Jetliners Nearly Collide on Approach to LAX : Fifth Incident in Two Days at Airport Prompts Federal Safety Board to Launch Investigation

In the most serious of four aviation safety mishaps that occurred at Los Angeles International Airport during a single evening, two jetliners on approach to parallel runways missed each other by 10 to 30 feet above the Inglewood-South Los Angeles area, federal officials said Friday.

The other incidents included a near-collision by two passenger jets on a runway, a smashup between two unoccupied planes on the ground and a reported air traffic control lapse that permitted a helicopter and a plane in the airport’s tightly regulated Terminal Control Area to come too close to each other.

The quartet of mishaps Thursday followed by two days another close call at LAX in which one airliner narrowly missed another while taking off.

Thursday’s closest call was a near-collision at 9:16 p.m. between Mexicana Aerolineas Flight 906 from Mexico City and Westair Flight 3558 from San Diego. It happened while the two planes were heading for separate runways on the south side of the airport at about 2,000 feet altitude.

The Mexicana pilot failed to make a small turn, ordered by air traffic controllers, that was to lead him to his assigned runway, according to officials familiar with the incident. The pilot’s failure to change course nearly took him into the path of the Westair jet.

In response to the incidents of Tuesday and Thursday, the Los Angeles office of the National Transportation Safety Board, which is responsible for investigating safety failures, asked the agency’s Washington office to dispatch two specialists in human performance and air traffic control to Los Angeles to study what went wrong.

Human Error Factors

“We want to look at the factors that might be involved in human error,” said NTSB spokesman Alan Pollock, adding that such a review was not unusual.

The NTSB specialists will examine the judgment of crew personnel and air traffic controllers involved in the five incidents, focusing on factors such as fatigue, medical history, medication and drugs in an effort to determine what might have been responsible for distracting the participants.

Performance specialists in recent years have emphasized the need to look beyond errors of individual pilots and to also concentrate on the question of whether flight crews have lost their discipline and reflexes because of complacency nurtured by automation and seniority.

Westair, a large, Fresno-based commuter carrier whose 315 daily flights in California operate under the name of United Express in a marketing agreement with United Airlines, was involved in two of Thursday night’s four incidents.

The most serious one was the encounter between Westair’s flight from San Diego, which carried 13 passengers and two crew members, and the Mexicana jet, which was carrying 138 passengers and a crew of 15.

Karl Grundmann, an FAA controller who was on duty in the LAX tower, said both planes were to land on parallel runways. As is standard procedure in air traffic control, the two planes were following the same approach route, one behind the other. Several miles beyond the airport, controllers instructed the Mexicana plane, which was in the lead, to make a slight turn that would bring it to Runway 25 Right. The Westair plane was to continue on course to Runway 25 Left.

According to the federal officials, the Mexicana plane acknowledged the control tower’s instruction but then failed to make the turn and subsequently almost collided with the Westair plane when they were five to six miles from the airport.

“It was close,” Mexicana spokeswoman Ruth Shari said.

The NTSB said the planes missed each other by 10 feet. The Mexicana pilot estimated it at about 30 feet, Shari said.

Westair Chairman Timothy P. Flynn disputed both estimates, contending that the planes did not come closer than 1,000 feet.

Controllers Were Unaware

Grundmann said controllers were unaware of the near-collision because the planes had been cleared for visual approach, making the pilots responsible for the separation between their planes.

“Westair was anticipating, apparently, that the Mexicana would move over and it didn’t happen,” he said. “If Westair didn’t notice that Mexicana hadn’t moved, this (type of incident) probably could have happened.”

Westair’s Flynn called it “a lack of communications between the Mexican plane and the tower.”

Three hours earlier, Delta Airlines Flight 1445, carrying 38 passengers and a crew of six to Portland and Anchorage, was beginning its final takeoff roll at the end of a runway at LAX. At the same time, Westair Flight 3246, which had just landed at the airport with 13 passengers and a crew of two from Fresno, was taxiing to a gate by crossing the runway the Delta plane was using.

Noticed Plane

The Westair plane had crossed half of the runway when its crew noticed the Delta plane beginning its takeoff only 1,500 feet away.

The Westair crew increased its speed and completed the trip across the runway without incident.

Westair’s Flynn said his crew had been instructed by controllers in the LAX tower to cross the runway. Delta spokesman Richard Jones said he knew nothing about the incident. An FAA spokeswoman deferred comment to the NTSB, which confirmed the conflict and said it is investigating why the Westair plane was crossing the runway.

Two hours after that incident, a Pacific Southwest Airlines BAe-146 being taxied by mechanics collided with an unoccupied Eastern Airlines L-1011 that was parked away from a runway. There were no passengers on either plane.

A PSA spokeswoman declined to comment on the incident, but Eastern spokesman Colin Gates said PSA officials told him that the plane was awaiting service for a brake problem, and when mechanics took it for a test taxi and attempted to do a 180-degree turn they lost control.

Wing Hit Engine

The left wing of the PSA plane hit the left engine of the Eastern plane, and the PSA plane’s vertical stabilizer hit the Eastern plane’s left wing, nearly severing the stabilizer.

Neither airline had completed damage estimates Friday but the combined loss could be several million dollars, according to an airline official.

In a similar incident six months ago that was also blamed on brake failure, a United Airlines 747 without passengers was being taxied to a hangar by a mechanic when it suddenly veered to the right, clipping the tail cone of an America West 737 carrying 76 passengers and five crew members. No one was injured but both planes sustained some damage.

Details of the fourth incident of the evening, involving a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department helicopter, were slim. The helicopter was dispatched to what a sheriff’s spokesman called “a tactical field situation.” To get there it needed to cross LAX’s Terminal Control Area, in which the routes of all aircraft are supervised by air traffic controllers.

Too Close to Other Craft

Somewhere northeast of Hawthorne, the helicopter failed to maintain adequate horizontal distance from another craft. The NTSB would not say who appeared to be at fault. Sheriff’s Capt. Vance Kirkpatrick, the head of the department’s Aero Bureau, said an NTSB official told him that an air control supervisor reported the problem, blaming it on a controller, not the helicopter pilot.

Problems of controlling traffic at and en route to LAX are expected to become even thornier in January when the airport closes one of its four runways for resurfacing.

The closure, expected to last four to six months, is planned for what airport officials hope will be the lightest traffic season of the year.

Representatives of airlines are scheduled to meet later this month to discuss how to juggle or restrict the number of daily flights to compensate for the loss of the runway.

Lower Number of Arrivals

LAX controller Grundmann, who is also an official of the National Air Traffic Controllers Assn., said that if the airlines and the FAA enforce a lower number of LAX arrivals per hour, now running at 50 to 60, the closure will be tolerable.

“If they do that, and spread them out over each hour, we’ll probably be able to work it well. If they don’t adhere to that, I don’t know what is going to happen,” he said.

The airport last closed a runway for resurfacing in the early 1980s. The difference now, Grundmann said, is that “back then we were averaging 1,700 or 1,800 planes a day (arriving and departing). Now it’s 2,100 or 2,200, and a busy day is 2,400.”

Times staff photographer George Fry contributed to this story.