"Enough Is Enough"

In the wake of the second failure in a week of an ILS approach system at Los Angeles International -- and with many unanswered questions still surrounding last month's blackout of the Air Route Traffic Control Center in Palmdale -- officials at LAX are changing their tone when speaking about of relationship with the FAA.

Whereas those officials had been fairly understanding of these issues in the past... now, they want answers.

"Enough is enough," said Frank Clark, executive director of a nonprofit organization representing airlines operating at the Tom Bradley International Terminal, to the Los Angeles Times. "The frequency of these within a relatively short interval does create a cause for concern and leads us to wonder if there isn't something more systemic going on with maintenance and age of equipment."

The number of problems is disturbing. It all started last month, when the Los Angeles ARTCC went out July 18 -- resulting in lost communications with planes flying over SoCal, grounding planes for over an hour. Less than a week later, a ground radar system failed at LAX, which nearly led to a runway incursion involving two regional aircraft.

And then there's the VERY troubleprone ILS on runway 25... which first failed on a foggy morning on August 7, causing delays to incoming planes for over 90 minutes. Officials thought THAT particular problem was solved... until once again, the same system failed on Monday.

News of the repeated problems is also raising the eyebrows of some legislators -- most notably Senator Barbara Boxer, who plans to ask for an explanation of the system snafus during a trip to LAX on Thursday for a briefing on new security procedures.

Maybe she can get some answers from the FAA.

FMI: www.faa.gov, http://boxer.senate.gov/