(Credit: Flight Path Museum LAX/LAWA)
The 80th anniversary of the first commercial flights at Los Angeles International Airport will arrive this December.
The former Mines Field west of Inglewood became the city’s first official airfield, Los Angeles Municipal Airport, on Oct. 1, 1928, but the first commercial flights to use the facility didn’t do so until Dec. 9, 1946. It was renamed Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on Oct. 11, 1949.
Since then, LAX has had several serious aviation accidents, but considering its size and volume of flights, its overall safety record is impressive.
In fact, the worst LAX-related accident in its history actually took place more than 30 miles from the airport, over the city of Cerritos.
Shortly before noon on Sunday, Aug. 31, 1986, a Piper Cherokee private plane headed for Big Bear that had taken off minutes earlier from Torrance Municipal Airport flew undetected into the tail assembly of Aeromexico Flight 498. The Aeromexico DC-9 had just started its descent into LAX on its flight from Tijuana after originating in Mexico City.
The Piper Cherokee went undetected by the Aeromexico pilot because he was dealing with reports of another private plane in the area. Airplanes in those days were not universally equipped with adequate detection systems, nor were smaller planes equipped with transponders that would make them easily detectable.
The collision at roughly 6,560 feet in the air sent both planes hurtling to the ground. The Piper Cherokee crashed into an empty elementary school playground, its three occupants killed in the initial collision..
Tragically, the Aeromexico plane crashed and burned into a neighborhood of tract homes in Cerritos. 82 people died in total from the crash,, including all 64 on the jetliner, 15 on the ground, and the three in the Piper. Six houses were destroyed on the ground, and many more damaged.
Ultimately, blame for the crash was shared by the Piper pilot and LAX air traffic control. But much was done to help prevent future tragedies following the crash. Small planes in the LAX air space area were required to carry transponders, making them detectable by larger planes. In 1989, the FAA also began requiring all commercial airliners to install onboard traffic avoidance systems.
17 years earlier, pilot error caused the crash of a Scandinavian Airlines DC-8 jetliner into Santa Monica Bay some six nautical miles short of its landing strip at LAX on Monday Jan. 13, 1969. 15 people died in the SAS Flight 933 crash, the first commercial airline flight deaths in LAX’s history.
Five days later on Jan. 18, 1969, a United Airlines 727 jet suffered an unexplained total power failure four minutes after takeoff from LAX. Without power, the crew of Flight 266 lost control of the aircraft, and it plunged into the sea. All 38 people, passengers and crew, lost their lives.
The other most deadly LAX crashes mostly took place on the ground, not in the air.
On March 1, 1978, at 9:30 a.m., a Continental Airlines DC-10 airliner blew two tires as it attempted to take off from a rain-soaked LAX runway. Flight 603 never left the ground. A nose wheel collapsed, causing the plane to skid to a halt and erupt into flames.
Two passengers died when they jumped from the airplane’s wing into an area of the plane that then burst into flames. 79 people were injured.
The worst ground accident at LAX was a runway incursion that occurred on the evening of Friday, Feb. 1, 1991.
The LAX control tower mistakenly gave the go-ahead for USAir Flight 1493 to land on a runway where SkyWest Airlines Flight 5569 had just been given the go-ahead to take off. The SkyWest plane, a smaller turboprop Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner with 12 people aboard, was crushed by the larger Boeing 737 as it attempted to land in the same spot.
35 people died, all 12 aboard the SkyWest aircraft and 23 people aboard the USAir 737, in the fiery crash and aftermath. 20 of the 23 USAir casualties came from asphyxiation due to smoke inhalation.
Investigators later found that the airport’s ground radar system wasn’t working at the time of the crash, and that the SkyWest plane was in a blind spot not visible from the control tower.
As with the 1986 Aeromexico tragedy, the horrifying USAir crash resulted in improvements in LAX operations. Takeoffs and landings henceforward were made on completely separate runways, a recommendation made by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) following its investigation of the crash.
The price paid for the safety improvements resulting from these accidents has been high, but the results are a drastic reduction in LAX incidents in recent years.
Sources:
Bureau of Accidents Archives website.
Daily Breeze archives.
“LAX History,” Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) website.
Wikipedia.
