Plane Diversion Prompts Airport Safety Concerns

The diversion of a crippled Southwest Airlines jet away from Burbank Airport shows the need to improve safety there by replacing its aging terminal, the president of the authority that controls the airport said Wednesday.

“We are managing risk,” said Carl Raggio, president of the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority. “The sooner we move our terminal, the less risky it will be. . . . The airport is safe because the pilot who has trouble will go someplace else.”

While emphasizing that flight operations at Burbank Airport are safe and meet Federal Aviation Administration standards, Raggio and other officials also said a new terminal farther away from airport runways would cut the risk of a disaster someday.

On Tuesday, Southwest Airlines Flight 1767 carrying 127 passengers and five crew members from Las Vegas to Burbank was forced to make an emergency landing at Ontario International Airport. No one was injured, but passengers were shaken by the experience, which included repeated efforts by the pilot to dislodge the landing gear on the left side of the Boeing 737 while still in the air.

Officials said Wednesday that landing at Ontario was safer because the airport has longer runways than Burbank and the area is less dense.

A National Transportation Safety Board investigator said the problem with the landing gear involved the strut that helps support the weight of the plane on the ground. The mechanism was overextended in the wheel well and didn’t respond properly when the flight crew activated it for landing, he said.

“They were only able to get it out partially,” said George Petterson, the NTSB air safety investigator handling the incident. “They knew that they were going to land without that landing gear.”

Petterson said the airplane’s landing gear was last overhauled in June 1995.

Petterson said preliminary results may be available within about a week, but a complete investigation would take about six months.

The airplane’s landing gear assembly was expected to be sent from Ontario to a Boeing facility in Seattle today, where Petterson will supervise further investigation.

Officials said the airplane, which suffered minor damage during the emergency landing, would be repaired and back in service as soon as possible.

Authorities said a maintenance history of the 8-year-old aircraft showed no unusual problems. The aircraft’s last major maintenance check, which did not include overhauling the landing gear, was conducted April 16, they said.

The aircraft, which was on its sixth flight of the day during the Las Vegas-to-Burbank trip, was not being overworked, authorities said.

“You can keep that bird in the sky 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year,” said Tim Pile, a spokesman for the FAA, which is assisting the NTSB with the investigation. “There is a checklist that has to be performed before and after flights. As long as you’re doing that, that’s what you call getting the most out of your equipment.”

Officials at Southwest Airlines said the pilot’s decision to head for Ontario was based on its longer, parallel runways. The decision did not involve the proximity of the Burbank terminal to its runways, which are shorter and intersect, she said.

“The reason we chose Ontario was that it had two parallel runways,” said Ginger Hardage, an airline spokeswoman.

The Burbank Airport’s longest runway is about 6,885 feet, while Ontario’s longest runway is about 12,200 feet, authorities said.

Hardage said the emergency landing required about 8,000 feet of runway, which was easily provided at Ontario.

The authority that controls Burbank Airport has split sharply over proposals to build a new, larger terminal that could better handle the more than 5 million passengers who use the airport in a year.

Representatives from Burbank and Los Angeles have criticized and challenged the current plan, which was approved last month by the FAA, claiming that noise and congestion will become intolerable.

Burbank officials Wednesday criticized Raggio’s comments.

Anyone would be in favor of a safer terminal farther away from the runways, but not everyone wants a larger terminal, several officials said.

“The truth of the matter is that if we triple the number of flights, we’ll have three times as much chance for an accident to happen,” said Bob Kramer, vice mayor of Burbank.

And despite the peaceful end to the hair-raising flight on Tuesday, it is bound to stoke the bitter debate over a larger terminal.

Philip E. Berlin, an airport authority commissioner from Burbank, agreed with Kramer.

“This issue is not one of safety,” Berlin said. “No one is going to disagree that they would want to have a safer airport.”

Still, Victor J. Gill, an airport spokesman, said safety is the main issue raised by the incident Tuesday.

The existing terminal is 313 feet from the center line of the nearest runway. But the FAA design standard is at least 750 feet between the terminal and the center line of the nearest active air carrier runway, Gill said.

“The current building is not unsafe,” Gill said. “It is less safe that it optimally should be.”

Veteran airline pilots said that the Southwest pilot made the sort of good landing that any experienced airline pilot should have been able to make under the circumstances.

“As far as I know, no one has ever been injured in an incident like that,” said Barry Schiff, a veteran airline pilot and safety expert for the Air Line Pilots Assn.

Raggio applauded the Southwest pilot for going elsewhere.

“A pilot, given an option, is going to pick the least-risky area,” Raggio said. “More power to him. His choice was a good one.”

Raggio said detractors who object to the idea of a terminal expansion or relocation are missing the point regarding safety.

“Good risk management is taking the precaution before something happens,” he said.

Times staff writer Eric Malnic contributed to this story.