"As one LAX project ends, another begins"

Monday, April 2, 2007

As one LAX project ends, another begins
The southernmost runway reopens as more-risky construction starts on a
taxiway between two airstrips.
By Jennifer Oldham
The Los Angeles (CA) Times


Even as they reopen the southernmost runway at Los Angeles International
Airport today, officials are looking ahead to a more dangerous project:
building a parallel taxiway between two runways while jets traveling more
than 100 mph take off and land just yards away on each side. 

Dozens of excavators, oversized dump trucks and other machines will toil 20
hours a day to build a 1.8-mile-long concrete taxiway on the airport's south
side, even as controllers work to wedge in hundreds of flights around them. 

"This is, without a doubt, a greater safety concern," said Jake Adams,
runway project manager for the city's airport agency. "We're taking the
appropriate measures to make sure the contractor does what he's supposed to
do." 

Airport officials said they were satisfied with Tutor-Saliba Corp. and its
subcontractors' safety record during reconstruction of the southernmost
runway, 55 feet farther away from its twin. The project is coming in 7%
under budget and only about a week late despite some unexpected obstacles.

"We put in $170 million worth of runway work in seven months and blew
everyone's mind," said Ronald N. Tutor, president of Tutor-Saliba. "It was
uneventful."

Even so, building inspectors cited the firm and its subcontractors several
times since work began in July for not complying with stringent safety
requirements, a Times review of inspection reports found. 

The requirements included erecting orange plastic fencing around various job
sites, installing beacons and large orange-and-white checkered flags on
construction vehicles, not overloading trucks and providing flagmen to
ensure that trucks yield to aircraft.

The citations were meant in large part to reinforce safety rules so the
contractor and workers understood the importance of adhering to them when
construction on the center taxiway begins this month, Adams said. Officials
expect to complete the project in June 2008.

The city's airport agency spent years trying to convince residents and the
City Council that it needed to rework the south airfield at LAX to prevent
close calls between aircraft on the ground. 

About 80% of such incidents occurred on the south side when pilots landed on
the outer runway, turned onto a series of taxiways and stopped too close to
the inner runway, where aircraft take off. LAX historically has had among
the nation's highest rates of so-called runway incursions.

By moving the southernmost runway and installing a center taxiway, officials
hope to cut down on incursions. When the project is finished, pilots will be
directed by controllers after they land to turn onto the taxiway, where they
will await clearance to cross the inner runway. 

A settlement agreement forged between airport-area communities and the
agency in late 2005 allowed some projects in Mayor James K. Hahn's
$11-billion LAX modernization plan to proceed - including the $330-million
south airfield reconstruction.

Moving the southernmost runway was a massive undertaking that required
months of planning to reorchestrate the airport's 1,800 flights a day. 

Airlines and air traffic controllers were concerned that shutting down one
of the airport's four runways for the project would cause delays, not just
at LAX, but also at other regional airports.

But things went relatively smoothly. Less than 1% of all flights from July
through March experienced reportable delays - or those 15 minutes or longer
- as a result of the runway closure, according to air traffic control data. 

Officials said months of planning by the FAA and the airport agency, fewer
operations at LAX and good weather helped keep delays at bay. 

"I'll bet if you spoke with the average passenger flying through here, they
wouldn't have known anything was different," said Marv Shappi, operations
manager at the LAX tower. 

Project managers also managed to avoid concrete shortages common in today's
busy construction environment by calling on several pre-approved suppliers. 

There were several problems, however. Early on, workers discovered a
1,200-foot runway buried near the Sepulveda Tunnel. The 1940s-era runway
wasn't on construction documents and required the contractor to stop the
entire project to remove the concrete. The excavation cost $1.3 million and
delayed reconstruction efforts for 23 days. 

There also were several incidents involving damage to "critical cables" that
supplied power and information to sensitive equipment that pilots use to
navigate the airfield, according to a letter from the Federal Aviation
Administration to the city's airport agency obtained through a Freedom of
Information Act request. 

Correspondence between George Aiken, the FAA's manager for safety and
standards, and Lydia Kennard, then the agency's executive director, points
to four instances from Aug. 7 to Dec. 8 when workers severed or damaged
cables. Flights were delayed in a Nov. 7 incident after a contractor sliced
through a cable, cutting power to lights that pilots relied on to orient
aircraft for takeoff and landing on the inner runway on the airport's south
side. 

In additional correspondence, Kennard attributed the problems to the
contractor, who, she wrote, failed to mark the conduits properly or didn't
"exercise proper care" when working around them. Tutor-Saliba referred
questions on the matter to the airport agency.

The agency promised to increase inspections of construction activities,
according to a follow-up letter March 28 from Aiken to Samson Mengistu, the
agency's acting executive director. In it, the FAA reminded airport
officials that they must "strictly enforce airfield safety" to ensure
construction doesn't interfere with navigation aids. 

As for the center taxiway, it will be built in multiple phases to allow
officials to rebuild a series of taxiways that connect the southern runways
while continuing to operate an active airfield. The inner runway will have
to be closed periodically to allow workers to stitch on these taxiways. The
closures may come from 1 to 7 a.m. and could affect heavy jets headed to
Asia that typically depart in the early morning. 

Since the inner runway on the airport's south side is its longest, carriers
must plan ahead for its closure to ensure that their aircraft aren't too
heavy to take off on one of LAX's three other runways. 

"Were talking about less than a half dozen airlines," said Frank Clark,
executive director of the nonprofit organization that represents carriers
operating at the Tom Bradley International Terminal. 

He said the airport agency is "good about giving them advance notice . so
they can plan accordingly if they have to hold off cargo and work it through
other cities."

Air traffic controllers said center taxiway construction will not require
them to reroute flights as extensively as they did when the southernmost
runway was closed.

When the runway reopens, however, controllers will need some time to adjust
to directing planes onto fewer taxiways between the two runways on the south
side, said Shappi, the operations manager at the LAX tower. 

Residents also will be in for an adjustment period when flights resume on
the southernmost runway. Airport officials are bracing for noise complaints
from neighboring communities. 

"We're really concerned about the perception of the runway being 55 feet
closer," said Adams, the airport agency's runway project manager. "For the
last eight months, they've had a wonderful silence. The reality is the
runway is not significantly louder now."

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