Planes Nearly Collide On Runway

A Skywest regional jet departing last Saturday from LAX to San Antonio reached 100 kts before aborting takeoff, to avoid a Gulfstream business jet taxing across the active runway. The planes missed by less than 100 feet.

The near-accident occurred around 6:00 pm, when the UK-registered Gulfstream taxied from a hangar on the south side of the field and was given instructions to cross the outer runway but hold short of the inner runway, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The pilot read back the instructions, but missed his assigned taxiway... and had to make a U-turn to get back to it. After repeating his initial instructions, the Gulfstream pilot took the correct taxiway, but did not stop short of the inner runway as instructed. As the Gulfstream crossed the active runway, the departing Skywest aircraft, carrying 39 passengers and crew, had to slam on its brakes to avoid the collision.

The Gulfstream pilot told officials he was certain the controller had cleared him to cross both runways, even though he twice read back the "hold short" instructions correctly, Ian Gregor, an FAA spokesman, told the Times.

FAA officials said the SkyWest pilot, the tower controller and the ground radar that alerts controllers to impending collisions all noticed -- at the same time -- the Gulfstream crossing the runway.

"We had three layers of redundancy," continued Gregor, "This is just a clear and clean pilot mistake."

According to tapes released to the LA Times, the shaken controller called out, "SkyWest 6430, I apologize. We never talked to the Gulfstream. He crossed without a clearance. I apologize. If you could make a right turn, please, and exit the runway."

The SkyWest pilot is heard responding, "Exiting right," exhaling heavily. The controller was so traumatized by the near-collision that she left her post seconds later.

Pilots familiar with LAX acknowledge it is one of most complex fields in the nation, with two sets of parallel runways flanking to the north and south the tower and terminals. Pilots landing or taking off from an outer runway must follow a complicated taxi route across the inner runway.

"You're having controllers working too long and too hard on position," said Mike Foote, a controller in the LAX tower and a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. "This was all pilot error -- you can't say it wasn't -- but the fact is this didn't use to happen. People would catch it. We still do … but more frequently it's not being caught."

The FAA disagrees, saying staffing issues played no role in Saturday's incident. The tower controller who instructed the SkyWest jet to take off had been on duty only 65 minutes when the close call occurred, reports the Times.

"Controller workload and controller staffing had nothing to do with this," Gregor said. "It's disingenuous to suggest otherwise. The system worked exactly as it should."

FMI: www.faa.gov,  www.lawa.org/lax