FAA Delays Using LAPD Copters to Monitor Airspace

Citing “premature” publicity, Federal Aviation Administration officials on Friday postponed a plan to use Los Angeles police helicopters in tracking down errant pilots who violate controlled airspace around Los Angeles International Airport.

FAA investigators had planned to go aloft in two police helicopters for three hours today as a test to pursue pilots suspected of straying or intentionally flying into the Terminal Control Area (TCA) surrounding the airport.

However, FAA regional director H. C. McClure decided to postpone the test--believed to be the first of its kind involving a city police force--after The Times reported it in Friday’s editions.

“We felt premature publication of the information did compromise the ability of the FAA and the Police Department to conduct the test and receive valid data . . .,” said agency spokeswoman Elly Brekke. “We felt that we wouldn’t get a true test reading of the normal course of the day.”

FAA officials will reschedule the test sometime after this weekend, but a new date has not yet been set, Brekke said. There will be no advance notice given when it is, she added.

The FAA promised to step up its enforcement efforts in the Los Angeles Terminal Control Area following the Aug. 31 air disaster over Cerritos, in which a single-engine plane entered the airspace without authorization and collided with an Aeromexico jetliner. All 67 people in the two planes and 15 on the ground were killed.

Since then, FAA officials have complained that unauthorized pilot intrusions of the control area occur virtually every day, and especially on weekends, when general aviation traffic over the Los Angeles Basin is heaviest.

The control area consists of 12 wedge-shaped layers of air that extend outward to about 30 miles east and west of the airport, and about 12 miles to the north and south. Pilots must obtain radio permission to legally enter, and their aircraft must have altitude-reporting transponders that allow radar operators to more easily locate them.

FAA officials had hoped to keep the police-FAA plan to track errant flyers secret and had planned a 1 p.m. press conference today to reveal details of the three-hour test after it had begun.

Brekke said Friday that by limiting advance notice, the FAA had hoped that pilots would fly as they normally do, allowing authorities to better gauge how commonly the airport’s airspace is intentionally and accidentally violated.

Brekke said officials also hoped to minimize advance publicity because they feared possible interference during the test from helicopter-borne television crews.