Jets’ Close Encounter Prompts an FAA Look

Jumbo jets en route from Japan and Holland passed alarmingly close to each other--within two-thirds of a mile--after an autopilot on one plane apparently malfunctioned while they were over South-Central Los Angeles, authorities said Thursday.

The Dutch KLM Boeing 747 was forced to change course to avoid a Brazilian VASP MD-11 over a densely populated residential and industrial area as the two planes prepared to land at Los Angeles International Airport on Wednesday afternoon, federal officials said.

The Brazilian jet, inbound from Osaka, Japan, apparently failed to follow air traffic controllers’ instructions for a tight turn onto its final approach, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

It strayed across the approach route of the Dutch jet, which was arriving from Amsterdam, the FAA said.

FAA investigators said the pilot of the Brazilian plane later told controllers that the autopilot device on his plane “didn’t make the turn.”

Kevin McGrath, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Assn., the controllers union, said a review of air traffic tapes also suggested trouble with the device.

“The Brazilian crew was flying on autopilot and they were waiting for it to turn them onto the final approach course, which it apparently failed to do,” McGrath said.

“It could be a system failure,” McGrath added. “It could be the way they programmed it. It could be a crew oversight. It could be lots of things.”

But Mitch Barker, an FAA spokesman, said a pilot is ultimately responsible for the operation and safety of the plane.

“At this time, we are treating this as a pilot deviation because the Brazilian aircraft did not comply with air traffic control instructions,” he said. “There’s always time to turn the autopilot off and take command when the autopilot does not perform to the dictates of the [flight].”

Veteran captains also stressed the notion that responsibility ultimately rests with the pilot.

“To blame it on the autopilot--if that’s in fact what happened--is denying your own responsibility for the airplane,” said Barry Schiff, a longtime captain and widely regarded aviation safety expert.

“Autopilots do what pilots want them to do,” Schiff said. “They relieve the pilot from actually manipulating the controls. But the pilot is always responsible for controlling his aircraft, even when it’s on autopilot.”

Veteran pilots familiar with LAX said it is not uncommon for planes to stray off course while on approach. “This kind of thing happens fairly often, almost every day,” said one pilot who asked not to be identified.

The FAA downplayed the incident, saying it did not involve “a critical loss of airspace.”

McGrath disagreed.

“We came too damned close to a tragedy,” he said.

Pilots said it is not unusual for a plane to make virtually its entire approach on autopilot.

To follow a controller’s instructions while on autopilot, a pilot enters the assigned compass heading into a computer.

“The guy punching the numbers in often has his head down” and, as a consequence, is not looking out the windshield for other planes, one pilot said. The other member of the cockpit crew usually maintains a lookout.

Pilots usually take back manual control, which involves toggling a switch, just before touching down.

It remained unclear Thursday precisely what occurred aboard the Brazilian plane, but the FAA’s preliminary findings presented a rough picture:

LAX has four long east-west runways. Those to the north of the airport’s terminals are called 24 Left and Right, and those to the south 25 Left and Right. Controllers directed the Brazilian jet to land at 24 Left.

Coming in from the ocean, its plane looping in a wide right-hand turn, the crew acknowledged those instructions but failed to make a sufficiently tight turn.

Instead, the plane, which can carry up to about 300 passengers, strayed toward Runway 25 Left.

KLM Flight 601, coming in from the east with 344 passengers and a crew of 18, was headed straight in for Runway 25 Left.

The KLM pilot spotted the Brazilian plane from three miles away and took evasive--but “not abrupt”--action.

On the ground, controllers saw what they believed to be a potential disaster unfolding on their radar screen: the two planes crossing directly into one another’s paths.

“As far as the controllers were concerned, the two aircraft merged,” McGrath said.

At the closest point, the planes came within 0.57 miles of each other horizontally, with an altitude difference of about 400 feet, according to the FAA. The air traffic control tapes indicated that language concerns--sparked by the international nature of the flights--did not “seem to be a cause” in the incident, McGrath said.

After the Dutch jet turned south to avoid the encroaching MD-11, the Brazilian jet was ordered to execute a 360-degree turn, so that it could line up properly with Runway 24 Left.

It made that turn, and both jets landed safely.

Information about the passengers and crew of the Brazilian jet was not immediately available.

Barker said the incident had not been classified as a “near midair collision” because neither of the pilots had filed the necessary reports to trigger such a designation.

However, Peter Wellhuner, a KLM spokesman in Amsterdam, said that the pilot of Flight 601 had made a “verbal complaint” to air traffic authorities immediately upon arrival and intends to follow up with a written report.

According to statistics compiled by the FAA, pilots reported 202 near midair collisions in 1996, the lowest number in five years.

By comparison, the agency recorded 241 such incidents in 1995 and 276 in 1994.

California has accounted for the largest share of close calls since 1991, averaging 57 each year.

Times staff writer Eric Malnic contributed to this report.