Widebody; Low Wing; 2 Turbojet Eng
Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Air Traffic Control Radar 13; Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (mon) 8
Workload; Situational Awareness; Communication Breakdown; Confusion
ATC Issue All Types; Conflict Airborne Conflict; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Clearance; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Air Traffic Control Issued New Clearance; Flight Crew FLC complied w / Automation / Advisory; Flight Crew Took Evasive Action
Human Factors
Aircraft X departed LAX on the LOOP departure. I climbed them to 13;000 ft and placed them in handoff to ZLA. Aircraft Y departed LAX on the LAXX departure and I instructed them to maintain 250 knots. Aircraft Y did not check in climbing to a certain altitude and I did not issue them one. They should have been climbing to 5000 ft as issued by LAX tower. Aircraft X was issued a left turn to LAX VOR to rejoin the LOOP SID and a climb to 15000 ft. Aircraft Y was issued a 160 heading to place them in compliance with my handoff to the next controller. I gave a few other control instructions and then noticed Aircraft Y climbing through 6400 ft. I instructed Aircraft Y to maintain 7000 ft and issued the traffic on Aircraft X; who was climbing out of 7500 ft. Aircraft Y reported they were leveling and responding to an RA. Aircraft X then reported responding to an RA. Aircraft Y came back and reported Aircraft X in sight and I questioned what altitude they were climbing to. They responded with 11 thousand via the departure.
Unfortunately; today we had a loss of separation with an [air carrier widebody] in visual conditions. After successfully completing our flight to LAX we prepared to ready the aircraft for our next flight. The first distraction was that we were having problems with initializing the FMS which delayed the arrival of our PDC. Thinking that one of the possible issues was a lack of an in time being recorded (it has happened a few times to me recently); I called our dispatcher as I always like to have a chat with the dispatcher when possible. He confirmed that the in time was recorded and waited on the phone as I performed the initialization; which worked. At about that time; the people were boarding and we got a company jumpseater that wanted to observe our flight to ZZZ1. We preloaded the FMS with the filed clearance and discussed the tower en-route clearance that we were expecting as per the Jeppesen charts which listed 11;000 ft as the ALT. These both matched. After that we continued to perform our normal duties getting ready for the flight and I also had to show the jumpseater the use of all the equipment as it was his first time in this aircraft type jumpseat. The PDC came in at the same time that we got the other flight information; as well the jumpseater was having some issues with setting up his seat. When we briefed the flight; the PDC had already been folded and I missed at the bottom that it listed as filed except maintain 5;000 ft. I think that seeing the 11;000 in the upper right hand corner and then hearing the clearance as [Low Altitude IFR Route]; I thought 11;000 ft in my mind just like we saw when we looked over the release and the en-route clearance. Everything was back on track and we continued not realizing that the mistake had been made. On departure; we flew the track as depicted until being assigned a few heading changes and a frequency change. Air traffic was busy as normal. We continued our climb through the PDC assigned altitude of 5;000 ft thinking that we were assigned 11;000 ft. Around 9;000 ft we noticed the airliner that departed in front of us off 25R moving across our flight path from right to left. We started slowing our climb and thought that they were close but could see that we were going to be passing behind them. We were concerned about wake and around 10;000 ft we got an RA and reported to ATC that we had traffic insight but we were responding to the RA by leveling off. After the conflict was resolved we received clearance to climb to 11;000 ft. Asking ourselves what happened and looking for answers; only then did we notice that we were only previously cleared to 5;000 ft on the bottom of the PDC.
An air carrier flight crew and SCT Controller reported an airborne conflict between the flight crew's aircraft and another air carrier flight. Contributing factors included a misread PDC by the flight crew and improper altitude reporting during initial contact with SCT. Frequency congestion likely contributed.