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Jet Crashes Underscore Gap in Safety Practices Poorer Airlines' Shortcuts Prove Deadly

Posted on: Friday, 26 August 2005, 12:00 CDT

The five civil airline crashes of recent weeks, including the crash Tuesday in Peru that killed as many as 37 people, have made August the world's deadliest month for plane disasters in more than three years.

But the cluster of accidents, with their total death toll of more than 320, does not mean that it has suddenly become a lot more dangerous to fly, aviation experts say. When averaged with the long stretches of accident-free travel, they still form a larger picture of the relative safety of air travel.

In North America, the crash record is "the best it's ever been," said Anthony Broderick, an aviation consultant who for years was the top regulation official at the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.

But while no single thread appears to run through the five crashes in Canada, in Greece, off Sicily, in Venezuela and in Peru they underscore the gap between the safety practices common in wealthy countries like the United States and those in many other countries.

Commercial aviation in the United States has experienced an unusually long period of safety since the crash in the Queens section of New York of American Airlines Flight 587 on Nov. 12, 2001. All 260 people on the Airbus A300 died.

U.S. airlines' insurance rates, which more than doubled after 2001, have since fallen by 10 percent to 15 percent a year, said Gavin Souter, managing editor of Business Insurance, a Chicago- based journal.

The recent crashes, he said, were "not having an impact even the crash in Peru doesn't seem like it's going to make any difference." Investigations of these accidents will continue for months. Causes remain a matter of speculation.

Nonetheless, it appears that some airlines, particularly in poorer countries, may still be taking shortcuts with equipment, maintenance, quality control or training the sort of shortcuts that, when things go badly wrong, can be exceedingly dangerous.

Investigators in the crashes in Venezuela and off Sicily are examining the purity of fuel used. The two planes lost the use of both engines a most uncommon occurrence except when fuel is a problem. Lack of wind-shear-warning equipment may be an issue in the Canadian and Peruvian crashes.

Disaster can strike even when a first world airline is landing top-of-the-line equipment with proper air traffic control at a major airport in a rich country as happened Aug. 2 in Toronto. Startlingly, all 309 people aboard walked away from the crash of an Air France Airbus A340.

Evidence indicates that a sudden blast of downward air hit the airport as the plane was landing in a fierce storm. Pilots also set the plane down well past the normal touchdown area, for unclear reasons; it skidded into a ravine, catching fire.

There were suggestions Wednesday that the Peruvian airliner that crashed on a flight from Lima to Pucallpa might have encountered similar downdrafts.

TANS Peru Flight 204 crashed in a marsh after an emergency landing during a torrential hailstorm, killing at least 37 people, The Associated Press reported. At least 58 people escaped the burning wreckage of the Boeing 737.

Wind shear might have affected the emergency landing, said Jorge Belevan, a TANS Peru spokesman.

Broderick, the former FAA official, said the series of crashes at least partly illustrated how a country's resources and political will can translate into safety, or the lack of it.

"People, equipment and procedures quality procedures all cost money," Broderick said. "But you also need the will to spend those resources." In North America, he said, even airlines in serious financial trouble appeared not to have trimmed their spending on safety, Broderick said. Governmental bodies similarly seemed to take safety seriously.

Canada now is going through a period of self-examination, he said, including its decision years ago not to install equipment to warn planes of dangerous wind shifts. About 110 U.S. airports have such equipment, which has saved many planes from danger. Wind-shear detectors are present at only some airports in Europe, including in Spain, though fierce North American-style storms are less common there. Aviation experts say disasters never have just one cause. Boeing once issued a publication called "The Long, Thin Chain." It held that most crashes would not have taken place had only one thing changed. This would appear to apply to the recent crashes.

In Canada, for example, it is possible that the crash would have been averted if the Toronto airport had a larger runway overrun area or aircraft arresters, which can stop planes that overshoot a runway.

Such devices are used at 14 U.S. airports, including John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, where a wide-body MD-11, a commuter plane, and a Boeing 747 have been successfully stopped after overruns. If Toronto controllers had had Doppler radar-type sensors to warn them of dangerous wind shifts, perhaps the Air France pilots would have decided not to land. If Canada required grooved runways, a standard practice in the United States that speeds the runoff of water, the plane's braking power might have been improved.

The other crashes raise their own questions.

Following the Aug. 6 crash off Sicily of an ATR-72 plane operated by Tuninter of Tunisia, in which 16 people died, investigators have been examining the plane's fuel supply, from the underground tanks at the oil field to the truck used to refuel the plane.

Seepage, broken pipes and condensation can leave water in such tanks, which workers, known as skimmers, routinely remove. Failure to do so could cause engine problems. Both of the ATR-72's engines went out.

Pilots of the West Caribbean charter plane that crashed in Venezuela on Aug. 16, killing 152, also radioed that both their engines had failed, again raising concerns about fuel purity and supply.

The Aug. 14 crash north of Athens of a Helios Airways Boeing 737 it lost cabin pressure, flew for hours, apparently after the pilots passed out, then ran out of gas is one of the more mysterious recent accidents. All 121 people on board died.

Investigators are studying earlier reports of equipment malfunctions on the airplane, including decompression through a door on a recent flight.

Source: International Herald Tribune

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