FAA Studies New Plan for Small Planes in L.A. Area

Spurred by frustrated private pilots and air traffic controllers, the Federal Aviation Administration is considering a plan that would allow more small planes to fly through the highly restricted airspace surrounding Los Angeles International Airport.

The plan, according to some aviation experts, would increase the safety of descending commercial airliners by rerouting many private planes that have been forced to fly near the airliner approach paths east of the airport.

Anthony Skirlick, the president of Los Angeles’ largest air traffic controllers union local, said Monday that uncontrolled air traffic in the skies east of Los Angeles International has increased dramatically as a result of two FAA “emergency” decisions in August. The FAA intent was to better protect airliners in the restricted “terminal control area,” among the busiest in the nation.

Results of Decisions

One decision raised the ceiling of the control area from 7,000 to 12,500 feet--an altitude that many small planes are incapable of reaching. The other decision resulted in the closing of a special air corridor over the airport through which general aviation pilots routinely and without restriction entered the control area.

FAA officials concluded that the three-mile-wide corridor had become dangerously congested. However, several groups, including the air traffic controllers and the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Assn., have questioned whether it posed more danger to divert air traffic by closing the corridor, where no collision was ever reported.

Those groups have filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court contesting the FAA’s decision. The case is expected to be heard Nov. 3 in Pasadena.

Under the FAA’s new plan, general aviation pilots could once again follow an aerial path, in this case called a “flyway,” to get through the Los Angeles control area, rather than flying around or above it.

As proposed, the flyway would extend north in a straight line above the Queen Mary in Long Beach Harbor to the Sepulveda Basin Dam near Van Nuys at an altitude between 5,000 and 13,000 feet, according to Skirlick.

Unlike procedures followed by pilots using the old corridor over LAX, pilots entering the new flyway, which would be slightly wider than the old corridor, would have to first contact air traffic controllers and would be obliged to follow controllers’ directions. Aircraft also would have to be equipped with altitude encoding transponders, electronic devices that allow radar operators to better track a plane’s location.

One or more controllers at the FAA’s Los Angeles Terminal Radar Approach Approach Control facility would likely be assigned to direct aircraft in the flyway, Skirlick said.

General aviation pilots now requesting permission to enter the terminal control area, particularly those flying under “visual flight rules,” are regularly denied entry by controllers who insist that they are too busy handling higher priority flights, namely commercial jets. The recourse for many is to go around the control area, a time-consuming and grating process for aviators used to traveling straight courses.

A flyway wouldn’t guarantee that all private pilots could fly through the control area, but the majority would probably be allowed to do so, Skirlick said.

“It’s not a cure-all,” Skirlick said, “but as far as overall air safety, this is a monumental step in the right direction.”

The plan is expected to be discussed Nov. 5 at a meeting of FAA officials, air traffic controllers and representatives of various aviation groups. A flyway could be in place by spring, Skirlick said.

Gerald Walton, an FAA air traffic special projects officer, denied that the FAA has been pressured into establishing what would be, in effect, another air traffic corridor, saying, “We’re trying to be responsive to the public. . . . We’re trying to work something out given the response we got” to the agency’s controversial decisions in August.

3-Phase Plan

Those decisions--constituting the second phase of a three-phase FAA plan to “restructure” the airspace over Southern California--came nearly a year after an Aeromexico jetliner and a small plane collided over Cerritos, killing 82 people.

The accident Aug. 31 occurred within the terminal control area.

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the 260,000-member Aircraft Owners and Pilots Assn. expressed skepticism Monday over the flyway plan.

“I think everybody who uses the airspace in the Los Angeles Basin realizes that they are just adding Band-Aids to a situation that needs more than that,” Patricia Weil said. “Right now we’ve got an untenable situation. . . . It’s time everybody sat back down together and looked at the whole airspace situation because right now, it’s not good.”