Just what is going on with airline safety these days? With the grounding of thousands of flights by American Airlines and a couple of hundred by other companies, is something basically wrong with US scheduled airplanes, or what? Well, yes, there is something wrong, but it is not the safety of our airline fleet. The cancelled flights of the past two weeks are due to a screw-up in the blame game between companies and the government, the airplanes themselves haven't been in any danger of crashing to the ground.
The problem is confined to the MD-80, built by the McDonnell Douglas people in Long Beach, California until Boeing acquired that company in 1997. They are old planes (first flown in 1980, originally as the DC-9, in fact) and no longer manufactured. At issue are a bunch of wires in the landing gear wheel well area, wrapped in plastic and then held together with plastic ties at intervals of several inches. The problem is that with wear and tear, the ties began to work loose and the bundles of wires to sag, leading to the possibility of an electrical fire. The FAA wants the bundles to have ties at intervals of just one inch. Airlines have neglected their maintenance work, trying to save money, and put off checking the wiring too long. The Federal Aviation Administration, for too long an ally of the airlines instead of a regulator, also put off doing the inspections properly, especially during the past seven years. It's this peculiar lazy company and indifferent government relationship that's wrong.
Then the FAA woke up, probably as a result of Congressional prodding in the past months, fined Southwest Airlines over $10 million for flying around with cracks in their Boeing 737 fuselages for nine months back in 2006 and 2007, and started looking at other things, including the bundled wires on the MD-80s. American Airlines said "this is not a safety of flight issue because the wire bundle is secure. It is a matter of how the work was done, not whether aircraft were protected from the threat of wire exposure and chafing that could cause fire." To avoid more fines, American and a few other airlines (Alaska, Delta and Southwest) began to get those inspections done, pronto. And so they had to inconvenience a couple hundred thousand passengers? Better that than paying a big fine, they figured.
American Airlines apologized to its regular flyers on Saturday, April 12th, saying it expected things to be back to normal by Monday, April 14th.
Yet The Airplane is a Safe Place to Be
We keep hearing about how safe our airlines and their planes are here in the USA, and it's true, of course. Since the 1950s, the number of scheduled airplane departures is up over three times, and the number of fatalities is down over five times, despite our using outmoded air traffic control systems that essentially date 50 years back. I recall flying Air Calypso in the Caribbean some years ago, and though I didn't worry about it then, I would now that I know more about maintenance problems and pilot error. But that said, if we're so secure, why even bother to consider an airline's safety record?
Maybe it's not so essential here in the USA, where we have 36 airlines that haven't had a fatal accident since 1970 or the date of their founding, for those that weren't around in 1970. Among those 36 are such well-known carriers as Aloha (recently out of business), Frontier (just filed for bankruptcy), Hawaiian, JetBlue, Midway and Southwest. The figures show that there are less than 0.5 fatalities per scheduled million departures here, which means, I guess, less than one fatality per two million takeoffs. (The comparable figures for automobile fatalities are 16.96 fatalities per 100,000 registered vehicles, or 42,642 road deaths in 2006, last date I found figures for.)
And flying in Europe is safe, too, with 68 airlines there not having had a fatal accident in the same period mentioned. Included are such famed companies as Aer Lingus, Austrian Airlines, Finnair and Virgin Atlantic.
There are 31 airlines in Asia and Australia that have perfect safety records (so far as lack of fatal incidents is concerned), including Eva (Taiwan), Hainan (China), Japan Air Systems (not JAL) and Qantas (Australia).
Of course, the more flights you make, the more likely an accident is to occur, which is why you don't see the really big names such as American Airlines, British Airways, Continental, Delta, Northwest and United Airlines, for instance. But with at least 2,092 airlines in the world, it's nice to know there are 135 with no fatal accidents since 1970. All these figures come from a fine website, www.airsafe.com, which is quick to say, as I do, that these figures are not carved in stone, it being so hard to find this kind of information, even, perhaps especially, from governments.
Of the 2,092 airlines, by the way, some 235 are big enough to be members of IATA (International Air Transport Association), the official UN organization intended to regulate the world's air transportation systems. Of those members, only 190 have passed the safety audit of IATA itself, which gives some thought to many observers. (Some all-domestic airlines, such as Southwest, are not even members of IATA.) To clarify those 2,092 airlines (in 2006), IATA tells me there are 984 flying western-built jet aircraft, and the larger figure includes western- and eastern-built jets and turboprops, including operations down to commuter airlines but excluding air taxis. IATA points out that its 235 members carry about 94% of the world's international scheduled traffic.
Types of Planes
According to Air Safe, as of the end of 2006, the safest of Airbus equipment is the 330 or 340, while the Airbus 310 has the most accidents of that genre. The retired Concorde had the highest rate of fatal accidents per model, perhaps since it made such few flights and its one fatal accident threw the percentages way up. The safest Boeing aircraft appears to be the 777, with no fatal accidents but an apparent engine failure causing a crash landing at London in January of this year.
The Brazilian-made Embraer Bandeirante has a high fatal accident quotient. The statistics for the Italian-made ATR, which is perhaps my least favourite plane still in production, give it a fair rating, similar to that for the Boeing 737 and 757. (On the American Eagle route from Miami to Key West using the ATR, the recorded flight announcements say that "if oxygen is required, the flight attendant will administer it," which on questioning an attendant I found to mean that he or she comes around with a bottle of oxygen and a mask for you, one passenger at a time.)
Boeing ratings on www.airsafe.com range from zero (the best, for the old 717 and newer 777) to 0.79 for the 747, with an average for the 11 models of 0.406. As to Airbus, its ratings range from zero (models 330 and 340) to 0.58 (the 300), with an average for its 5 models of 0.412, meaning that Boeing is a tiny bit safer, statistically, than Airbus, according to these figures.
Don't Fly These Airlines
The European Union, since 2005, has kept a list of banned airlines that are not allowed in European air space. Of the original 92, 87 were from central, western and southern Africa, including all 51 airlines of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, all 13 airlines of Equatorial Africa, all 13 airlines of Sierra Leone, all six from Swaziland and all four from Liberia. The only airlines on the banned list from outside Africa include North Korea's Air Koryo, Thailand's Phuket Airlines, Afghan Ariana Airlines, two from Kazakhstan, two from Kyrgyzstan and one from the Comoros. In 2007, the EU added all 51 of Indonesia's airlines to the list, and some from Russia, Ukraine (Volare Air) and Angola. Moldova on its own banned eight of its airlines. Cubana has a poor reputation, too.
Happily, the better African airlines, such as Kenya Airways, Royal Air Maroc, Egyptair and South African Airways are not on the banned list and have relatively good safety reputations.
IATA records Africa as having the highest number of airplanes lost per million sectors flown, the rate being 4.09 in 2007. By way of contrast, the North American rate was 0.09, European rate 0.29 and Asia & Pacific 2.76. Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, surprisingly, had the best score - a zero rating - meaning no loss of aircraft that year.
Sources
In addition to AirSafe, you can find information of sorts on these websites:
The Flight Safety Foundation website is www.flightsafety.org. Based in Alexandria VA, it says it is "often referred to as the conscience of the industry." It also publishes lists of occurrences on the Aviation Safety Network, website www.aviation-safety.net. The phone is 703/739-6700.
The official site of the US government's Federal Aviation Administration is www.faa.gov, where they have an Accident & Incident report that is always up to date.
Information on specific accidents can be found at the site of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), at www.ntsb.gov.
The website for the International Air Transport Association (IATA) is www.iata.org.
Airline Safety Records can be found at www.airline-safety-records.com, which is related to Air Safe.
Air Transport Association, www.airlines.org. This lobbying group represents most of the scheduled airlines in the USA and is based in Washington DC.
A very opinionated site on air safety is www.airlinesafety.com, which appears to doubt almost every authority there is. Its editor is a former United Airlines pilot.
Note: This information was accurate when it was published, but can change without notice. Please be sure to confirm all rates and details directly with the companies in question before planning your trip.
Source: Robert Haru Fisher, for Frommers.com
April 24, 2008