Every time Qantas lands one of its giant Airbus A380s at LAX, parts of the nation's fourth-busiest airport come to a halt.
Service roads, taxiways and runways must be closed to airfield trucks, cars and other commercial aircraft as the world's largest passenger plane -- with wings almost as long as a football field -- arrives, departs and taxis with an official escort of operations vehicles.
The plane is so immense that air traffic controllers give it priority so it doesn't have to wait for takeoff at the end of the airport's southern runways in cloudy or foggy weather because it can disrupt radio signals from the airport's instrument landing system.
More than any other airliner, LAX officials say, the A380 requires special procedures because Los Angeles International Airport was not built to accommodate a plane of its size.
Despite occasional griping from airlines, LAX, Qantas, and Federal Aviation Administration officials say that A380 operations have gone fairly well since October, when the Australian carrier began service to Los Angeles from Melbourne and Sydney.
But air traffic controllers and LAX officials caution that as airlines put more A380s into service, they could hamper airport operations and delay other commercial flights if improvements to runways, taxiways and terminals are not made in the next few years. Based on Air Transport Assn. figures, every minute of delay for an airliner carrying 150 people costs the carrier and passengers an average total of $152, including the value of fuel, crew time, lost productivity and other expenses.
Air traffic controllers at LAX say the current procedures work because A380s have priority, there are only one or two planes a day and the airport isn't as busy as it once was. Since 2000, the average number of daily takeoffs and landings has dropped from about 2,150 to 1,500 because of declines in air travel after 9/11, high aviation fuel prices last summer and the nation's sagging economy.
"The whole process is cumbersome and will cause problems down the road," said air traffic controller Mike Foote, a local representative of the National Air Traffic Controllers Assn. "If we go back to pre- recession operations levels, the situation would be untenable. There would be gridlock."
Controllers say the potential for delay could increase dramatically with the addition of four or five A380 flights a day.
