A Tragic Repeat

By Ed Magnuson

The circumstances were chillingly similar. Last Aug. 31 a small private plane took off from a suburban Los Angeles airfield, flew into the restricted airspace that protects Los Angeles International Airport without informing controllers, and collided with an Aeromexico jetliner. Eighty-two people died. Last week a single-engine Mooney aircraft lifted off from a municipal airfield 15 miles south of Salt Lake City, intruded without warning into the restricted zone around the city's international airport, and struck a SkyWest commuter airliner. All ten people in the two planes were killed.

In each case visibility was excellent. In each, the pilots of the commercial aircraft were being guided by airport controllers. And in each, the small planes were flying under "see and avoid" rules in which controllers are not responsible for their flight paths.

"We'll never know if anybody was looking out the window," an air-traffic- control expert said of the two-man crew in the SkyWest Metro and the pilot and flight instructor occupying the Mooney. A priority rule of flying, regardless of whether controllers are monitoring a flight, is that someone must always be watching for other air traffic. When the two planes collided about 2,400 ft. above the Salt Lake valley, visibility was 20 miles.

Investigators said Pilot Chester Baker, owner of the Mooney, and Instructor Paul Lietz had been practicing "touch and go" landings and takeoffs at an airport near Kearns, Utah. At about 12:50 p.m. Baker touched down briefly, then lifted off and climbed sharply upward. The Metro, en route from Pocatello, Idaho, with six passengers and two crew members, was about to make a turn for its approach to the international airport.

The SkyWest aircraft "was inbound and doing exactly what he was supposed to do," said Tom Doyle, an assistant air-traffic manager at the main airport. As for the Mooney, Doyle said, "I don't know where that aircraft was." Investigators said the Mooney may have been "squawking" with a transponder -- a device that amplifies its radar reflection -- since printouts indicate its blip may have appeared on one radar screen. If so, why had the controller not warned the commuter pilot? A possible explanation: the Mooney was not transmitting information on its altitude, and thus the danger was not apparent.

The Mooney pilot, moreover, had not checked in with controllers as required. "He busted the ARSA," said Don Moffit, a Salt Lake City tower manager, referring to the Airport Radar Service Area in which all planes must be directed by controllers.

The collision was a postscript to a year in which 828 near-midairs were reported to the Federal Aviation Administration. The agency's boss, Donald Engen, noted that the FAA will soon introduce new air-collision warning devices for airliners and more sophisticated computers for the air-traffic control system, but he suggested that the "solution to the midair collision threat will still be the pilot." There is no substitute, Engen said, "for a vigilant airman's eye."

With reporting by Mike Carter/Kearns