LOS ANGELES AIRPORT ISSUES UPDATE ON CURRENT FLIGHT OPERATIONS
2:00 pm PST -- Monday, October 27, 2003

At 2:00 p.m. PST, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) officials report that the airport remains open and fully operational. However, the airport is still experiencing flight delays and cancellations due to the continued disruption of a regional Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) radar facility north of San Diego that controls all flights into and out of Southern California's various airports.

The FAA's Southern California Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facility at Miramar was evacuated Sunday morning, when it was threatened by one of the San Diego wildfires. It is not known when the FAA will resume normal operations at the TRACON facility.

A check of major airlines at LAX at 2:00 p.m. today indicates about 220 inbound and outbound cancellations are now expected for the entire day -- or 13 percent of the airport's daily 1,700 operations (landings and takeoffs). No flight cancellations are reported by the nearly 40 foreign air carriers at the Tom Bradley International Terminal.

Airlines are selectively canceling flights today and combining flights where possible in order to reduce the load on the air traffic control system. This reduction in the number of flights is resulting in delays ranging from 0 to 90 minutes on those flights that are operating -- a significant improvement over yesterday's hours-long delays.

Most of the departure cancellations appear to be to destinations within California. This has resulted in rental car companies at LAX reporting very brisk business in car rentals.

After losing a significant amount of its operational capacity due to the temporary closure of the Miramar TRACON facility, air traffic controllers from that facility were dispatched yesterday to the LAX Tower, where they have increased the number of arrivals at LAX from yesterday's average of 30 flights per hour to 60 per hour currently. The airport's normal rate is 70 arrivals per hour. The arrival rate is important as this impacts the number of aircraft that are available to turn-around and depart.

LAX officials advise passengers to check with their airlines to ensure their flight's schedule before coming to the airport. Airline phone numbers are available in public telephone directories and most major airlines have current flight status information available on their Internet websites.