Jetliner May Have Brushed Cessna on Runway

A Continental Airlines jetliner taking off from Los Angeles International Airport with 84 passengers aboard may have clipped a light plane that was taxiing across the runway Wednesday, federal officials said.

The jet continued on its scheduled flight and landed safely three hours later in Houston, No one on either plane was injured.

The officials indicated Thursday that the two planes apparently had received conflicting instructions from the airport control tower that put them on a collision course. As in all such cases, the controllers involved were removed from duty pending further investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Mike Benson, an NTSB spokesman in Washington, D.C., said investigators will review the Federal Aviation Administration’s tape recordings of radio communications between the tower and the two aircraft to determine whether there was “controller operational error.”

Benson said the pilot of the jetliner had indicated that he believed that controller error contributed to the incident.

Continental Airlines officials said no damage was found on the Boeing 727 airliner when it landed Wednesday night after the mishap.

The tail of the smaller plane was bent and torn in the incident, but FAA officials could not immediately confirm that the two planes actually collided, saying that jet blast from the airliner could have caused the damage. Spokesmen for Continental said the pilot of the jetliner believed that he missed the smaller plane “by about five feet.”

Continental Flight 866 had been cleared for takeoff on Runway 25 Right--the east-west runway immediately south of the tower--and was under the control of a “local controller,” who handles takeoffs and landings on the runways on that side of the airport, FAA sources said.

FAA and NTSB sources said the twin-engine Cessna 310, which reportedly had only a pilot on board, was under the control of a “ground controller,” who handles planes on the airport’s ramps, aprons and taxiways. The sources said the pilot had been cleared by ground control to cross Runway 25 Right.

The Continental pilot, who was not immediately identified, reported later that he saw the Cessna crossing the runway ahead of him just as his jetliner lifted off the ground. “We were right where we were supposed to be,” said Bruce Hicks, vice president for corporate public relations at Continental headquarters in Houston. “That captain is a veteran and he did a fine job.”

Hicks said the pilot “believed he missed that aircraft. . . . “

“They thought they came close, they thought it was a near miss, that it was within five feet,” Hicks said. “There was no indication on board that he may have hit it.”

What happened to the Cessna after the incident was not made clear.

“I don’t know whether it was taxied to the other end of the runway or what,” said Barbara Abels, a local spokeswoman for the FAA. “I heard that it reported stabilizer damage to the tail. That’s all I know.”

The identity of the Cessna pilot and the ownership of the plane and its home airfield were not immediately disclosed, but the NTSB said the plane was believed to be a cargo air taxi operating between Los Angeles and Ontario. Abels said the only additional information she had was that the Cessna had landed at the airport a few minutes before the incident.