San Diego Center to Monitor Skies Over Southland

In an effort to make the Southern California skies safer, federal aviation officials announced Monday that they will use Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego as the location for a radar approach center for air traffic control, consolidating four facilities in Los Angeles, Burbank, Ontario and El Toro.

The new 100,000-square-foot center, which will be built on Navy land, will direct air traffic in a 30,000-square-mile area from Ontario to Santa Catalina and Burbank to Oceanside. The planned facility will monitor about 2 million flights annually, at altitudes up to 13,000 feet.

In Orange County, controllers and pilots were generally receptive to the consolidation plan at Miramar.

The Coast Terminal Radar Approach Control, or TRACON, at El Toro has drawn heavy criticism from controllers and congressional investigators in recent years because of its antiquated radar and computer equipment. In addition, Federal Aviation Administration officials say the building doesn’t meet earthquake standards.

Coast controllers also have complained of chronic understaffing. The facility is currently staffed with 60 controllers when it is allotted a total of 78, said a controller there.

San Diego’s existing TRACON at Miramar will remain separate, though it may be combined with the proposed Southern California facility after 1995, said FAA spokeswoman Elly Brekke.

“You now have four facilities that separately control airspace in the L.A. Basin--now we’re going to have one facility. When you manage a single facility you have much better control and that will enhance safety,” Jerry Chavkin, the FAA Western-Pacific regional administrator, said.

The radar center, expected to cost $114 million and open in late 1993, will use a new telecommunications system as well as equipment from the other four facilities, Chavkin said. There will be no immediate increase in the number of air traffic controllers, he said.

Under the current system, a pilot might be in touch with several TRACON controllers in approaching an airport in the Los Angeles Basin. At the airport in Torrance, one-half of the airspace is controlled by the Los Angeles TRACON, the rest by the TRACON at El Toro, Chavkin said. Under the new system, the pilot would speak only with the Southern Californian TRACON at Miramar.

The National Transportation Safety Board, some pilots and air traffic controllers have criticized the FAA for inadequate controller staffing and poor equipment in Southern California TRACONs. Several say these conditions have contributed to several near-misses. On Feb. 13, for example, a British Airways Boeing 747 carrying 286 passengers came within two miles of an American Airlines jet with 70 aboard. FAA rules require three miles of horizontal separation.

“It seems foolhardy that they would go build a new installation and not stock it with more staffers and top quality equipment,” said Richard D. Russell, a pilot and the regional air safety coordinator with the Airline Pilots Association in Los Angeles. “Unless they can staff it with an adequate number of controllers, they’re not going to be able to handle the traffic. They certainly cannot handle it right now.”

Southern California skies are among the most congested in the United States. Orange County has 12,200 licensed commercial and general aviation pilots; Los Angeles County has 27,000. In 1988, there were 533,484 takeoffs and landings at John Wayne Airport in Orange County and 623,519 at Los Angeles International Airport. John Wayne Airport handles a heavy amount of general aviation traffic, while LAX handles almost all commercial traffic.

Chavkin with the FAA says he is confident the existing facilities can handle the current air traffic using their current equipment and that they will continue to do so until the San Diego center opens.

The San Diego site was chosen after a yearlong search during which proposals were solicited from 21 airports and military bases in Southern California.

Los Angeles TRACON employees will be among the first to move to the new facility, which eventually will house about 400 controllers, technicians and other personnel, she said.

At Miramar, the reaction to the new center was muted.

“No agreement has been made,” said Chief Bobbie Carlton. “The next step is for them to come to Miramar with a shopping list of what they would like to do.”

In Orange County, Mike Desrosiers, a Coast TRACON controller for the past eight years, said there will be better equipment and newer facilities than what he and about 60 other controllers have had in El Toro.

Desrosiers said that working in one big radar center would not affect the way controllers handle airspace throughout the Southland. Jay Gassner, a flight instructor for Martin Aviation at John Wayne Airport, is not concerned with the controllers’ location.

“The important thing is to have the airspace covered and to have enough guys covering the (radar) screens,” Gassner said. “As far as being physically located in one place or another, I don’t think that’s the issue.”

Gassner compared the consolidation plan for Southland TRACONs to one that has long been in effect for coverage of the nation’s high-altitude airspace. Controllers work out of one facility in Palmdale and cover airspace above 13,000 feet over all of Southern California and parts of Nevada and Arizona, he said.