FAA investigates LAX runway incursion

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a runway incursion Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport in which two planes passed within 15 feet of each other, according to one witness.

It’s just the type of safety problem that the airport’s new $83-million center taxiway was designed to prevent.

Ian Gregor, an FAA spokesman, said Monday that the incident occurred when a Midwest Airlines Embraer E-190 passed the hold bars on a taxiway and came closer than it should have to a Northwest Airlines Boeing 757 taking off on the south side’s inner runway.

Last June, LAX opened a 1.8-mile-long centerline taxiway between the two runways on the airport’s south side, where eight minor incursions have occurred since 2008. The new taxiway acts as a buffer zone where arriving aircraft can slow down and wait for clearance to cross the inner runway.

-- Dan Weikel

Comments

[John J. Tormey III, Esq.]

FAA perpetually blames the victim, and NTSB covers for FAA. FAA is still the same “Tombstone Agency” decried by former USDOT Inspector General Mary Schiavo in her Congressional testimony years ago. Though presidential administrations changed within the last year, we now know that college drop-out J. Randall (Randy) Babbitt is as much of an abject aviation safety failure as his ignoble FAA Administrator predecessors Bobby Sturgell, Lynne Osmus, and Marion Blakey. There remains no meaningful regulation of aviation safety in this country - just an aero-mercantile puppet like Randy Babbitt acting at the behest of the airlines, ATA, and fat aero-contractors. Like a caddy. Like a Fendi. Like a submissive. Babbitt’s aeromerc masters will make certain that Babbitt and others in FAA management have a feathered nest upon their exit from the agency. That’s the deal. Babbitt’s recent protestations notwithstanding, FAA and Babbitt continue to blame everyone but themselves to deflect and distract attention from their cozy private-dancer status with their true customers the airlines, vendors, and other aeromercs. The American people are sick of it, and applaud the courage of those people and communities who stand up for what is right.
John J. Tormey III, Esq.
Quiet Rockland