Pilots Dispute Flight Curbs Near Airport, Say FAA Overreacted

Attorneys for private pilots told a federal appeals court in Pasadena Tuesday that the Federal Aviation Administration overreacted when it dramatically curtailed their freedom to fly over the Los Angeles Basin.

The pilots have filed suit to overthrow an emergency ruling by FAA Administrator T. Allan McArtor on Aug. 12, the day after an American Airlines jetliner and a private plane narrowly missed one another over Santa Monica.

In the lawsuit, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Assn. (AOPA) charges that McArtor reacted arbitrarily, inappropriately and unnecessarily when he issued the emergency order expanding the controlled airspace around Los Angeles International Airport.

The order, which McArtor said he issued to “lessen the risk posed to the traveling public” by private air traffic, imposed two new regulations:

- It raised the ceiling of the airport’s Terminal Control Area--airspace normally set aside for airliners approaching and leaving the airport--from 7,000 feet to 12,500 feet.

- It eliminated a coastal “visual flight rules” air corridor that had permitted private pilots to cross the TCA, directly over the airport, without first getting authorization and direction from FAA controllers.

Attorneys pressing the suit for the AOPA--which represents 260,000 small plane, or general aviation, pilots and owners nationwide--concentrated Tuesday on the elimination of the air corridor.

Scott Raphael, who represented the AOPA before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, suggested that McArtor’s decision to close the corridor was made “without thought or planning or study . . .

“It was an overreaction to what really wasn’t an emergency at all,” Raphael told the appeals panel, which included circuit judges Arthur L. Alarcon and Dorothy W. Nelson and District Judge Robert P. Aguilar.

Raphael said there has been no “sudden spate” of near-collisions over the basin. And while there have been some, he said, none involved a plane using or approaching the corridor.

He said that by closing the corridor, the planes which formerly used it are now being forced to detour east around the TCA, dangerously close to the path of some of the jetliners.

On Oct. 19, the FAA said it was considering creation of a new north-south “flyway” for private planes that would cross the airport and the TCA at an altitude of between 5,000 and 13,000 feet, a route somewhat similar to the abandoned corridor. Many saw this proposal as a concession to McArtor’s critics.

But the AOPA noted Thursday that the flyway would require pilots to operate with the permission and direction of FAA controllers and to have special equipment on board that gives controllers an automatic readout of their altitude. These requirements are already in place for any general aviation pilot who wants to fly through the TCA.

“So it wouldn’t be a substitute for the corridor at all,” Patricia Weil, a spokeswoman for the AOPA, said in an interview. “It still wouldn’t give adequate access to general aviation aircraft.”

Robert Zener, a Department of Justice attorney who represented the FAA at the court proceedings, argued Tuesday that the near-collision over Santa Monica and other near-collisions in recent months did constitute an emergency. He said McArtor’s response, which moved the private plane traffic away from the airport, was made “on a rational basis.”

Zener’s remarks were in response to Judge Aguilar’s comment that the pilots had to show there was no rational basis for the administrator’s ruling.