Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran an article on the dangers of in-flight fires. Boeing is mentioned.
Smoke, Fire Affect Over 1,000 Flights Each Year
By Andy Pasztor
Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Smoke and fire incidents occur more frequently aboard airliners than many passengers assume affecting more than 1,000 flights annually around the world and causing an average of one unscheduled landing a day in the U.S., according to an independent safety study.
Based partly on newly released, global data from the International Air Transport Association trade group, or IATA, the report highlights the potential dangers of such in-flight incidents, even as it emphasizes that the vast majority of them don’t pose an imminent safety hazard. But the study by John Cox – a retired US Airways Group captain and former top safety official with the largest international pilots union – proposes additional preventive measures in airplane design, maintenance and pilot training.
The recommendations call for further steps in an area that already has prompted increased activity by manufacturers, airlines and U.S. aviation regulators.
Using three years of data that the IATA gathered from 50 airlines, the study builds on a previous U.S. sample and projects that one in every 10,000 or so airline flights is likely to experience some type of in-flight incident.
“That’s certainly a larger number than most people would think, but the total includes everything from burnt toast to serious, life-threatening fires,” according to Richard Healing, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board who is familiar with the findings. “When pilots smell smoke of any kind,” Mr. Healing added, they’ve got to be out of their minds in they don’t try to land as quickly as possible.”
Although there have been two major passenger-plane crashes in North America caused by fire in the last 10 years, only a fraction of smoke incidents result in actual fires during the flight. An even smaller number prompt so-called diversions or unscheduled landings. Still, Mr. Cox said he projects that more than 600 precautionary landings occur each year world-wide, though only a portion show up in the voluntary data supplied to the IATA.
“I don’t think the average passenger realizes the risk of smoke or fire is quite as high” as the latest statistics indicate, Mr. Cox said in an interview before presenting his findings yesterday to an aviation-safety conference in Oklahoma City. The issue of how to prevent fires or control them if they do break out has lately “drifted closer to the top” of aviation-safety concerns, he said, because the industry has been successful in reducing other dangers, such as midair collisions and various mechanical failures.
A Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman said the findings are “very consistent with the FAA’s program of minimizing smoke and fire in aircraft.” “In line with some of the concerns raised in the report, the spokeswoman said FAA and industry officials some time ago began considering a more proactive approach to prevent fires.
Boeing Co., other plane manufacturers and industry-safety groups have long recognized the dangers of in-flight fires, and the FAA has spent years mandating stepped-up inspections and maintenance of wiring. Boeing’s safety department lists in-flight fires ass the seventh-leading cause of accidents world-wide since the mid-1980s. And finding new techniques to deal with fires, once they occur, hasn’t been a high on the priority list of industry-safety initiatives.
With roughly 100 miles of electrical wiring inside a large modern jetliners, industry and government officials have advocated finding and fixing damaged, loose and broken wires. Metal shavings and age can cause cuts or cracking of insulation, which is one of the reasons the FAA last fall issued a first-of-a-kind proposal for broad improvements in the design, installation and maintenance of electrical wiring. The latest study goes further by recommending use of more-sensitive circuit breakers designed to prevent currents from arcing, or jumping between wires, and potentially starting a blaze.
The report advocates installing advanced smoke detectors in aircraft cabins, locating thermal sensors near bundles of wiring routed behind the hard-to-access panels and installing inflatable smoke-hoods in cockpits to ensure that pilots can see their instruments in continuous heavy smoke. |
