Pilot Group Says FAA’s Airport Study Is Flawed

A Federal Aviation Administration report concluding that Lindbergh Field is safe is a “complete whitewash” because it fails to address several important safety issues, including a seven-story parking garage near the end of the airport’s runway, said a spokesman for a commercial airline pilots group.

The FAA report, released Tuesday, concludes that Lindbergh is “operating very safely” and it recommends expanding the center-city airport so that it can accommodate more than one large jumbo jet at a time on its primary runway and taxiways.

The report also notes that the FAA last month installed a new, sophisticated landing system that uses a series of lights to help guide pilots onto Lindbergh’s comparatively short runway.

Parking Garage Not Mentioned

But the report--written after a team of FAA experts visited San Diego from Oct. 10-14 to talk to local and airline officials--never mentions the controversy surrounding the Laurel Travel Center parking garage, which was built 700 feet from the end of the runway with FAA approval. Airline pilots and local politicians have warned that the building is an “accident waiting to happen” and have criticized the FAA for not declaring it a safety hazard.

Dick Russell, a United pilot and Regional Air Safety Coordinator for the Air Line Pilots Assn., said omissions about that and other safety issues at Lindbergh makes the FAA report a “complete whitewash.”

“There’s nothing to it,” said Russell, who was among the people who met with the FAA team in October. “They (the FAA) are burying their heads in the sand. They think the problems will go away, but they will not.”

Russell said he also was irked that the FAA report failed to mention other recommendations given to the safety team, including rewriting the agency regulations that allowed construction of the Travel Center, which rises nearly 94 feet above sea level.

“Any regulation that would allow a building such as the Laurel Travel Center to be built is antiquated, deficient and should be rewritten,” Russell said. “That was one of our suggestions.”

Russell said that, under the best of conditions at Lindbergh, airlines are operating safely.

Problems Growing

“But we’re talking about the situations that are making it increasingly more difficult every time we put up these buildings,” Russell said, referring to a plan to build a number of high rises in the Lindbergh flight path. “The Laurel Travel Center is the worst case of dereliction of duty that I’ve ever seen.”

Other suggestions ignored by the agency, said Russell, included lengthening of the airport’s relatively short runway to the west.

Russell said the new landing system, prompted by pilot complaints about the Travel Center, has improved safety at Lindbergh. Under the old system, a 747 jumbo jet following the landing lights would have crashed into the Laurel Travel Center, he said. The new, more precise system has been moved further down the runway and uses a more gradual angle of descent, allowing the wheels of a 747 to miss the building by at least 170 feet, he said.

But that change, to avoid the building, means the heavy plane will land farther down the runway. That, in itself, could cause new problems unless the runway is expanded to the west, said Russell.

Other Recommendations

Among the recommendations contained in the FAA report were:

- Have the San Diego Unified Port District acquire land next to the airport for a major expansion that would include a new passenger terminal, a bigger apron and improved taxiways. The added land would also be used to extend Lindbergh’s little used cross runway for aircraft departures.

- Perform a computer study to look at airline traffic flow at Lindbergh.

- Study the problems created when two or more 747 jumbo jets are maneuvering on the airport runway and taxiways. Currently, there is insufficient room to allow jumbo jets to pass one another without scraping wings.

- Try to buy land from the Marine Corps recruit depot, located adjacent to the airport, to expand the taxiway on the north side of the main runway.

Councilman Ron Roberts, whose district includes Lindbergh, said Tuesday he was disappointed by the FAA study.

“Many of their comments were based on a lack of understanding of real options in San Diego,” Roberts said. “They are talking about moving the Marines out and shooting planes out over Pacific Beach.”