LAX Guidance System Crashes Again

[question everything]

From the Los Angeles Times

LAX Guidance System Crashes Again
By Michael Muskal
Times Staff Writer

12:01 PM PDT, August 14, 2006

For the second time in a week, the instrument landing system at LAX went down this morning, briefly delaying arriving flights.

The cause of today's failure was under investigation, Ian Gregor of the Federal Aviation Administration said in a telephone interview. It was not known whether today's incident was connected to last week's outage and delays. The instrument landing system that works on the only active runway on the airport's south side went down just before 10 a.m., said Gregor. The outage slowed the rate of arrivals from the usual 60 to 70 planes an hour to about 46. Technicians had the system working again about 10:40 a.m., he said.

(snip)

A similar delay on Aug. 7 tied up flights across the country and in parts of Canada. The system was down for hours and service was disrupted even longer. The instrument landing problem was one of two that hit LAX today.

Earlier at LAX, authorities evacuated an Alaska Airlines flight after the crew found a suspicious item. Police and federal agents searched the plane but found no explosives, said airport spokesman Harold Johnson. The flight originated in Guadalajara, Mexico. The plane landed without incident just before 9 a.m. and the 125 passengers and crew were taken off the plane, which was taxied to a remote part of the airport.


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-081406evac,1,43453.story

[jiffy]

1. Do they use that samesystem elsewhere?

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

5. Only in your town.

Sorry to break it to you. :cry:

[jiffy]

2. I'm already scared to fly!

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

6. Don't be scared.

[lvx35]

7. Understandable...I just flew into Seattle with really low cloud cover...

...like the clouds were on the ground, and I listened to Air Traffic control as the planes landed...It just got the planes close enough and then they did it by "vector" which I assume is some kind of guidance system...but without that it would have been scary indeed, beacuse you couldn't see the ground until you were on it, basically.

[enlightenment]

8. I recall, years ago, a friend telling me how he

flew a Cessna 310 (twin engine) into a small town in Wyoming in basically zero visibility and strong cross-winds. It involved opening the window to look out and crabbing almost completely sideways to get to the ground -- which he couldn't see until he was almost on top of it.
He thought it was kinda fun -- almost as much fun as buzzing white tailed deer in the middle of the night (all you can see are their rear ends . . .).
He's been a commercial pilot for the last 20 years and, I suspect, a damn good one. I tend to trust the folks in the front; they don't want to go down any more than I do -- and they can see it coming!

[lvx35]

9. Amazing.

Those folks have balls/ovaries of steel, I could never do that!

[enlightenment]

10. Yeah, he had those, too!

:evilgrin:

[ronnykmarshall]

3. Was this guy working at the time?

[jaysunb]

4. My wifes flight was delayed

about an hour this morning ( 11-12 ). So that's the reason. HAH !

[Javaman]

11. Tinfoil hat time!

It seems to me that there is a pattern to all of this. One thing after another to basically kill the airline industry.

But what do I know, it just seems like a very well thought out attack. Who would want such a thing? Who knows?

:tinfoilhat: