TV REVIEW : What Goes On Behind Those Radar Screens

“Flying the Fast Lane,” this week’s offering from KCET’s locally produced documentary series “California Stories,” offers an interesting behind-the-radar-screens look at air travel, one of the most-taken-for-granted daily wonders of the modern age (tonight on Channel 28 at 7:30).

Part of KCET’s weeklong examination of the growth in air travel and the nagging issue of airline safety, “Fast Lane” put eight camera crews in the air and on the ground with air-traffic controllers in six locations to follow a PSA flight from Los Angeles International Airport to San Francisco International Airport and back.

Not counting one or two minor course adjustments to avoid “routine potential collisions” with some of the heavy small-plane traffic that crowds the skies around LAX, the PSA flight is uneventful.

Writer/producer Teya Ryan and her crew (including personnel from KQED in San Francisco) do a nice job of showing the smooth coordination and cooperation among pilots and controllers. This was just one of the 220 or so commercial airplanes that leave each day from the L.A. Basin bound for the Bay Area. Last year 9 million passengers flew this busy flyway--the most crowded air corridor in the world.

As reporter Jeffrey Kaye points out, it will be getting a lot more crowded--in the sky and at the airport--in the future.

“Flying the Fast Lane” takes a rather unimaginative, pessimistic view of the future (No new technologies coming along? No new L.A. airport to supplement LAX?) and seems to perceive the issues of safety and congestion mostly through the eyes (and interests) of air-traffic controllers. Still, it’s a solid example of how well TV can be used to expose the magic behind what we’ve come to accept as routine.

KCET’s coverage of airline issues continues each night this week at 7:30: Tuesday through Thursday on the 5-minute newsfeature program, “7:30,” and on Friday’s 30-minute “Whose Sky Is It Anyway?,” which focuses on the Federal Aviation Administration’s role in monitoring commercial and general aviation.