FAA Expands L.A. Airport’s Control Area : Order Comes on Heels of Another Aerial Near-Miss

In a move that dramatically curtails the freedom of private pilots, the Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday issued an emergency order expanding the controlled airspace around Los Angeles International Airport.

The order, announced in Washington by new FAA chief T. Allan McArtor, came in the wake of a reported near-collision between an American Airlines jetliner and a private plane over Santa Monica Tuesday.

The order calls for:

- Raising the ceiling of the airport’s Terminal Control Area, an expanse set aside primarily for airliners, from 7,000 feet to 12,500 feet. FAA officials first proposed that change last week, but did so in the form of a lengthy rule-making change that would have required two years to take effect.

- Closing a coastal “visual flight corridor” that had been created by the FAA to allow private planes to fly through the TCA in good weather.

‘Lessen the Risk’

McArtor said he issued the order “to lessen the risk posed to the traveling public” by private planes that fly in the Los Angeles Basin.

Nationwide, there have been 150 near-collisions involving at least one airliner during the first seven months of this year, about 30% more than in the same period in 1986.

H. C. McClure, director of the FAA’s Western-Pacific region, said the expansion of the TCA would increase by 25% the amount of air traffic requiring clearance from controllers.

Elly Brekke, an FAA spokeswoman in Los Angeles, said there was no indication that McArtor issued the order in direct response to Tuesday’s near-collision between a private aircraft and the American Airlines Boeing 737. But Brekke said she believes the incident contributed to McArtor’s decision.

The American Airlines pilot reported that the private plane missed him by only 100 feet, while his plane was at about 7,400 feet--above the current ceiling of the TCA.

Several veteran private pilots and flight instructors complained Wednesday that by substantially raising the TCA and closing the coastal corridor, McArtor is unfairly restricting private planes and could inadvertently encourage them to jam into unregulated airspace.

The TCA is a segment of airspace about 50 miles long and 25 miles wide around the airport. It contains several layers with various floor and ceiling altitudes. Planes cannot enter this area without permission from air traffic controllers, and once there they must fly under the guidance of controllers. Planes in the TCA are required to carry altitude-reporting transponders, which allow controllers to see the planes on their radar scopes.

Intent of Decision

When the FAA first announced last week that it planned to raise the TCA’s ceiling to 12,500 feet, its intent was to discourage private planes from flying above airliners. Some smaller aircraft are not capable of climbing above 12,500 feet.

That change alone would mean that aircraft flying between airports north and south of Los Angeles would be forced into alternate routes, including the popular coastal corridor, which sets aside airspace between 2,500 and 5,000 feet.

However, spokesmen for general aviation complained Wednesday that the emergency order raising the TCA and closing the coastal corridor virtually blocks planes that fly without the direction of air traffic controllers from the heavily traveled coastal route.

Fewer than half of all pilots have instrument ratings, which permit them to fly regardless of weather conditions.

“Nobody (who operates under visual flight rules) can go from Santa Barbara to San Diego anymore,” said Robert Gunnell, owner of Gunnell Aviation in Santa Monica.

Effect of Controls

Gunnell said the new rule would tend to force visual traffic over downtown Los Angeles and along the Los Angeles River at low altitudes.

Gunnell and others in the aviation community at Santa Monica Airport criticized McArtor for taking unilateral action when the FAA had just started soliciting comments on the long-term proposal for modifying the TCA.

“The aviation community is aghast that this guy would make such a totally uninformed reaction to a problem that has been under study for some time,” Gunnell said.

Santa Monica Airport Director Henry Ditmar said the action “appeared to eliminate the possibility of reasonable debate on the TCA.”

Dick Russell, a United Airlines captain and the Los Angeles safety coordinator for the Air Line Pilots Assn., said he welcomes the changes. He said his organization had proposed increasing the TCA ceiling last fall at an FAA seminar. However, he said eliminating the coastal corridor was not recommended by airline pilots.

Russell agreed with general aviation spokesmen that eliminating the corridor “is going to have a major impact . . . that’s going to push all that traffic to the east.”

At a briefing several hours before the emergency order was issued, the manager of the FAA’s radar unit that handles planes approaching Los Angeles said Tuesday night’s near-miss probably would not have occurred if the 12,500-foot limit had been in effect.

Change in Situation

“I’m certain the new TCA, in effect, would have had an impact on the situation,” said Richard Cox, manager of the Los Angeles Terminal Radar Control facility.

He said the jet, American Flight 2718, headed to Los Angeles from San Francisco, was on approach to the airport when it made a sharp left turn and dove to avoid the westbound small plane.

The jetliner made a safe landing without further incident. There were no injuries reported abroad the jetliner, airline officials said.

The small plane left the area and was not tracked by controllers. Federal aviation investigators said they may not be able to find the pilot.

An initial investigation into the incident, Cox said, showed that neither aircraft was in violation of airspace rules.

The American pilot reported the incident at 7:01 p.m.--about three minutes after it occurred--and traffic controllers said they saw no other aircraft in the vicinity on their radar screens, Cox said.

Small Plane Spotted

Several minutes later, however, a small aircraft, heading west about four miles north of Santa Monica, showed up on controllers’ radar screens, but Cox and other FAA officials said they could not be certain that the aircraft was the one involved in the near-collision.

Cox said the small aircraft may not have appeared on radar screens because a blind spot in the radar may exist in the skies over Santa Monica.

“We believe that there may be a problem in that vicinity and we’ve asked for a flight check to determine if in fact there is a lack of radar coverage,” he said.

A hangar at Santa Monica Airport, situated near one of two radar units at the airfield, may be interfering with the reception of radar signals, officials said.

Air traffic officials take pains to describe radar as an imperfect means of tracking aircraft, in part because obstacles such as mountains and buildings can block a signal. There are several such blind spots throughout Los Angeles, according to those familiar with aviation. Cox said most of these areas are generally known by controllers, who try to use extra diligence when traffic enters them.

Several passengers aboard the American jetliner said Wednesday they thought they were going to crash.

‘I Was Going to Die’

“I believed I was going to die,” said Century City attorney Jane Osborne, who with her husband was returning from an American Bar Assn. meeting in San Francisco.

“Everybody was already belted in for the landing,” she said, “when the plane at first rolled suddenly to the left. Then it seemed that it literally turned on its side and then dove down sharply. My husband had his hands up, trying to hold on the ceiling.

“It got deadly quiet (on the plane after the incident).”

Another passenger who said he has flown about 3 million miles said he will never forget what happened.

“I never felt as scared as I did (Tuesday night),” said Donald Nowlin, a businessman from Fort Worth, Tex. “For a little while, the plane had completely turned over and was flying on its back. I really thought we were going to go down.”

Several passengers contacted by The Times said they were unaware of what occurred until the plane landed and arrived at the terminal gate.

Osborne said the captain came on the radio and informed them of the near-collision. “He said that if we continued (at that altitude), we would have had a meeting of the minds in the sky,” she said.

Times staff writers Bart Everett and Nieson Himmel contributed to this story.