FAA Relents, Will Push for Traffic Tower at Whiteman

The Federal Aviation Administration, giving in to pressure from local officials, has agreed to propose the installation of a control tower at Whiteman Airport in Pacoima, the only uncontrolled airport in the San Fernando Valley.

The FAA, which for several months resisted requests from local officials for such a tower, informed Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) that the agency’s Western regional headquarters will ask that funds be included in the next budget request to Congress to build control towers at Whiteman and at Compton Airport, Berman’s office said Wednesday.

Whiteman is a small, county-owned airstrip used mainly by pilots of privately owned light planes. Pressure to install a control tower there increased after two incidents last year: A light plane collided in flight with a jetliner bound for Los Angeles International Airport over Cerritos last August, taking 82 lives; and, last December, the pilot of a Continental Airlines DC-9 came within about 400 feet of landing at Whiteman, mistaking it for nearby Burbank Airport.

Aviation industry sources said landing a jetliner on the little airstrip would probably have destroyed the plane and harmed or killed many passengers. The Continental pilot is now fighting an FAA order suspending his license for 45 days.

Berman, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority all appealed to the FAA to install a control tower. The FAA replied that it requires about 200,000 takeoffs and landings a year to justify the expense of a tower, and Whiteman falls about 50,000 short of that level.

Those calling for installation of a control tower argued that it is not the traffic level that concerns them but the airport’s location between Van Nuys and Burbank airports, the second- and third-busiest airports in Los Angeles County, and the possibility of collisions with their traffic. The northern end of a Burbank Airport runway is 3.8 miles to the southeast of Whiteman, and Van Nuys Airport is five miles to the southwest.