Hearings Set to Begin in Cerritos Air Tragedy

With scores of questions and few answers in the Aug. 31 collision of an Aeromexico jetliner and a private plane that killed 82 people, the National Transportation Safety Board convenes this week its first public hearings into the tragedy.

An 8-inch stack of documents and two dozen key witnesses will be presented in four days of hearings to begin in Los Angeles Tuesday.

NTSB Chairman Jim Burnett will preside over questioning by investigators and other aviation officials in what board spokesman Ira Furman said is “a continuation of the field phase of our investigation and a further fact-finding effort.”

Furman said information obtained at the hearings will be used to determine what caused the crash of Aeromexico Flight 498 and a small private plane over Cerritos.

Among the probable causes under investigation are that the pilot of the single-engine Piper strayed into restricted airspace and hit the jetliner at 6,500 feet as it approached Los Angeles International Airport.

A transcript of air traffic conversations before the crash has brought into question the possibility that the controller on duty was distracted from his radar screen by a second small plane that also violated restricted air space, the Terminal Control Area (TCA).

Furman said the NTSB had not “even begun to entertain” recommendations to avoid a similar disaster.

“Those will come several months down the road when we have all the information necessary,” he said.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Fred Farrar said he expects evidence from the hearings to affect any regulatory changes recommended by the NTSB.

An internal FAA advisory board has already recommended stiffer penalties for pilots who violate the terminal control airspace around airports.

The pilot violating the controlled airspace who distracted the controller before the Aeromexico crash has had his license suspended for 60 days, Farrar said.

Farrar said the FAA has also initiated regulatory action to require all aircraft operating within the TCA to carry a transponder. Airliners with 30 passengers or more also would be required to carry a $75,000 airborne warning device that would alert a pilot in the event of an impending collision.

The Piper was not equipped with a transponder--an electronic device that also would have enabled traffic controllers to track its altitude.

Any regulatory changes might take as much as two years before they are put into effect, Farrar said.

Also under consideration are changes in the sizes and shapes of the TCAs and who would be allowed in the TCA, he said.

Evidence to be made public at the hearings will include reports and documents gathered during three months of investigation, plus flight data records, radar tracking records, witness interviews and a transcript of voice recordings made just before the crash.

Furman said representatives from Aeromexico, pilots’ associations, Piper Aircraft and airways systems specialists will be allowed to ask questions during the hearings.

Among the two dozen witnesses expected to testify are FAA officials, witnesses, air controllers handling traffic at the time of the crash, supervisory personnel, terminal control area experts and private and commercial pilots.

The investigation has already determined that the DC-9 was as much as three miles off course at the time of the collision. But Karl Grundmann of the FAA said, “Three miles is a little more than normal, but it’s not unusual.”

Richard Cox, an air traffic controller who will testify in the hearings, said controllers are not ordinarily concerned if planes are a few miles off course in the TCA.

But radar maps showed that if the airliner had followed its path more precisely, it would have avoided the collision with the Piper.

The DC-9’s path, although off course, was in the heart of the TCA and should have been in even safer territory. Its assigned course would have been along the edge of the TCA.