An air traffic controller in San Diego who mistakenly routed a wide-body jet with 353 people aboard toward Mt. Wilson has been removed from her current assignment amid an investigation into the incident, The Times has learned.
The wrong turn, which has sparked concern in aviation circles, occurred in some of the busiest and most difficult to monitor airspace in the nation. On a typical day, more than 11,000 aircraft take to the skies in Southern California, most of them over the Los Angeles Basin. Los Angeles International alone handles 1,700 to 1,800 departures and arrivals daily.
In the past 30 years, the National Transportation Safety Board has blamed two major crashes in the region on air traffic control problems — the mid-air collision of a private plane and an Aeromexico jet over Cerritos in 1986 and another collision involving a SkyWest commuter plane and a USAir jetliner at LAX.
The controller has been given other duties and is no longer working air traffic after an EVA Air Boeing 777 that departed from Los Angeles International Airport last Friday morning was ordered to turn left to the north, sending the aircraft over the San Gabriel Mountains at low altitude.
(culled from www.latimes.com)
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