COLLISIONS AND NEAR MISSES

NEAR--MISSES

About every eighth day this year in Los Angeles County, two airplanes have come close enough to each other to result in the filing of a formal “near-miss” report by one of the pilots, according to FAA statistics. Through Sept. 29 there had been 32 such reports filed by pilots.

Two-thirds of the reports were filed by airline pilots. On 16 occasions, these pilots reported they had narrowly avoided a private plane or other general aviation craft. Most of the remaining incidents involved two general-aviation aircraft.

The average distance between the two planes before they separated was 310 feet and ranged from five feet--a near-miss between two general aviation planes 1,000 feet above Santa Monica on June 29--to 1,000 feet.

Nineteen of the 32 misses occurred near three airports, Los Angeles International (7), Long Beach (6) and Santa Monica (6).

MID-AIR COLLISONS

The Aug. 31 mid-air collision over Cerritos was the 30th in Los Angeles County since 1964, the year the FAA began keeping track.

The Cerritos crash, which took 82 lives, was by far the worst. Previous mid-airs had killed 111 and injured 32. (The statistics do not include victims on the ground.)

Before the Cerritos crash, the county’s worst mid-air had been a 1971 collison between a Marine Corps jet and a DC-9 commercial jetliner north of Duarte that took 50 lives.

Most of the county’s mid-airs have involved two small planes, and have occurred over various suburban communities.

The FAA’s most recent study of mid-airs, conducted in 1969 and 1970, found that most occurred when a plane was preparing to land at an airport without a control tower.

The study said most mid-airs occurred under good visual conditions and that pilots often simply failed to make their presence conspicuous enough to other planes.

In 60% of the incidents studied, one pilot disregarded the other’s right of way.

SAFETY

Accident rates for general aviation and airliners have declined during the past decade.

Here are accident rates per 100,000 flying hours for general aviation and U.S. air carriers.

GENERAL AVATION Fatality Rates Per 100,000 aircraft hours

1975 2.20 ’76 2.16 ’77 2.09 ’78 2.06 ’79 1.63 ’80 1.70 ’81 1.78 ’82 1.84 ’83 1.78 ’84 1.73 ‘85* 1.53

AIR CARRIERS Fatality Rates Per 100,000 aircraft hours

1975 0.037 ’76 0.036 ’77 0.052 ’78 0.083 ’79 0.060 ’80 NONE ’81 0.061 ’82 0.047 ’83 0.060 ’84 0.014 ‘85* 0.051

*Preliminary data