A Flight Rule Change for ‘Safety’ Makes the Skies More Dangerous

At 10,000 feet over Ontario, the view from a jetliner’s cockpit is often spectacular. Forty miles ahead, the Pacific Ocean sparkles through the perennial haze; the San Gabriel Mountains tower to the right; to the left, foothills and valleys undulate beneath a misty veil.

But as the captain reduces speed for the final approach into Los Angeles International Airport, he has his eyes on more than the scenery. He and others in the cockpit are scanning the skies for other traffic, for this is the busiest airspace in the world. And human eyes--even in the so-called “radar environment”--are a pilot’s first line of defense.

Not only is there an almost incessant flow of jetliners and other aircraft arriving and departing LAX, there usually are many other aircraft, large and small, crisscrossing the Los Angeles Basin en route to other destinations.

Over the years, methods of keeping this traffic safely separated around busy hubs like Los Angeles have become highly efficient, but not perfect. The machines are more reliable than ever, the pilots more highly trained. But there are still brushes with the unexpected, and--on rare occasions--a fatal mistake or failure.

Seldom, however, have political actions had a negative effect on aviation safety. Yet that is what happened last month when the new Federal Aviation Administrator, T. Allan McArtor, ordered a change that affects most pilots who fly in the Los Angeles area. While the public may believe his action enhances safety, aviation professionals, including those within the FAA, know better.

Most of the traffic over Los Angeles belongs to the huge general-aviation fleet, a segment of the aviation community little understood by the public at large. These aircraft are often and erroneously referred to as “little airplanes” flown by “private” pilots.

Critics have suggested banning “little airplanes”--general aviation--from major metropolitan areas. That could be done, but it would be as ill-conceived as banning private automobiles from the freeway system in favor of buses and other public carriers. Airplanes not operated by airlines provide broad and useful services:

-- For every community served by an airline, 23 are served by general aviation. General aviation is the only way to fly from Los Angeles to Blythe, Bishop or hundreds of other destinations in California. (Following airline deregulation, most carriers abandoned service to smaller communities; now more than half of all airline passengers fly to only 25 major U.S. cities.)

-- There are 4,800 airliners in the United States, but nearly a quarter-million general-aviation aircraft that annually carry 200 million people on 80 million flights, a load greater than that carried by five of the nation’s largest carriers combined. The FAA classifies only 6% of general-aviation flights as “recreational.”

-- Using a wide variety of aircraft--from single-seat to transport--general aviation makes possible air ambulances, aerial fire-fighting, crop dusting and spraying, air search and rescue, aerial law enforcement, aerial news and traffic reporting and a plethora of other vital services, including critical delivery of human organs for transplants.

Although lacking the high profile of the airlines, general aviation encompasses every type of civil flying imaginable except scheduled airline flights. And most pilots, whatever aircraft they fly, share a deep concern for safety. It is absurd to suggest otherwise. General-aviation pilots and their passengers have the same aversion to midair collision as airline pilots and their passengers.

That is why general-aviation pilots objected to McArtor’s ruling that increased the size of the terminal-control area (restricted airspace) surrounding LAX, and why there were similar objections by the Air Line Pilots Assn., the National Air Traffic Controllers Assn., the National Air Transport Assn. and virtually every other aviation organization interested in safety. The reason is simple: The FAA’s emergency regulation increases the potential for midair collision.

The aviation industry blames such an ill-conceived regulation on political expediency. Industry leaders contend that, as the first anniversary of the Cerritos disaster approached, public attention would focus on what the FAA had done to prevent a similar tragedy. Since the FAA had done virtually nothing, action was needed to save face. Hence, McArtor, bypassing the normal rule-making process, made a change certain to be applauded by the public at large: After all, who could oppose “safety?”

Thus the Administration gained immediate support from people alarmed and frustrated by overcrowded terminals, delays and an image of “crowded skies.” Such a rule change, they were told, would eliminate the potential for midair collision. If this solution seemed too simple for such a complex problem, few outside the aviation industry noticed.

Before the emergency regulation, general-aviation aircraft had safe routes across the Los Angeles Basin: Pilots could overfly the terminal control area above 7,000 feet, or fly through an FAA-designated corridor over LAX between 2,500 and 5,000 feet.

The new regulation effectively blocked both of these routes to the large volume of traffic flowing north and south over Los Angeles. The top of the TCA was raised to 12,500 feet, making overflight impractical for most general-aviation traffic. But this is not at the heart of the dispute.

The regulation also closed the corridor above LAX. Even though this had never been a hazard, McArtor reasoned that raising the top of the TCA would dangerously increase traffic in the corridor. But by diverting both the overflights and the corridor traffic, the new rule adds to the very hazards it was intended to eliminate. Traffic that once safely overflew the TCA now skirts it 30 miles east of LAX--at precisely those altitudes occupied by airliners approaching LAX. Other general-aviation traffic now flows under the TCA and over downtown Los Angeles. Funneling traffic in this way increases congestion and the risk of midair collision over heavily populated areas.

General aviation pilots seeking to avoid these routes can and do request permission to fly through the enlarged TCA--thereby increasing the workload of already overburdened air-traffic controllers. And the “limitations of the air traffic control system” were cited by the National Transportation Safety Board as the single probable cause of the Cerritos disaster.

Additionally, McArtor’s order is just as inappropriate in the wake of the Cerritos crash as were the regulations instituted after the midair collision between a jetliner and a light airplane over San Diego in 1978. Neither set of regulations changed the conditions under which these disasters occurred. Yet in both cases the public has been led to believe the system has been improved.

Another proposal would require all aircraft operating near TCAs to be equipped with altitude-encoding transponders, which provide an enhanced radar image with an altitude notation. Such a rule has merit, but experts doubt the ability of existing ground equipment to process signals from so many aircraft.

There have been many viable suggestions for accommodating increases in airline traffic (general-aviation activity has declined in recent years). The one favored by many experts involves the designation of sterilized corridors exclusively for traffic using major terminals. Such a plan would leave an abundance of airspace for general-aviation traffic while increasing protection for the airlines. This and other logical concepts have been dismissed by the FAA without explanation.

For the crew of the LAX-bound jetliner over Ontario, traffic avoidance is only one of many concerns. The responsibilities of a pilot are technically complex and sometimes difficult for passengers to understand. The architecture of the airspace system is similarly complicated and best left to those who understand and deal with it routinely. Politics have no place in aviation safety.