Airline Safety
We invite airline passengers to review the safety tips and articles
presented here. Please visit David Evans' blog for
additional safety information at
http://asj.nolan-law.com/.
Basic Air Travel Safety
Tips
More Than Red
Lights Are Needed For Warning
Reactive Versus
Proactive Safety
In the Flying
Public’s Interest
Basic Air Travel
Safety Tips
We offer these tips to provide you with a better chance for survival in
an airline accident or emergency landing:
- Avoid shorts and sleeveless tops. You want natural fiber
covering as much of your body as possible.
- Wear flat, leather shoes. Leather doesn't melt.
- "Don't grab anything" is good advice but I'd be more
explicit: leave carry-on behind. Overhead bins may have collapsed,
compounding the problem of finding your items.
- Read the seat back card: either the seat cushion has straps
to be used as a flotation device or there's a life vest under the seat.
Important: do not inflate vest before leaving airplane. Inflated vest
may not squeeze through exit, especially over wing hatches.
- During safety briefing, pick two exits -- one forward and
one aft.
- Seat belt should be firm for a crash landing. Remember how
to unbuckle: by lifting the metal tab. This is different than the
push-button latch that's in your car.
More Than
Red Lights Are Needed For Warning
On the night of 16 October a helicopter ambulance with four persons
aboard – one an infant patient being evacuated – struck guy-wires
reinforcing a radio tower near Aurora, IL. The wires ripped through the
helicopter and caused it to plummet to the ground. All four persons
were killed in the shattered heap of wreckage.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating. One
of the big questions is how the helicopter came to be flying so close
to the radio tower, which had flashing red lights on the mast to warn
of its presence.
But the red anti-collision beacons, many of which are mounted on
antenna masts for years, have limitations. Flashing red lights are not
easily discriminated as to range at night, let alone relative height.
News reports indicate that the red lights on the mast in Aurora were
working at the time of the accident, so clearly they are not sufficient.
Even during the day, the threat of hitting masts and guy-wires is very
real for low flying aircraft and helicopters. Masts are hard to see.
When flying into a rising or setting sun, masts are almost impossible
to see ahead.
Masts, in short, are an all-day, every day threat to helicopters. That
is especially true at night, even for helicopters in which the pilot is
equipped with night vision goggles.
Accident data indicate that 50 U.S. registered helicopters were
involved in wire strikes from 1996-2000. That works out to an average
rate of ten per year, but the number of dangerous guy-wire impacts – as
opposed to electrical wire strikes – is not known.
Unfortunately, equipping helicopters with cutters that snag and cut
high-tension electrical wires is probably not a solution. Guy-wires
that are surrounding and supporting antennae masts are of a different
sort – high-tensile stranded steel, not electrically conductive
filaments surrounded by insulation. No rotor blade is going to survive
an encounter with a guy-wire or electrical high-tension wire. No cabin
or rotor-mast mounted cable cutter is ever going to neatly sever a
supporting guy-wire.
The answer is to make the helicopter pilot increasingly aware of the
proximate presence of a guy-wire, and to increase such awareness the
closer he gets.
One idea is to mount a laser light near the top of each guy-wire; the
light would point down the length of the wire to the ground. By this
means, some visibility of the wire is provided without creating a
nuisance to the public of light pollution.
How well this would illuminate guy-wires for pilots remains unknown.
This approach also does nothing to alert pilots during daylight.
Another method involves a simple transponder mounted on the antenna
mast and coding an aural message on a discrete frequency. That
frequency could be installed in an interrogator aboard the helicopter
and triggered by the mast’s transponder at a usefully short range.
“Usefully short” infers that nuisance warnings to helicopters passing
the mast tangentially, and at a safe distance, would not be triggered
(courtesy of the Doppler shift).
A typical message could be a warbler, followed by a “heads up” in the
pilot’s headphones along the following lines:
“Caution: a 300 foot tall mast surrounded by guy-wires strung at 45
degrees is on your present track at a distance of 3 nautical miles. You
must immediately climb to 350 feet or divert at least 30 degrees left
or right of your present track to avoid collision.”
This is not a technically challenging task and, if adopted for both
military and civilian use, cost would be nominal.
Enhancements, such as the triggering of a centrally-mounted laser-light
show illuminating guy-wire mounted reflectors, could be justified for
particularly dangerous masts astride well-traversed routes. The
reflectors would make all the difference to a laser light shining down
the length of wire.
It should be noted that isolated tall buildings would also benefit from
transponders (Chicago’s Sears Tower, Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers,
and various other high value edifices).
A higher form and format of warning is required and justified for a
higher degree of safety. The NTSB has called for Terrain Awareness and
Warning Systems (TAWS) on medical helicopters. So far, the Federal
Aviation Administration has not acted on this two and a half year old
recommendation. TAWS is entirely self-contained on the helicopter; it
compares the helicopter’s position in three-dimensional airspace
against a digitized terrain data base in computer memory. The digitized
terrain base can contain made-made objects, providing the pilot with a
warning of threatening ground or man-made objects ahead. This
technology has been mandated for all airliners, and it has prevented a
number of crashes.
However, if TAWS is not going to be mandated for helicopters –
especially for medical evacuation helicopters, as urged by the NTSB –
the tower/building mounted transponder seems an eminently viable and
low-cost means of warning pilots that they are flying toward a man-made
hazard to navigation.
Reactive
Versus Proactive Safety
After a crew attempted to fly across country on battery power (that
normally expires in 30 minutes), the flight ended badly but not
disastrously: with an emergency landing 22 September at O’Hare (ORD) in
which the B757 went into the grass because there were no antiskid
brakes, no thrust reversers and no spoilers and, oh by the way, no
pitch trim. All of these systems depend on electric power, of which
there was none, naught, nada at almost two hours past the time when the
battery registered nil electrons. (See Aviation Safety & Security
Digest, ‘An Ostensibly Minor Malfunction Escalates To An Accident,’
home page.)
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating, and
the report is probably months away. And with good reason; investigators
have a lot of issues to explore.
Not the least is this message, sent out by the flight department at
American Airlines after the incident:
“SUBJ: NEW ELECTRICAL CHECKLISTS
A RECENT FLIGHT DIVERTED INTO ORD AFTER COMPLETELY DISCHARGING THE
BATTERY IN FLIGHT. THE CREW FOLLOWED THE CHECKLISTS CORRECTLY, WHICH
COME DIRECTLY FROM BOEING, AND [WHICH] DID NOT DIRECT THE CREW TO LAND
AT THE NEAREST SUITABLE AIRPORT … NEW CHECKLISTS WILL DIRECT THE CREW
TO LAND THE AIRCRAFT AT THE NEAREST SUITABLE AIRPORT IF THE BATTERY IS
DISCHARGING AS WELL AS ADD A LIST OF ALL ITEMS ON THE STANDBY AC,
STANDBY DC, BATTERY BUS AND HOT BATTERY BUS. YOU WILL SEE THESE
CHECKLIST REVISIONS SOON.”
Boy, does this message raise questions.
First of all, hasn’t the industry learned anything after the Swissair
flight 111 tragedy of 1998? In that crash into the waters off Nova
Scotia, Canada, that killed all 229 aboard the MD-11, the crew
attempted to diagnose where smoke entering the cockpit was coming from
before deciding to divert to Halifax. The airplane was downed by a
raging electrical fire above and behind the cockpit.
Canadian investigators determined that some 20 minutes elapsed from
smoke first wafting into the cockpit to loss of most instruments and
control of the aircraft. The word went out: when faced with an
electrical emergency, and especially if an electrically-stoked fire is
suspected, land immediately.
Indeed, manufacturer Boeing put out a Flight Operations Bulletin in
June 1999, before the investigation was completed in the Swissair
crash, enjoining operators to “land as soon as possible.” As Tom
Melody, the Boeing senior manager and chief test pilot for MD-11
customer service, said in the bulletin, “Don’t delay … consider whether
you would rather be on the ground – or in the air” with the prospect of
an electrical fire raging in some unseen region of the airplane.
That bulletin went to all Boeing’s MD-11 customers, including American
Airlines.
Apparently, the bulletin had no effect on the checklists Boeing
provides its customers.
Apparently, American Airlines did not look at all of the checklists for
the Boeing aircraft it operates and take action to modify them. Note
the whiff of blame in the message American sent to its flight crews:
“Boeing [checklists] … did not direct the crew to land at the nearest
suitable airport.”
Oh, and it appears that pilots were not given clear and unambiguous
guidance as to which systems were connected to the various flight
essential busses.
Now, after the accident at O’Hare, American is galvanized into action,
promising checklist revisions “soon.”
Not soon enough to prevent the emergency landing at O’Hare.
This is the second time American’s procedures have been questioned.
After the November 2001 crash of American flight 587, an Airbus
A300-600, in New York City, killing 265, the airline’s advanced
aircraft maneuvering program (AAMP) came under scrutiny. There was a
belief among some NTSB investigators that AAMP predisposed the first
officer, who was flying the airplane, to aggressively whap the rudder
back and forth, which caused the tailfin to snap off.
Thus, the flight department’s belated memo raises serious questions
about how the airline – any airline for that matter – provides aircrews
with guidance and training before they get into serious trouble.
Afterwards is often too late. □
In the Flying
Public’s Interest
With the change in presidential administrations, and the appointment of
a new person to head the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the
agency has the opportunity to become more accountable to the flying
public.
Rep. James Oberstar (D-MN), Chairman of the Infrastructure and
Transportation Committee, has vowed to change the FAA’s Customer
Service Initiative (CSI), because he thinks this approach is absolutely
wrong. Under the CSI, the FAA treated airlines and airplane
manufacturers as valued customers. In Congressional hearings, the FAA’s
“cozy” relationship with the industry was roundly criticized.
If CSI is abolished – as it should be – what could be done to make the
FAA more accountable to the flying public? After all, passengers are
really the customers the FAA serves to protect through various safety
programs.
And yet these customers know virtually nothing about the airline or
airplane on which they’ll be flying. Contrast the situation with other
services; even hairdressers (barbers) and financial planners (not to
mention lawyers) have to post their certificates upon their walls above
their “cockpits” (desks/chair/computers). In aviation, there is an
inbuilt pact of trust implicit in the “terms of carriage,” and the
Airworthiness Certificate and Registration Certificate is posted inside
every cockpit door. But the general public has very little knowledge of
these documents.
One thing that could be done is to create a new page on the FAA’s
website, along the lines of a “full disclosure concept,” in which Joe
Q. Public could access the following information on every airline, air
taxi and air charter company:
- The name of the airline or company.
- The names of the FAA’s Principal Operations Inspector (POI)
for that company, and the FAA’s Principal Maintenance Inspector (PMI).
These individuals provide primary FAA oversight. In addition to listing
their names, the FAA should indicate their telephone numbers and e-mail
addresses, so that customer concerns can be logged directly. Oh, and
how long these individuals have been assigned to the company should be
provided, as an excessive amount of time can be an indicator of the
aforesaid “cozy relationship.” The FAA has actively resisted the notion
of transferring POIs and PMIs to other companies every three years.
- Whether or not the company participates in the FAA’s Air
Transport Oversight System (ATOS), the number of FAA inspectors
assigned to ATOS teams (short staffing being a problem), and the number
of inspectors who possess licenses to fly the aircraft used by the
operator.
- Whether or not the company has established a Safety
Management System (SMS). The FAA recommends but does not require an
operator to implement SMS, but at those airlines where SMS is
practiced, safety improves and, amazingly, costs are reduced.
- Whether or not the company has an Aviation Safety Action
Program (ASAP), by which pilots and maintainers can report safety
problems. The ASAP program at American Airlines ceased recently,
apparently because of mistrust between pilots and management.
- Whether or not the company has a Flight Operations Quality
Assurance (FOQA) program for measuring and assessing deviations from
approved flying procedures.
- The oldest, youngest and average age of each type of
aircraft in the company’s fleet.
- Where the aircraft are maintained; that is, by the company,
or is maintenance outsourced, and to whom?
- By airplane model, the latest airworthiness directive from
the FAA, the latest service bulletin from the manufacturer, and when
these requirements or recommended practices must be implemented. If not
already incorporated, when action is scheduled to be taken.
- When each airplane was last overhauled, with comparable
information on each airplane’s engines (as they often are handled on a
separate schedule).
- Deployment on all airplanes of essential safety equipment,
to include TCAS (Traffic Alert Collision Avoidance System) and TAWS
(Terrain Avoidance Warning System), which airplanes do not have this
equipment fitted and when they are slated for it.
- The cabin air quality, to include airflow, ozone,
allergens, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, infectious agents and
humidity. The FAA has resisted efforts to measure and improve cabin air
quality for years, and its requirement for 10 cubic feet per minute of
fresh air is substantially less than that recommended for public
buildings by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air
Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE).
- Use of positive passenger-bag match (PPBM) on domestic as
well as international flights to tighten security and improve service.
PPBM yields fewer lost or misrouted bags.
To be sure, while airline and FAA officials are predictably fervent in
publicly declaring their commitment to safety, there is a reluctance to
make the safety record available to the flying public. Yet some
overseas carriers provide relevant safety-related information on their
public websites. Japan Airlines, for example, publishes (1) the
corporate safety policy, (2) information on selection and training of
flight crews, (3) information on maintenance activities, (4) on board
technology to enhance safety, such as predictive wind shear systems,
(5) cabin safety and emergency procedures, and (6) statistical
information on operations. This section includes not only the on-time
performance of the airline, but also information regarding major flight
irregularities, such as precautionary landings.
It is also within the state-of-the-art to generate a useful safety
index or score. In fact, the UK-based FlightSafe Consultants Ltd. has
produced a safety index based on a carrier’s past accident record and
ten other factors related to underlying safety levels. These indices
include fleet age, fleet composition (all newest-technology airplanes
to all oldest-technology), the quality of airline management, and so
forth. The FlightSafe calculation features a safety multiplier, in
which a heavier penalty is applied as the accident rate per 100,000
landings increases. For example, a rate of 1 accident per 100,000
landings carries a multiplier of 0.80, and a multiplier of 0.40 is
applied to a rate of 9 accidents per 100,000 landings.
As part of the calculations, fatal accidents carry double the weight of
minor accidents. An airline can score between 10 (a perfect safety
record) and 0 (which applies automatically to those carriers with 25 or
more accidents per 100,000 landings).
It is suspected carriers will not relish the FAA putting out
information such as that suggested here. But, then, imagine an FAA
website that carries real safety information, not just self-serving
rhetoric, which is the present situation.
The list of items could be pared. Like it is said, if you want a radio,
ask for a color television.
But based on a new government theme of transparency, relevant safety
information could – and should – be provided in the public interest.
