Wider Control Area Around L.A. Airport Urged in FAA Proposal

In a further attempt to improve air safety, the Federal Aviation Administration has proposed expanding the controlled airspace around Los Angeles International Airport.

The announcement on Wednesday of the changes--the second part of a three-phase FAA plan to “restructure” the airspace over Southern California-- came 11 months after the collision of an Aeromexico jetliner and a small plane over Cerritos that claimed 82 lives.

The Aeromexico collision occurred within the Los Angeles Terminal Control Area (TCA), the irregular, oblong block of airspace, about 50 miles long and 25 miles wide, that the FAA now wants to expand.

The TCA was designed to help controllers and pilots maintain safe distances between aircraft operating near LAX. Planes within the TCA are supposed to maintain radio contact with air traffic controllers and carry special devices called transponders that help controllers keep track of the aircraft’s altitude and position.

Critics in the aviation community have said the configuration of the TCA is so irregular that many pilots who intend to avoid its confines stray into it by mistake. That’s apparently what happened to the small plane--flying without the required transponder--that collided with the Aeromexico DC-9 last Aug. 31.

The changes proposed by FAA Administrator T. Allan McArtor on Wednesday would increase the ceiling of the TCA from the present altitude of 7,000 feet to 12,500 feet above sea level.

This means, in effect, that aircraft flying between airports north and south of Los Angeles will be forced into routes around or under parts of the TCA if they cannot climb above 12,500 feet, an altitude beyond the capability of some smaller aircraft. Air traffic controllers do not usually allow aircraft flying by visual flight rules to fly into the TCA, regardless of whether the aircraft carry altitude-reporting equipment.

The floor of the TCA would retain its present, “inverted-wedding-cake” configuration, starting at ground level near the airport and to its immediate east and west, and jogging irregularly up in increments of 500 to 5,000 feet as the TCA expands outward.

In another proposed change, McArtor said, the indented southern boundary of the TCA would be straightened. That would expand the TCA to include a chunk of airspace above 5,000 feet that extends out over Long Beach Airport.

Aircraft approaching Long Beach Airport from the Orange County coastline at Seal Beach have been involved in several near-collisions in recent years, partly because of a so-called blind spot in FAA radar there, according to air traffic controllers.

Some Orange County pilots may be affected by the new 12,500-foot ceiling for the TCA because many planes cannot reach that altitude quickly enough to avoid running into it. They would have to fly under the TCA or around its new boundaries.

“It takes time (about 20-25 minutes) and it takes (extra) fuel to climb to that altitude,” said Howard Morgan, assistant manager at LenAir, a flight school at John Wayne Airport. “Many won’t be able to make it before getting to the TCA boundary, so they’ll have to fly in the corridor between 2,500 feet and 4,000 feet. Mostly that’s a matter of personal preference, not an inconvenience.”

Asked if herding more pilots into the lower corridor would make those altitudes too crowded to be safe, Morgan said: “I wouldn’t say so, necessarily. . . . I wouldn’t want to speculate on something like that.”

Jay Maag, the FAA tower chief at John Wayne Airport, said he had not been briefed about the new TCA boundaries. He said the FAA has been considering creating a less restrictive controlled airspace around Wayne Airport. The system is known as an Airport Radar Service Area (ARSA), in which two-way radio communication with the tower is required.

The El Toro Marine Corps Air Station has an ARSA, part of which extends north to the Santa Ana River near the junction of Interstate 5 and California 22, with a ceiling of 4,400 feet.

Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole said in Washington that the proposed TCA changes “would provide private pilots, airline passengers and crew members with increased protection against midair and near-midair collisions in the busy Los Angeles airspace.”

But John L. Baker, president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Assn., which represents 260,000 pilots and operators of small, general aviation aircraft, and Karl Grundmann, a regional representative for the National Air Traffic Controllers Assn., disagreed.

Baker and Grundmann said any expansion of the already understaffed air traffic control network would overburden the already strapped system.

Last March, in the first step of the restructuring of Southern California’s airspace, the FAA announced changes in some of the principal air routes used to funnel jetliners in and out of major Los Angeles-area airports. Several of these new routes--designed to increase separation between airlines and small planes--are already in use.