Flight attendant Jan Brown-Lohr says it’s not nearly enough that she lived to talk about the harrowing 1989 flight that ended with a crippled DC-10 cartwheeling in flames down a runway in Iowa.
The crash of the Chicago-bound United Airlines flight killed 112 people, including two young children who weren’t wearing seat restraints.
Although she spent years lobbying Congress and aviation officials to adopt safety measures that would protect such “lap babies,” Brown-Lohr said she will retire soon after 25 years in the airline industry, with little expectation that such reforms will be enacted.
Lap babies are non-ticketed, non-harnessed passengers up to 2 years old who don’t meet the minimum weight and height requirements to use regular seat belts. Therefore, the Federal Aviation Administration considers them exempt from a mandate requiring all passengers to wear seat restraints during takeoffs and landings as well as in choppy skies.
Studies conducted by the FAA and its safety watchdog, the National Transportation Safety Board, have shown that an unrestrained child involved in a plane crash can become a human missile, exerting a force of hundreds of pounds while striking objects and other passengers in the cabin.
“The government requires pets to be crated in carriers during flight, it requires that luggage be stowed and food galleys secured. But we pay lip service to protecting those who can’t speak up for themselves,” said Brown-Lohr, who lives in Schaumburg, Ill.
Now, after being prodded by safety activists since the July 1989 Sioux City crash to go beyond its “strong recommendation” that all children be secured in some form of a seat restraint, the FAA is investigating anew the issue of creating one level of safety for all airline passengers.
“I think it’s time,” said FAA Administrator Jane Garvey, who joined the agency in August.
But FAA officials, who do not track the number of lap babies who travel on airplanes each year, say they are concerned about the economic impact new regulations would have on air carriers and passengers, about the shortage of research on child-restraint systems that would work in aircraft and automobiles, and whether child safety seats would get in the way during an emergency evacuation.
Larger societal questions also have been raised, such as what role free choice and parental responsibility should play in setting safety standards. Coupled with a re-energized FAA educational campaign on air turbulence–the leading and the most preventable cause of injuries on aircraft–some airline analysts maintain the cost-benefit test doesn’t dictate extraordinary action.
In its own cost-outcome study, the FAA said it documented only one death and a handful of injuries between 1983 and 1995 that could have been prevented if child-restraint systems had been mandatory. The NTSB disagreed, pointing to the deaths of at least five small children from 1987 to 1995. They included:
– In 1994, a 9-month-old lap baby died of massive head injuries in a crash in Charlotte, N.C., after being thrown five rows ahead of the intact seat in which her mother was located. An investigation showed that the pair was seated in a survivable section of the aircraft.
– In 1990, an unrestrained infant who suffered a fractured skull was the only casualty when a DC-10 encountered turbulence near Puerto Rico.
– In 1987, a lap baby died of head injuries after being thrown into the bulkhead in front of his parent’s seat when a DC-10 crashed in Denver. The parent survived.
Conversely, the sides of a child-seat restraint shielded an infant when a jet engine exploded in 1996 and debris cut through the fuselage. A woman and her son seated nearby were killed.
Safety watchdogs, estimating that up to 20,000 infants travel on airlines each day, suggest that even a one-in-a-million chance of death or serious injury is viewed by most parents as an unacceptable risk. The advocates say the airline industry needs to catch up to automobile regulations in all 50 states, which require that children wear safety restraints.
With airline operating profits showing strong growth over the last three years–up $7.9 billion in 1997–safety proponents say the timing is right for the carriers to invest in added safeguards.
While the manufacturers of child seats for use in aviation are focusing on making them smaller and easier to use, most of the seats on the market are designed to withstand a force of only 9 G’s, or nine times the force of gravity, according to Matt McCormick, chief of the survival factors division at the NTSB.
“The child seats need to be much more crash-worthy,” McCormick said. “The regular seats on a passenger plane, by comparison, are certified to 16 G’s.”
While the safety debate continues, the welfare of lap children rests in the arms of adults–what one veteran accident investigator called “the grip of death.”
Current FAA regulations allow children under age 2 to fly at no charge if they share a seat with an adult. Most airlines provide a free passenger seat, on a space-available basis, to children traveling with restraint seats, which the FAA has required the airlines to allow parents to bring aboard since 1982. Many of the carriers also offer discounted seats to passengers under 2.
The FAA recommends that children weighing less than 20 pounds be restrained in a rear-facing seat, and children between 20 and 40 pounds use a forward-facing safety seat. Kids over 40 pounds can use ordinary lap belts.
With the support of organizations that include the Association of Flight Attendants and the NTSB, legislation has been proposed four times since 1989 to make the use of child-restraint seats mandatory on aircraft. In the current session of Congress, bills in the House and Senate have been sent to committee, but no hearings or legislative action are scheduled.
“The chances for passage are poor,” said Patricia Friend, president of the Association of Flight Attendants. “Nearly everyone except the FAA, which favors behavior modification over rule-making, seems to support the concept, but this Congress hasn’t shown any interest.”
Safety advocates have not given up hope: A 1997 report by the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security advised the FAA to eliminate the safety-restraint exemption for infants and toddlers. The nation’s airlines are also re-evaluating their position.
For years, the carriers opposed a child-restraint requirement out of concern that it would drive families with kids out of airplanes and into their cars, costing the airlines customers. In the past the FAA agreed, arguing that mandating safety seats would cause additional deaths since traveling at 31,000 feet is statistically much safer than riding on the highway at 55 miles an hour. The airlines also are concerned about being saddled, through regulation, with extra expenses.
The Washington-based Air Transport Association, an industry group, says no passenger should fly without wearing a government-approved restraint, although it hasn’t endorsed a new regulation.
“It’s physically impossible in severe turbulence to hold a child in your lap, and I don’t know anybody who knows anything about this issue who takes a child on a plane without having them strapped in,” said association spokesman David Fuscus.
“But we think the regulatory agencies have to work out standards on which child seats are acceptable and how they should be used on a particular aircraft,” Fuscus said. “In the meantime, parents who want a guaranteed seat for their young child should purchase a ticket for them.”
Over the next several months, the FAA is seeking public comment on how the agency should proceed on a rule to require the use of child-restraint systems on U.S. air carriers.
While saying that she preferred education and “using the bully pulpit” over adding rules to solve many cabin-safety issues, FAA administrator Garvey said of the lap baby situation: “Rule-making is very long and very complicated, and it drains a lot on the resources. But in this case, I think that’s going to go into rule-making. It’s become a priority for us.”
Beginning in June 1996, the FAA banned backless booster seats and torso harnesses. Tests showed that the devices, while effective in automobiles, could cause abdominal and head injuries to children involved in an airplane emergency.
In the ill-fated United flight in 1989, a catastrophic explosion of a titanium fan disk in the rear engine sent shards cutting through hydraulic lines, rendering the cockpit steering controls nearly useless. The Chicago-bound aircraft broke apart while attempting an emergency landing at the Sioux City airport.
“The Sioux City crash pushed me over the edge,” said Brown-Lohr, who was burned in the accident. “Beyond the 40 minutes of terror before the plane careened and flipped across the runway, the most horrifying part was finding myself in charge and telling parents to put their children on the floor in preparation for the crash.”
In preparing passengers to brace for an emergency landing, the FAA-approved policy of most major airlines includes buffering unbelted children with blankets and pillows, then placing them on the cabin floor secured by the hands or feet of adults.
A 23-month-old boy on the United flight was killed after being torn from the grip his mother had on one of his ankles. The parent was among the aircraft’s 184 survivors, but the child’s body was found in the rear of the plane.
Another unrestrained child suffered a similar death and two others lived, although they received much more serious injuries than adults seated nearby in the survivable sections of the aircraft. A passenger found one of the lap children who survived, a 2-year-old girl, inside a closed overhead bin 15 rows behind her mother’s seat.
“In the last year or two, I think that more parents are getting the message and bringing aboard restraints for their children,” said Kim Kinnas, a veteran flight attendant for American Airlines.
“But despite all the recent attention given to clear-air turbulence, most people still want to believe that nothing can happen to them on an airplane.”
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