Flights From L.A. to Get Priority During Runway Rebuilding

The nation’s air traffic controllers will give special priority to flights out of Los Angeles under a “free-flow concept” designed to minimize delays caused by a runway reconstruction project that began Tuesday at Los Angeles International Airport, federal officials said.

The airline industry’s Air Transport Assn., which earlier had predicted there was “no way around” major delays resulting from the project, reversed itself Tuesday and said the special attention from controllers, coupled with rescheduling agreements hammered out last December between the airlines, should assure a smooth flow of air traffic during the four-month reconstruction of one of LAX’s four runways.

Under the free-flow concept, planes bound from Los Angeles to airports suffering slowdowns because of bad weather or heavy traffic will be moved ahead of flights originating in other cities, according to John Mayrhofer, manager of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Los Angeles tower.

Concept Explained

To explain the concept, Mayrhofer described a scenario, familiar to many travelers, in which planes are held on the ground at various cities because of congestion at their common destination. Under the free-flow concept, he said, planes in Los Angeles will be moved to the top of the waiting list.

This means that planes at LAX usually will be able to take off as soon as a runway is available. It also means that waits at LAX gates will be held to a minimum, and that, in turn, means fewer holds for planes getting ready to land and use those gates.

The free-flow concept is being coupled with the rescheduling of about a quarter of the 1,500 commercial airline flights in and out of LAX every day, the FAA said. In addition, about 50 flights are being dropped for the duration of the four-month project.

George Carson, the ATA’s Western regional director, said the resurfacing of Runway 24 Left is reducing the airport’s effective capacity from about 130 operations an hour to about 100. (An “operation” is a single takeoff or landing.)

Accommodating this drop primarily involved moving flights from the peak hours of the day--corresponding roughly with the morning and evening rush hours familiar to motorists--to other hours when traffic is lighter.

The reconstruction of Runway 24 Left was ordered by the Los Angeles Department of Airports under a $11.8-million contract let after inspectors noted that cracks had begun to appear in the pavement and chunks had been loosened by the immense weight of some of the airliners that use it.

Lighter Planes

Built in 1958 at the advent of the commercial jet era, when aircraft were generally lighter, the runway in recent years has strained under fully loaded Boeing 747s that weighed as much as 830,00 pounds

Rather than continue to patch the runway piecemeal, as had been done repeatedly in recent years, engineers decided to rebuild most of the 10,285-foot strip.

About 700 feet of concrete paving at each end of the runway is largely undamaged and will remain in place. About 8,900 feet of asphalt paving in between will be replaced.

A huge bulldozer using a single-bladed subsoiler began ripping up the 9-inch-thick pavement on Tuesday. The chunks of pavement--some 2 to 3 feet across--were then fed into a massive crushing machine that spat out an asphaltic aggregate.

The new runway will be more than 4 feet thick. At the bottom will be 6 inches of crumbled dirt. Above that, a foot of compacted earth. Above that, a foot of the asphaltic aggregate. Above that, another foot of crushed rock aggregate. And on top, 15 inches of freshly poured concrete.