Get into a modern automobile, and you’ll wear a seat belt with shoulder restraints.
You’ll be traveling in a seat built to withstand a major accident.
And you might have an air bag to cushion the blow of a head-on collision.
But walk on a modern jetliner and, with some exceptions, you’ll enter a world of decades-old crash-protection technology.
In an accident, unless you’re a pilot or flight attendant, you’ll wear a lap belt, leaving you vulnerable to a fatal head or neck injury.
You’ll most likely sit in a seat that will collapse or be ripped from the floor.
And you’ll be traveling in a cabin where overhead compartments can fall apart, turning luggage into deadly projectiles.
After the July 2 crash of USAir Flight 1016 in Charlotte, N.C., critics are asking: Why isn’t more done to help passengers survive a crash?
“When you’re flying in the most modern jet, in many respects, you’re flying in an aircraft whose safety standards were established in 1952,” said Wayne Williams, a former Air Force pilot and Eastern Airlines engineer who founded the National Transportation Safety Association.
To be sure, commercial airlines rank among the safest ways to travel.
In 1993, more than 40,000 people died on U.S. highways, a toll equivalent to a jumbo jet crashing every day. There were no crashes involving major airlines.
In 8 of the last 14 years, the industry says, there were more people killed by lightning than in airline crashes.
Still, consumer advocates say airlines need to do more to protect passengers when a plane does crash. Studies show that many people don’t die from the impact of the crash but from the fire and smoke afterward.
In the early 1980s, the Federal Aviation Administration studied crashes in which investigators found there was a chance of survival-more than 80 percent of accidents. In those crashes, the agency attributed 40 percent of the deaths to fire.
After the Charlotte crash, nearly half of the 37 people who died were found within a dozen feet of an open exit.
For years, the government, airlines and consumer groups have considered:
– Stronger seats: In a requirement dating to the 1950s, most airline seats are built to withstand 9 G’s of force-or nine times the weight of a passenger hurtling forward.
In 1988, the FAA required new aircraft seats to boost that to 16, but it applies only to newly designed planes. So few planes meet the new standards. USAir Flight 1016, a 21-year-old DC-9-30, didn’t.
– Better seat belts: Safety advocates believe that shoulder restraints could save lives. But the FAA says that also would require much stronger seats-akin to the ones used by the pilot and crew. Rear-facing seats provide more initial protection, but they also must be stronger and they leave passengers with less refuge from flying debris.
– Infant safety seats: Parents are allowed to hold children younger than 2 in their laps without buying a ticket. One baby, traveling on her mother’s lap, died in the July 2 crash.
Airlines and the National Transportation Safety Board want to require that infants ride in special safety seats, the way they do in cars. But the FAA warns that more parents would drive rather than pay for airline tickets for their children. The agency believes more children would then end up dying in car accidents.
– Improved fire protection: The interiors of aircraft cabins burn easily and can give off toxic fumes. In the 1980s, the FAA issued tougher flammability standards, which could provide up to 17 more seconds for passengers to escape a burning aircraft.
The standards apply only to new and refurbished aircraft. A congressional report last year said the entire U.S. commercial fleet won’t comply until 2018. USAir said the DC-9 that crashed was up-to-date on FAA flammability standards.
– Smoke hoods: The device, developed after a 1965 crash, is basically a fireproof plastic bag that passengers could stick over their heads, protecting them from fumes. In tests, they’ve been shown to save lives. But airlines say passengers could become disoriented while wearing them, hindering evacuation.
– Sprinklers: The FAA is exploring installing sprinklers, but airlines fear they could leak or trigger inadvertently during flight, damaging electrical systems.
Airlines say they’ve made improvements: lighting along escape routes, fire-retardant material on seat cushions, fire extinguishers in galleys and smoke detectors in lavatories.
“The industry has done quite a bit to enhance survivability,” said Tim Neale, spokesman for the airlines’ Air Transport Association.
Why doesn’t the government require that planes be quickly upgraded to meet modern standards?
“It’s simply a combination of the cost and feasibility,” said Jeff Marcus, manager of the FAA’s protection and survival laboratory in Oklahoma City. “You simply can’t take every airplane out of service to do it.”
Still, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, criticized the pace of change in a report last year.
If all jetliners met the new flammability standards, it could save as many as 16 lives a year, the agency said. But at the current pace of refurbishment, almost half won’t meet those standards by the end of the decade.
FAA officials say the cost of requiring all aircraft immediately to meet the standard-about $1 million per plane-outweighs the potential safety benefits.
Consumer groups aren’t satisfied with the FAA response.
“We call it regulation by fatality,” said Geraldine Frankoski, director of the Aviation Consumer Action Project. “A rule is not put forward until enough people die. It’s tragic but it’s true.”
