Study Begun on Safety at L.A. Airport

Nine months after a runway collision at Los Angeles International Airport killed 34 people, the Federal Aviation Administration and the city’s Department of Airports have undertaken a joint study of what needs to be done to improve safety at the airfield.

The study was begun earlier this month after a federal investigative board concluded that the crash was caused by the FAA’s inept management of the airport control tower.

Don Miller, a deputy executive director of the Department of Airports, said the study stems in part from the federal board’s findings, but added that the local study will deal with other issues as well.

In addition to the air traffic control operations and procedures in and around the nation’s third-busiest airfield, the study has been focusing on the airport’s physical layout, navigational equipment and communications systems, Miller said.

These were among the issues studied by the National Transportation Safety Board during its eight-month investigation of the Feb. 1 collision of a USAir jetliner and a SkyWest commuter plane. The board’s report was released Oct. 17.

The Department of Airports, which was not implicated in the NTSB report, assigned Miller and another deputy executive director, William Schoenfield, to participate in the new study.

The FAA, whose local management personnel received much of the blame in the NTSB report, has brought in experts on flight safety, airport layout and navigational equipment from Seattle, Kansas City and Washington.

The joint panel is being headed by Larry Craig, manager of the aircraft division of the FAA’s Southwest Region in Dallas.

Miller said the panel has been interviewing pilots, air traffic controllers and others to learn their concerns and opinions. In addition, he said, panel members have toured the airport grounds and air traffic control facilities and examined the airfield’s radar and radio systems.

The panel is expected to issue its own report sometime next month.

Last month’s NTSB report strongly criticized the FAA.

Rather than place primary responsibility for the February crash on Robin Lee Wascher, the controller whose error led to the accident, the NTSB instead blamed FAA tower managers at the airport and their supervisors.

Wascher said she became confused and mistakenly cleared the jetliner to land on the runway where she had already positioned the commuter plane for takeoff. Wascher’s error, the NTSB said, resulted from a poor work environment caused by FAA mismanagement.

The board has thus far provided only a summary of its findings, but NTSB officials say the problems outlined in the full report are the same ones discussed during April’s hearings on the crash.