Airline safety costs a) billions or b) pennies

YOU hear it all the time at airline industry meetings: "If you think safety
is expensive, try an accident."

Still, how one views the relative cost of airline safety greatly depends on
how that cost is calculated. Too often, it's determined through negotiations
between the industry and the agency responsible for ordering improvements,
the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA usually assesses the total cost
to the industry of a particular safety initiative. The resulting figures
typically run into the millions or even billions of dollars -- a sure way to
delay action.

I've observed air safety talks for 10 years, and I think it's time to change
the current cost-benefit approach; namely, discussing improvement costs
in
terms of the price per ticket, rather than overall cost. Instead, there's a
kind of paralysis.Known safety deficiencies persist for years, unnecessarily
increasing the risk to crews and passengers. This is precisely the case
regarding three major threats to safe flight: smoke, fire and explosion. The
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which investigates all major
accidents in the United States, has recommended action in all three areas.

Another example: Last month, U.S. carriers reported six flights with smoke
in the cabin or cockpit, all of which made emergency landings. After the
1996 crash of ValuJet Flight 592 into the Everglades, the NTSB had urged the
FAA to evaluate emergency vision equipment that would enable pilots to see
their instruments and out the windscreen even in a smoke-filled cockpit. The
FAA still hasn't responded with regulatory action.

Now consider the cargo holds in smaller jets, such as the popular Boeing 737
and DC-9. For years, these holds weren't required to have an active means of
detecting smoke or fire or of spraying a fire-suppressing chemical. Cheaper
fire liners were installed instead. Airlines and manufacturers argued that,
at a cost of more than $300 million to equip all jets in service, fire
protection equipment was too expensive.

Then the ValuJet DC-9 crashed because of a raging fire in its belly hold,
killing all 110 aboard. Using the FAA's standard $2.8 million statistical
value of a life, this one accident cost more than $300 million, excluding
the cost of the plane. Afterward, the FAA ordered fleetwide installation of
fire protection equipment. The job was done in three years -- at a cost that
was less than expected.

The ValuJet crash shows the folly of waiting for an accident to justify
action. U.S. airlines racked up 52 accidents in 2003, an average of one per
week, according to NTSB statistics published March 22. Two of those
accidents resulted in 22 deaths. To be sure, more people were killed on U.S.
carriers in 1996 (342). But with an airline industry still hobbling after
9/11, the 2003 accident rate is the highest posted by the NTSB since 1984:
about one accident for every 200,000 departures, or one for every 320,000
flying hours, on average.

Now let's consider the cost per ticket of addressing some of the major
threats posed by smoke, fire and explosion.

Blinding smoke: In-flight fires have led to catastrophic crashes because
pilots simply couldn't see through the smoke. In a March 15 letter to the
FAA, Nick Lacey, former FAA director of flight standards, warned about the
danger of fire during a transoceanic flight, which might be hours from the
nearest airport. I've seen too many post-crash reports that read, "Cockpit
voice recorder indicates crew unable to see instruments due to smoke."


In 1993 the crew of a Swissair jet with smoke in the cockpit resorted to
flapping an emergency checklist booklet back and forth to see their
instruments. Unable to see anything outside the airplane during landing, the
captain came to a screeching halt on a Munich runway, averting disaster.
German investigators later recommended using an "inflatable view channel
between the crew, their instruments and the cockpit windows."

Indeed, this inflatable channel has been deployed as emergency equipment on
hundreds of corporate and military aircraft worldwide. And, most telling of
all, the FAA has committed to installing such equipment on its own dozens of
aircraft but hasn't ordered that airlines do the same. The equipment would
cost 2 or 3 cents per ticket, according to passenger advocacy groups.

Fire: A big challenge is fire in concealed spaces. Case in point: an
American Airlines DC-9, struck by lightning Nov. 29, 2000, while leaving
Washington's Reagan National Airport. The energy from the lightning bolt
entered the tail cone, traveled up wires above the overhead bins, arced in
the forward area of the cabin and started a small fire between the cabin
sidewall panel and the plane's outer aluminum skin. A flight attendant
borrowed a penknife from a passenger, cut a hole through the wall and
inserted the nozzle of a portable extinguisher, dousing the fire while
pilots made an emergency landing at Dulles.

As a result of this and similar incidents, the NTSB has called for improved
in-flight firefighting capability in the cabin, the cockpit and inaccessible
spaces.

The Fast-Port apertures offered by a small New York firm were designed
specifically for aviation applications. Cost per ticket: less than 1 cent
for six placed strategically about the cabin.

Exploding fuel tanks: After a TWA disaster, the NTSB challenged the
industry's fuel system design practices. The chief designers of the fuel
tanks said repeatedly that they designed the electrical fuel systems to
minimize the number of heat sources that could ignite the vapors. NTSB
investigators rejected this reasoning, saying the hunt for ignition sources
clearly had failed and the explosive vapors would have to be eliminated.

The FAA convened a government-industry task force to assess technologies
that might solve the problem. Its 1998 report concluded that eliminating
explosive vapors could cost $5 billion to $35 billion over 10 years -- far
more than the $2 billion cost of future accidents absent the change.

Wrong answer. To its credit, the FAA convened a second task force, which in
2001 found that eliminating the vapors would cost $10 billion to $20 billion
over 16 years. The internal documents of this second look showed that the
panel had considered the cost on a per-passenger basis. Its conclusion?
About 25 cents per ticket. Last month, the FAA said it would require a
partial fix to the center fuel tank. It has yet to act on the wing tanks.

IN 1996, Victoria Cummock, a member of the White House Commission on
Aviation Safety and Security, proposed a $4 per ticket surcharge to fund all
safety and security initiatives then under consideration. Cummock lost her
husband in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Her proposed surcharge, which might have plugged some of the gaps in
aviation security that were exploited on Sept. 11, 2001, was not endorsed.

One can pay a little now or a whole lot later. At a few dollars per ticket,
safety is anything but expensive. And worth every penny.

By David Evans

(Editor of Air Safety Week, a newsletter for the aviation industry)