After about two years of operation, Hermosa Beach city officials have yet to collect any significant data on illegal flight patterns from Los Angeles International Airport that once caused quality-of-life issues for residents of the beach cities.

“We haven’t had that many overflights since 9/11. The event caused a decline in flights, which I heard was about a 30-percent drop in flight activity,” said City Manager Steve Burrell.

In 2000, Hermosa Beach agreed to participate in the purchase of the system in conjunction with Redondo Beach and Palos Verdes. The device cost each city about $32,000 and allows all three municipalities to track the takeoff routes of planes leaving from LAX.

In years prior to 2000, city officials contended that the FAA and LAX have allowed planes to depart from the airport and illegally fly over the area. The data recorded from the system will be used to support the coalition’s claims with proper documentation to pursue any legal action against the FAA.

The three cities recently went offline with the device so that Rancho Palos Verdes could upgrade the system to better suit its data reviewing process.

“Rancho Palos Verdes is programming it right now so it can view it through a remote access system without having to come down here to look at the data by retrieving the disc,” added Burrell. “We’ve continued to upgrade it for the last six months and Rancho Palos Verdes is working on the latest project, which should be completed soon”

According to Burrell, the city hasn’t had much activity from the system in terms of documenting illegal flight patterns of planes that don’t adhere to the Daggett Loop route, compared to Palos Verdes, which monitors other activity such as altitude.

“There hasn’t been much information recorded from it,” said Burrell. “It’s pretty interesting to view it in real-life time. You can look at the screen and see the plane, and look to the north and see it in the sky. As long as a plane is where it’s supposed to be then there’s nothing much to look at, but if it goes into what we call alert areas then it makes a record of it.”

The city installed the system on a rooftop in downtown Hermosa Beach that became operational around December 2001. The events of Sept. 11, 2001, delayed the online process for technicians of Precision Instruments when the FAA closed all airports and grounded all flights across the country.

The device is equipped with a radar screen designating each South Bay city with a contrasting color. The system records the different numbers given to all planes belonging to a commercial airline. Technicians calibrated the machine’s small 2-inch antenna to a precise degree. The antenna and a tiny round disk tracks all flight patterns. The information is then downloaded onto a CD-ROM and accessed by a computer in city offices.