Airline Industry at Its Safest Since the
Dawn of the Jet Age
Flying on a Commercial Jetliner has never
been safer.
It will be four years on Tuesday since the last fatal crash
in the United States, a record unmatched since propeller planes gave way to the
jet age more than half a century ago. Globally, last year was the safest since
1945, with 23 deadly accidents and 475 fatalities, according to the Aviation
Safety Network, an accident researcher. That was less than half the 1,147
deaths, in 42 crashes, in 2000.
In the last five years, the death risk
for passengers in the United States has been one in 45 million flights,
according to Arnold Barnett, a professor of statistics at M.I.T. In other words,
flying has become so reliable that a traveler could fly every day for an average
of 123,000 years before being in a fatal crash, he said.
There are many
reasons for this remarkable development. Planes and engines have become more
reliable. Advanced navigation and warning technology has sharply reduced
once-common accidents like midair collisions or crashes into mountains in poor
visibility.
Regulators, pilots and airlines now share much more extensive
information about flying hazards, with the goal of preventing accidents rather
than just reacting to them. And when crashes do occur, passengers are now more
likely to survive.
"The lessons of accidents used to be written in blood,
where you had to have an accident, and you had to kill people to change
procedures, or policy, or training," said Deborah Hersman, the chairwoman of the
National Transportation Safety Board. "That's not the case anymore. We have a
much more proactive approach to safety."
The grounding of the Boeing 787
fleet last month illustrates this new era of caution. The last time a fleet was
grounded was 1979, after a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 crashed shortly after takeoff
at O'Hare Airport in Chicago, killing 273 people. The 787s, by contrast, were
grounded after two episodes involving smoke from batteries in which no one was
hurt and no planes were lost.
The last fatal accident involving a
commercial flight in the United States was Colgan Air Flight 3407, which crashed
near Buffalo, killing 50 people, on Feb. 12, 2009. The pilot's maneuver was the
opposite of what he should have done when ice formed on the
wings.
Perhaps even more noteworthy, there has not been an accident
involving a major domestic carrier since an American Airlines flight to the
Dominican Republic crashed after takeoff in Queens in November 2001, killing all
260 people on board.
But while flying is safer, it is still not
risk-free. Air traffic is set to grow in the next decade, and airports are more
congested. Near-misses on runways and taxiways have risen. And with two million
passengers in the United States boarding more than 30,000 flights every day,
maintaining that safety record will be a challenge.
The Colgan accident
also cast a troubling light on regional airlines, which hire young pilots, some
with little experience, at a fraction of the salaries at bigger carriers. Since
the crash, the Federal Aviation Administration has mandated longer resting
periods for pilots. But in the face of opposition from airlines, it is still
working on new rules for more extensive co-pilot training.
"It's
important not to define safety as the absence of accidents," said Chesley B.
Sullenberger III, the US Airways pilot who became a hero when he landed an
Airbus A320 in the Hudson River in January 2009 after both engines lost power.
All 155 aboard escaped.
"When we've been through a very safe period, it
is easy to think it's because we are doing everything right," he said. "But it
may be that we are doing some things right, but not everything. We can't
relax."
Not long ago, the industry's safety record was far bleaker. In
1985, more than 2,000 people died in dozens of crashes, including 520 when a
Boeing 747 crashed in Japan. A crash of a Delta Air Lines Lockheed TriStar
killed 134 in Dallas that year.
After another series of accidents in
1996, federal officials set a goal of cutting accident rates by 80 percent over
10 years. That year, 340 people died in just two crashes in the United States -
ValuJet Flight 592, a DC-9 that crashed in Florida, and TWA Flight 800, a Boeing
747 that blew up after its fuel tank exploded off Long Island.
Since
then, the F.A.A., airlines and pilot groups have stepped up efforts to share
safety concerns through a series of voluntary programs. Airlines agreed to
participate after obtaining assurances that the information would not be used to
discipline them.
An F.A.A. Web-based system, created in 2007, now
includes information from 44 carriers. The result is widely viewed as
successful, spawning an attitude that allows hazards to be identified before
accidents occur.
The F.A.A. and airlines now systematically study data
from flight recorders to analyze common problems, like finding the best angle of
approach and speed to land at airports with tricky wind
conditions.
Besides advances in navigation technology, today's airplanes
are equipped with systems that can detect severe turbulence or wind shear,
allowing pilots to avoid them altogether. Engines are also better built - when
one fails, pilots can still land safely.
"We have engineered out the
common causes of accidents," said Patrick Smith, a commercial pilot who writes a
blog called Ask the Pilot.
And because planes have better hull and seat
design, said Kevin Hiatt, the president of the Flight Safety Foundation,
"crashes are more survivable today than decades ago."
In August 2005, for
instance, an Air France flight to Toronto overshot the runway and burst into
flames, yet all 309 passengers and crew managed to escape.
Aviation
safety officials will also go to considerable lengths to learn what caused a
crash. Uncertainty is rarely tolerated, said Peter Goelz, a former managing
director at the National Transportation Safety Board.
After an Air France
jet crashed in the Atlantic in 2009 on its way from Brazil to Paris,
investigators spent nearly two years - and millions of dollars - looking for the
flight data recorder. "Aviation, in particular, abhors a vacuum," Mr. Goelz
said.
Mr. Smith said there was another reason for the safety record:
"Luck is always going to be a part of it."
The biggest battle still being
fought is over co-pilot training. The F.A.A. missed a Congressional deadline for
new rules requiring first officers to have at least 1,500 hours of flying, the
same as pilots, before being hired, instead of 250 hours today. The agency has
proposed a compromise of 750 hours for former military pilots and 1,000 hours
for pilots with an aviation college degree.
But the F.A.A.'s work has
been slowed by lobbying by the airlines, according to a recent report by the
Transportation Department's inspector general. Roger Cohen, president of the
Regional Airline Association, said the F.A.A. should not set arbitrary numbers.
"It's about quality training, not quantity," he said.
But Mr.
Sullenberger said: "Some in industry still are fighting so hard to weaken, to
delay or to kill an important safety initiative. The lessons of Colgan have not
been learned."
Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary, said that the
Colgan crash was his worst day in four years on the job, and that he had worked
closely with family members of victims to strengthen the pilot training rules.
Even though he plans to step down soon, he said, the F.A.A. is "going to
continue to work to get that over the finish line."
Safer Pilots Safer Skies
