Once Again On North End Of Airfield

There's been another runway incursion at the north end of Los Angeles International Airport... roughly two weeks after the last one.

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the most recent incursion, which happened Saturday evening and involved two Boeing 737s.

The Los Angeles Times reports a Continental Airlines flight had just arrived from Newark, NJ and crossed the hold-short lines -- breaching the runway where an American Airlines flight was taking off for Miami.

It is currently unknown if the American flight was on the roll, or was actually in the air at the time.

According to FAA spokesperson Laura Brown, the aircraft were at least 1,000 feet apart and a preliminary investigation found they may never have been closer than 3,000 feet.

This latest incursion comes less than two weeks after a WestJet Boeing 737 and  a Northwest Airlines Airbus A320 almost collided at LAX, coming within 37 feet of each other, as ANN reported.

It has not yet been determined if this most recent incident would be officially characterized as a runway incursion. Even though the incident was of the "lower severity" variety, it still managed to activate alarms in the tower.

LAX has the fifth-highest rate of incursions among the nation's 35 busiest commercial airports, according to the FAA.

As ANN reported last Friday, FAA administrator Marion Blakey told LA city leaders, "Los Angeles needs to get going. Fix the north airfield now."

"I'll put it plainly. However you decide to fix the airfield, get it done," the outgoing FAA chief added. "The problem here is that the parallel runways on the north side are too close together. A landing aircraft that leaves the outward runway on a high-speed taxiway literally has only a few feet to stop before crossing the inner runway hold line."

LAX officials declined to comment, reported the Los Angeles Times.

FMI: www.lawa.org/lax, www.faa.gov