Landing Jetliner Startles Onlookers With Low Turns

“We just kind of stood there and hoped,” Robert Sturdevant related Friday after he and his co-workers watched a Boeing 747 jetliner head for their 11th-floor offices near Los Angeles International Airport. “I just said, ‘I hope to hell he turns soon.’ ”

He did.

Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Ellie Brekke said Japan Air Lines Flight 62 from Tokyo was descending to between 800 and 1,000 feet only three miles from touchdown about 11:25 a.m. Friday when the pilot found himself a mile and a half north of the proper course.

He made a sharp left and then a sharp right, Brekke said, landing without further problems. There were no mechanical difficulties, she said, and no near-collision reports.

Buick Otsuki, assistant regional vice president of JAL, said the course correction was made because the tower controller directed the pilot during final approach to switch from Runway 24 Right to 24 Left.

Brekke said that such a change order was given, which is fairly routine, but that the runways are only 750 feet apart and the runway change “should not have had any bearing.” She said the pilot apparently “lost sight of the runway” about the time the controller asked him to switch.

Sturdevant, 25, an office manager for Emery Customs Brokers in a building at 6151 W. Century Blvd., said the episode kept about 10 of his people “glued to the window.” He said the plane “kept coming and kept coming.”

“We weren’t sure whether it was going to turn,” he said.