Crash Spurs Plea to Cut Long Beach Air Traffic

The crash of one airplane near Long Beach Airport and the near-collision of two others Sunday have prompted new calls by Long Beach officials for a reduction of traffic at the airport.

“I’ve said for years we’re going to have a catastrophic accident,” said City Councilman Edd Tuttle, who called for the creation of a task force to study air safety in the Long Beach area.

He and other city officials said the two incidents are further evidence that they should win a four-year legal fight with several airlines over an ordinance aimed at restricting the number of daily flights out of Long Beach Airport.

Near-Miss Recorded

In one incident, a United Airlines Boeing 767 nearly collided with a single-engine Cessna as the larger plane took off from the airport Sunday morning. At 7 that evening, a small plane trying to make an emergency landing at the airport plunged onto the San Diego Freeway, killing the pilot and seriously injuring his passenger.

On Monday, an investigator from the National Transportation Safety Board searched the wreckage of a Piper Malibu PA 46 for clues to what caused it to crash on the freeway near Redondo Avenue.

John Spiesman, 62, of Los Gatos, was killed. His passenger, Dennis Paboojian, 46, of Cupertino, also a licensed pilot, was listed in extremely critical condition Monday night at the Torrance Memorial Hospital Medical Center burn center.

Taken to Burn Center

Paboojian, who suffered third-degree burns over 60% of his body, was transferred from Long Beach Memorial Hospital to the Torrance burn center on Monday, spokeswoman Nancy Hill said.

The pilots, who were flying from San Diego County to San Jose, tried to make an emergency landing after their cockpit began to fill with smoke. Instead, they crashed into the median of the freeway. The plane struck one car, but none of its occupants were injured.

Earlier in the day, the United Airlines jet came within a hundred feet of hitting a Cessna a few minutes after the airliner took off from the Long Beach Airport. The pilot of United Flight 76, with 108 passengers and a crew of eight, said he saw the Cessna and put the plane into a dive to avoid it.

The Federal Aviation Administration tried to track the smaller plane but lost it in the Santa Ana Canyon Road area in Orange County. The FAA plans to investigate the incident, spokeswoman Elly Brekke said Monday.

Tuttle said he plans to request “a full explanation” from the FAA and to ask his colleagues today to appoint the task force to look into airline safety issues in the area, including how the FAA reviews accidents and whether the airport’s control tower is adequately staffed.

The near-collision between the Boeing and the Cessna “came within a split second of being like the Cerritos disaster,” Tuttle said.

Long Beach officials have been battling the airlines for years over the number of flights at the airport. So far, the city is losing.

In October, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to overturn a temporary injunction issued by a U.S. District Court judge that allows 26 commercial airline flights a day at the Long Beach Airport--eight more flights than the limit imposed by city noise abatement regulations.

Several airlines sued Long Beach in 1983 over the legality of the city’s airport noise ordinance. Trial is set for March.

“It’s just murder. We’re like under siege,” Vice Mayor Warren Harwood said of the court rulings allowing an increase in the number of flights.

“The situation out there is neither safe nor in any way satisfactory, and yet we have these powerful forces pressing us to allow more of what is jeopardizing our community.”