Here is an article from this week's Air Safety Week. I'm surprised that though they mention swissair there is no mention of what I think is the most sinister thing of all, the IFEN and the way it was wired into the now defunct airline's MD-11 aircraft. Notice this article says the Final Report will be released in March. As an update, the initial request for the draft report was rejected but Mark and I continue to pursue this information. I will keep you updated as I can.

2002: An Average Year Where Sinister Safety Trends May Yet Surface

By John Sampson
This past year was an average one for accidents and incidents despite the drop-off in air-travel caused by the global economic downturn and the continuing expectation of terrorist reprisals both in the air and against tourists abroad.

There is also evidence that undue delay and the degree of petty officiousness being unnecessarily exercised by overzealous security staff is whittling down the passenger numbers and vexing aircrews.

Crews are also now more anxious than ever before about job security and seem to be in no position to unionize or stand up to great expectations by their employers. Whether or not the current crop of bankruptcies and airline turbulence is being reflected in the safety statistics will not become evident until next year. Chronic pilot fatigue continues to be a silent killer that cannot be found by autopsy or toxicology (as may be the case in the Oct. 25, 2002 air charter crash that killed Sen. Paul Wellstone).

Major accidents of concern include the May 25, 2001, structural failure of an aging China Airlines 747 that had a breakup starting in the vicinity of an old tail-bounce repair (with that repair modality now not being acceptable). In the United States, two aging fire-service aircraft lost their wings and the investigations disclosed that essentially no one had been responsible for their fundamental airworthiness (see ASW, Dec. 9, 2002). Two earlier cases were the subject of National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) hearings in 2002. One concerned the Nov. 12, 2001, American Airlines [AMR] Flight 587 crash of an A300-600 (after vertical stabilizer loss) and the other concerned the Jan. 31, 2000, loss of Alaska Airlines [ALK] Flight 261, involving separation of the stabilizer (see ASW, Nov. 25, 2002, and Dec. 16, 2002). These two cases indicate that airworthiness standards for redundancy, reliability and structural strength are overdue for re-examination. This is a separate task to the recently released initiative for in-service inspection of aging aircraft (see ASW, Dec. 16, 2002).

Technology-driven safety
In Europe, with the skies becoming ever more crowded as deregulation became a catch-cry and reduced vertical separation minimums (RVSM) was imposed, two large aircraft collided at an airways intersection. It was due to deficient ATC (air traffic control) and some muddled perceptions about the priority that must be afforded to TCAS (traffic alerting and collision avoidance system) Resolution Alerts (which are the onboard "last chance" alarms and emergency survival instructions provided to aircrews once ATC has failed to separate them).

Although great progress has been made in reducing aircraft collisions with terrain, these controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) accidents are continuing to happen. Non- precision runway approaches and night/bad weather circling approaches (to other runways) continue to claim both large aircraft and small commuters. It is always a surprise to find that a significantly eminent operator has not yet gotten around to fitting the life-saving forward-looking terrain avoidance warning systems (TAWS). Unlike TCAS, forward-looking TAWS is still an option only, at least for the existing fleet. While new aircraft with a takeoff weight greater than 33,000 pounds or a seating capacity of more than 30 passengers must come from the factory with TAWS as of January 2001, existing aircraft are not required to be retrofitted with this technology until January 2005, according to JAR-OPS 1.665.

Experience-driven safety
By inspection, pilot error remains the greatest single cause factor for accidents. Pilot selection and training are thought to be fundamental to this continuing trend - as is the dwindling pool of ex military pilots. Nationalization of cockpits is displacing expatriate experience in many foreign airlines and the "cockpit gradient" is still appearing as a degrader of good CRM (crew resource management). In plain English that means that if a poor relationship between captain and copilot exists due to a martinet approach to captaincy (or a subservient approach to copiloting) the crew can become a "one-man band" with very little safety back up.

Western airlines properly expect their captains to be immediately answerable to first and second officers for all their operational decisions and captains generally endorse that because they recognize their own fallibility. That situation is not easily reproduced in an Asian or African cockpit - because it is not culturally normative. It's also worth mentioning that although many pilots make it to the top of their profession by having a high stanine score (suitability), pilot selection, training and proficiency practices vary widely across the globe. The standards remain high in the pre-eminent airlines, although training and type endorsement has supposedly supplanted experience as the final arbiter of suitability, particularly in Europe. "Elsewhere" it is obvious that lower aircrew standards can have a direct effect upon those pilot error statistics. For the passenger, these intangibles may have no apparent relevance (short of that final impact). However, for some airlines survival will be contingent upon their reducing the crew salary bill. Some airlines will negotiate a pragmatic outcome, but others (who can) will simply cull. Inflexible high-cost individuals will exit stage right but they also will be taking their acumen away from the worldwide experience pool.

Aircrews worldwide watched Cathay Pacific management sack 51 senior pilots without giving cause and then later saw two of these unfortunates reinstated because of clerical error (wrong names, wrong listings). The 49 remaining "out in the cold" are without any hope of reinstatement as the China-backed management imposes its will unopposed upon the pilot body. This "tearing-up" of contracts has had a negatively cathartic effect upon morale at Cathay and has indicated to pilots worldwide the potential weakness of their fraternal unions and international organs. An IFALPA (International Federation of Air Line Pilots Associations) ban upon taking up employment with Cathay has been widely disregarded, further frustrating the old school of pilots who had hitherto always seen their hard-earned seniority and their negotiated contracts as sacrosanct. A last ditch approach to the European Court of Human Rights is not expected to overawe the Cathay cadre. Chinese courts do not require employers to give cause or to honor employment contracts.

Ground accidents have covered the wide vista between expensive ramp-rash, maintenance error, lost (unfastened) panels and cowls, near-collisions due to runway incursions and an expensive (for a ramp-rash incident) Nov. 29, 2002, nose-to-tail-ender at Heathrow between two towed British Airways aircraft (nose of B747 struck tail section of B777). Added to the airport hazard has been the novel variation of two crews taking off on the wrong (closed) runway (in one case a critically shorter taxiway), an Air Nippon crew being stopped from doing so, and another B737 crew landing on a taxiway at Goa. Despite enhanced airport security, dead stowaways (mostly) are still dropping from airliner wheel wells at gear extension (or their bodies are being found after landing).

The high health hazard areas for tourists remain the back-blocks of aviation development (Africa in particular). Countries with challenging characteristics (Papua New Guinea, West Papua, Nepal, Indonesia, etc.) continue to claim tourist lives as old equipment and optimistic crews engage the elements and defy the terrain.

By far the most common (daily) incident is the continuing occurrence of onboard fumes, smoke or fire. The May 13, 2002, Air Canada Flight 117 B767 cargo fire had a recent sequel Dec. 20, 2002 involving another Air Canada B767 and draws attention to the fact that fires can smolder on despite Halon suppression (see ASW, June 10). The fire threat, and the distinct possibility of hull penetration, has not been factored into the recent study on extended range operations (ETOPS, see ASW, Dec. 23, 2002).

Some accidents, such as that of the Nov. 6, 2002 Luxair F-50 are suspected to be related to long standing uncorrected design deficiencies (turboprop Fokkers have long had cautionary airworthiness directives - ADs - about the possibility of inadvertently selecting ground fine pitch while airborne. Inadvertent engagement can be caused by the circuit breaker popping or by a pilot selecting idle too enthusiastically).

Data-driven safety
Last but not least, many airline accidents continue to demonstrate the deficiencies of cockpit voice and flight data recording equipment (CVR/FDR) and give weight to the call in some quarters for close circuit television (CCTV) - internal and external - to help resolve accident causes earlier (see ASW, April 17, 2000). Readers will recall that Swiss continues predecessor Swissair's effort to install CCTV coverage of inaccessible areas of its MD-11 aircraft, one of which - Flight 111 - was downed by an uncontrolled in-flight fire in 1998 (see ASW, July 30, 2001). Looking forward, the Flight 111 crash report is expected to be released by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada in March.

Byline: Mr. Sampson, an experienced military and civil pilot, is director of aircraft engineering and technical operations with the International Aviation Safety Association (IASA). He prepares the weekly accident and incident table for this publication. Sampson, e-mail safety@iasa- intl.com

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