliner came within 100 feet of a small Beechcraft plane whose pilot has not been identified. The planes were flying at about 7,000 feet 20 miles north of Sacramento.

FAA spokeswoman Elly Brekke said both incidents are under investigation.

The Orange County incident, which occurred at 21,000 feet about 15 miles east of El Toro, involved a Phoenix-bound America West Boeing 737 that had just left John Wayne Airport and an American Airlines MD-80 headed from Long Beach to Dallas.

Computer Sounded Alarm

Brekke said an air traffic controller at the FAA’s Palmdale facility accidentally assigned the two planes to the same altitude and they came between 500 and 1,000 feet of each other. A computer in the facility monitoring the separation between airplanes sounded an alarm, Brekke said, but by then the America West pilot was already taking evasive action.

Neither pilot reported the incident at the time, Brekke said. Airline officials said they have asked the two pilots to file written reports.

“It’s possible that the planes were on a collision course, but we won’t know that until our investigation is completed,” Brekke said. “The alarm sounds every time two planes are closer than they should be (five miles laterally and 1,000 feet in altitude). It doesn’t indicate that a collision is definitely about to happen.”

Brekke said that if an FAA review determines that air traffic controllers in either the Orange County or Sacramento incidents did something seriously wrong they will be “retrained” or reassigned to less demanding posts.