AIR TRAFFIC DICEY, UNION SAYS FAA DENIES CLAIM THAT CONTROLLERS SPREAD TOO THIN.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

PALMDALE - Overworked air traffic controllers unwittingly let jetliners flying to and from Los Angeles International Airport get unacceptably close to other planes twice in the past four days, the controllers' union said Tuesday.

In stormy weather last Friday afternoon, a jet flying from Salt Lake City to LAX came within a mile of a plane bound from Palm Springs to Livermore, Calif., the union said. On Sunday night, a jet flying from LAX to Denver came within three miles of a Burbank-bound Learjet as planes were routed around powerful thunderstorms.

``There's only so much you can do at any given time. When you're overloaded, sometimes even we make mistakes. There's no room for these mistakes when one mistake could cost thousands of lives,'' said Hamid Ghaffari, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association representative at the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center in Palmdale.

FAA regulations require planes at that altitude to be at least 1,000 feet apart vertically or at least five nautical miles - 5.75 standard miles - apart horizontally.

The controllers' allegations came less than a month after negotiations started on a new employment contract with the Federal Aviation Administration. Union leaders have complained for years that retirements and other departures are leading to a dangerous shortage of controllers.

An FAA spokesman said staffing was at acceptable levels and that the planes in the incidents cited by controllers were not in danger of colliding.

``They were not nose-to-nose,'' FAA spokesman Donn Walker said. ``Our system is designed to anticipate controllers' errors, to absorb them and to maintain safety.''

The Palmdale center handles high-flying jets over Southern California and parts of Arizona, Nevada and Utah. Walker said it is authorized for a staff of 308 controllers, but Ghaffari said it now has 216 fully certified controllers, plus 48 trainees.

Ghaffari said restrictions on overtime work imposed in April, as a budgetary measure, mean that fewer controllers are working in Palmdale during day and swing shifts. The Palmdale center was particularly affected because it has been difficult getting staffers to work in the High Desert, he said.

When the jets came within a mile of each other Friday afternoon, one controller was staffing two radar positions normally handled by four controllers, Ghaffari said.

During Sunday night's thunderstorms, eight fully certified controllers and two trainees were covering an area normally staffed by 15 controllers, he said.

Walker said overtime has not been restricted across the board. In both situations cited by the union, the controllers who let the aircraft come too close were working under normal staffing conditions, he said.

Some of the trainees are certified to man certain controller positions, though not to handle all positions, Walker said.

``We're using overtime right now at Los Angeles Center. It's difficult to see where they're coming from,'' Walker said about the union complaints, ``other than in the context they're in contract negotiations with us.''

The FAA has begun hiring workers under a staffing plan delivered to Congress in December, Walker said. Over the next 12 months, officials expect to add 100 employees at the Palmdale center, although older employees will be retiring.

Controllers at air route centers such as the one in Palmdale give pilots instructions, air traffic clearances and advice regarding flight conditions, and they keep the planes flying at safe distances. They hand off direction of aircraft to their counterparts elsewhere - as at the Southern California Terminal Radar Approach Control Center in San Diego County.

The San Diego County center handles planes approaching and departing from LAX, Burbank, Ontario, Long Beach and other major Southland airports, and it has about 220 controllers working regularly out of 261 authorized, a union leader said.

``We're combining positions, or we're having controllers work by themselves when they'd normally have an assistant during busy times or complex situations,'' said Tony Vella, union president at the San Diego County center.

In the past six or seven months at that approach center, Vella estimated there has been a 50 percent increase in operational errors in which planes were allowed to come too close to each other.

Charles F. Bostwick, [phone]

chuck.bostwick(at)dailynews.com