DEA Disputes Reports of ‘Near-Miss’ Between One of Its Copters and Jetliner

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on Friday disputed reports that one of its surveillance helicopters came within 200 feet of colliding with a United Airlines jetliner as it prepared to land this week at Los Angeles International Airport.

DEA officials in Washington said the helicopter, at its closest point, was 700 feet below and a quarter of a mile away from the United Boeing 727-200 jet. In addition, officials said, the helicopter was 13 miles southeast of LAX--not 5 1/2 miles east of it, as the National Transportation Safety Board has reported.

“There’s obviously a discrepancy here,” said Bill Deac, a DEA spokesman. “We have the whole matter under review; it’s certainly not something we take lightly.”

NTSB officials, who are continuing their own investigation of the incident, said they planned to spend the weekend reviewing computerized radar records that may pinpoint the exact locations of the jetliner and the drug enforcement helicopter at the time.

The United captain filed a “near-miss” report with the Federal Aviation Administration, claiming that the Hughes 500D chopper came within 200 feet of United Flight 282 as it prepared for landing Wednesday morning. The jetliner, carrying 87 passengers and seven crew members on a flight from Monterey, landed uneventfully less than five minutes later.

On Friday, United spokesman Chuck Novak said that the jetliner’s first officer was making the approach to landing Wednesday, flying the Boeing 727 at 2,100 feet near the Long Beach Freeway and Imperial Highway. The plane had just turned from north to west to align with Runway 25 Left when the captain looked out his left-side window and saw a northbound helicopter 400 feet away.

The captain then took the controls of the jetliner, applied additional power to its engines and climbed to 2,400 feet, missing the helicopter by what he estimated was 200 feet, Novak said.

“It was not a violent maneuver,” the spokesman said. “He just brought (the jet) up.”

Novak said he didn’t know if the two aircraft had been on a collision course before the United captain increased the jet’s altitude. In any case, Novak said one passenger told a flight attendant afterward that the dark-colored, egg-shaped helicopter had come so close to the jetliner “he could see the surprised look of the two men in it.”

Novak said it is not always easy to estimate distances between aircraft in flight--a possible explanation for the varying accounts offered by the two pilots.

The DEA pilot has told investigators that his helicopter was hovering at 1,300 feet, that he was well aware of the jet’s location and that the helicopter never posed a danger, NTSB spokesman Mike Benson said Friday.

Deac of the DEA would not detail what the Los Angeles-based helicopter and its crew were doing, except to note that they were on a drug-related surveillance mission.