Wider Control Area Around L.A. Airport Urged in FAA Proposal

In a further attempt to improve air safety, the Federal Aviation Administration has proposed expanding the controlled airspace around Los Angeles International Airport.

Wednesday’s announcement of the changes--part two of a three-phase FAA plan to “restructure” the airspace over Southern California--comes 11 months after the collision of an Aeromexico jetliner and a small plane over Cerritos that claimed 82 lives.

The Aeromexico collision occurred within the Los Angeles Terminal Control Area (TCA), the irregular, oblong block of airspace, about 50 miles long and 25 miles wide, that the FAA now wants to expand.

The TCA was designed to help controllers and pilots maintain safe distances between aircraft operating near the Los Angeles airport. Planes within the TCA are supposed to maintain radio contact with air traffic controllers and carry special devices, called transponders, which help controllers keep track of an aircraft’s altitude and position.

Critics in the aviation community have said the configuration of the TCA is so irregular that many pilots who intend to avoid its limits stray into it by mistake. That’s apparently what happened to the small plane--flying without the required transponder--that collided with the Aeromexico DC-9 last Aug. 31.

The changes proposed by FAA Administrator T. Allan McArtor on Wednesday would increase the ceiling of the TCA from the present altitude of 7,000 feet to 12,500 feet above sea level.

This means, in effect, that aircraft flying between airports north and south of Los Angeles will be forced into routes around or under parts of the TCA if they cannot climb above 12,500 feet, an altitude beyond the capability of some smaller aircraft. Air traffic controllers usually do not allow aircraft flying by visual flight rules to fly into the TCA regardless of whether the aircraft carry altitude-reporting equipment.

The floor of the TCA would retain its present, “inverted-wedding-cake” configuration, starting at ground level near the airport and to its immediate east and west, and jogging irregularly up in increments of 500 to 5,000 feet as the TCA expands outward.

In another proposed change, McArtor said, the indented southern boundary of the TCA would be straightened. That would expand the TCA to include a chunk of airspace above 5,000 feet that extends out over Long Beach Airport.

Public hearings for discussion of the proposed changes will be scheduled in coming weeks. FAA adoption of any reconfiguration of the TCA is not expected for several months.

Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole said in Washington that the proposed TCA changes “would provide private pilots, airline passengers and crew members with increased protection against mid-air and near-mid-air collisions in the busy Los Angeles airspace.”

But John L. Baker, president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Assn., which represents 260,000 pilots and operators of small, general aviation aircraft, and Karl Grundmann, a regional representative for the National Air Traffic Controllers Assn., disagreed.

Baker and Grundmann said any expansion of the already understaffed air traffic control network would completely overburden the system.

Last March, in the first step of the restructuring of Southern California’s airspace, the FAA announced changes in some of the principal air routes used to funnel jetliners in and out of major Los Angeles-area airports. Several of these new routes--designed to improve separation between airliners and small planes--are already in use.