The “most wanted” list published by the National Transportation Safety Board isn’t about fugitives on the run.
It is about raising public awareness and support for safety measures that can save lives. Specifically, the current list issued in May 1997 highlights eight airline safety issues recommended to the Federal Aviation Administration. The items range from requiring installation of fire detection and suppression equipment in cargo compartments to requiring the installation of flight data recorders with a larger number of parameters, such as attitude, altitude, speed and heading. The list also includes wake turbulence, airframe structural icing and safer control of aircraft on the ground.
This is, of course, a wish list. But it got some heavy-hitting support last week, when Vice President Al Gore called on airlines to mandate child-safety restraints, more rigorous plane inspections and the installation of enhanced ground warning systems to alert pilots to impending crashes.
In some instances the airlines have voluntarily responded before the FAA issues a final ruling or an order to comply.
One example is the fire detection and suppression equipment for cargo compartments. The FAA has mandated that the system be on board all U.S. aircraft by 2003 in light of a ValuJet explosion and fire in May 1996 in which 110 people died when the plane crashed in the Everglades. The fire was attributed to improperly prepared and packaged oxygen-generating canisters that ignited in the cargo hold.
Jim Hlavacek, spokesman for American Trans Air, said it expects to have its cargo compartments re-equipped with the system by July 1999.
Other carriers indicated their early response to the ruling as well. “We already have the fire detection and suppression systems in place on our 757s, 767s and MD11s. The remaining fleet will be equipped by 2000,” said John Hotard, American Airlines spokesman.
The Air Transport Association, a trade group whose membership includes 22 U.S. carriers and three foreign carriers, has assembled a safety team with representatives from labor, government, manufacturing and the airlines, said spokesman Al Prest.
“We are pooling our resources as an industry and getting to top-priority safety issues using our combined data. We are focused on major accidents where there are fatalities,” said Prest in describing the focus of the Commercial Aviation Safety Strategy Team.
The association also manages a steering committee overseeing Flight Operations Quality Assurance, a sophisticated in-flight data-collecting program intended to identify safety issues.
“Each airline enacts their own program–US Airways, Continental and Alaska Airlines are using FOQA, but United has taken the lead,” Prest said. Though FOQA has not been mandated by the FAA, Prest believes a ruling is imminent.
“Flight Operations Quality Assurance provides risk analysis,” said Ed Soliday, a United Airlines captain and spokesman. The data is gathered in-flight by a second flight recorder (other than the one commonly referred to as the “black box”) using an optical disc. “Every second or in some cases every eighth of a second we look at every parameter,” said Soliday.
Two hundred hours of flight information are collected on each disc. The information is translated into a three-dimensional graphic to view flight as it occurred.
This program creates a massive amount of data, and United is working with NASA to develop analytical tools to manage the information. “We will be able to predict component failure before it happens,” said Soliday.
The data affect engineering systems, flight-training programs and air traffic control procedures. For example, such data have identified airports with bad approach systems and these have been altered, said Soliday.
Members of the Air Transport Association unanimously voted to purchase another key safety system known as Enhanced-Ground Proximity Warning System (E-GPWS), said the association’s Bill Bozin. The program is expected to eliminate airline accidents in mountainous terrain.
“The decision to purchase the system was done voluntarily with the endorsement of the FAA,” Bozin added. It came in response to an American Airlines crash in Cali, Columbia, in December 1995 that killed 160 people. Pilot and computer errors were cited.
United’s Soliday said the system looks ahead of and below the aircraft to alert the pilot to threatening terrain. “Before this system, the Controlled Flight Into Terrain was the No. 1 killer in airline accidents.” United has 19 aircraft equipped with the E-GPWS and expects to have it on the bulk of their fleet by the end of 1999.
American’s Hotard said E-GPWS “is one more tool, but not a be-all or end-all. We emphasize to our pilots that they are flying the aircraft.”
Hotard described the system as virtual reality.
“It paints a picture on the radar screen that is color-coded much like a weather map, indicating elevations in terrain.” Hotard said the new system gives the pilot more than a 60-second warning of mountainous terrain, which is enough time to react.
Intervention and prevention are part of an overall safety agenda for the airlines, and Hotard said that’s why heart defibrillators will be standard on all American aircraft by November. “All 20,000 of our flight attendants are being trained in the use of this medical device,” he added. Other airlines are following suit.
As for prevention of injuries, particularly to small children, the industry is in debate over child-restraint seats. Children hurt in crashes and on turbulent flights are the driving force in this effort. Currently, children younger than 2 can fly without a ticket if they can sit in their parents’ laps.
“The difficulty is finding a seat that works and is affordable for the average consumer,” said United’s Soliday. “We hope to have a mutual agreement on a carrier or seat that is usable in both a car and on an airplane.”
Unrestrained children become subject to injury or death in crashes or turbulence when they are jostled from their parent’s arms. The use of such a seat has not been mandated by the FAA and is still in public discussion, according to an FAA spokesman.
