About 3 U.S. flights a day see smoke, fire event

By Gary Stoller, USA TODAY

Smoke or fire incidents occur on an average of at least three U.S. airline flights a day, according to a recently published estimate by a former senior official in the Federal Aviation Administration.

In-flight smoke and fires — mainly in inaccessible areas and compartments on airplanes — result in more than 350 unscheduled landings annually, estimates L. Nick Lacey, now an aviation industry consultant for the Morten Beyer & Agnew firm in Arlington, Va.

Lacey headed the FAA's flight standards office before he left the agency in 2001. He and a colleague studied the adequacy of smoke-elimination standards and procedures for EVASWorldwide, which sells emergency equipment to help pilots see through smoke.

More than one in 5,000 U.S. airline flights encounter smoke or fire, leading to at least one in 15,000 flights making an unscheduled landing, their report says.

Some aviation safety experts say Lacey's estimates, which he calls conservative, point out the need to develop plane fire codes and address electrical problems. Earlier this year, the National Transportation Safety Board said air crews need more training to fight in-flight fires and called on the FAA to study the feasibility of redesigning planes so fires behind interior panels would be easier to put out.

"The airlines are exempt from all state and local fire codes," says consumer safety advocate Paul Hudson, who is also a member of the FAA's rulemaking advisory committee. "We've requested over and over to plug this deficiency. Commercial airliners are the only major public spaces not required to have fire-detection and suppression equipment wherever a fire could break out."

In 1998, the FAA issued a rule requiring fire-detection and fire-suppression equipment in cargo compartments but not in other areas of a plane. The rule followed the deaths of 110 people aboard a smoke-filled ValuJet plane that crashed in the Everglades in 1996.

FAA spokesman Paul Takemoto says the FAA has conducted an extensive assessment of wiring safety on airplanes. As a result, it has developed plans to improve wiring maintenance and design and identify degraded wiring, which can cause electrical fires aboard airplanes, he says.

Lacey says his study's calculations are based on a 2000 study done by Jim Shaw, a safety expert for the Air Line Pilots Association. Shaw's study found that airlines filed 1,089 reports of smoke or fire on airplanes from Jan. 1, 1999, to Nov. 2, 1999, with the FAA.

More than half the incidents were "high-temperature" events, such as sparking, arcing or burning, and 82% were related to electrical systems or components, Shaw said.

Flight crews often did not know where the smoke or fire originated, he said.

For years, the FAA has looked at ways to improve the safety of electrical wiring. A short-circuit in wiring was the most likely cause of a fuel-tank explosion that killed all 230 people aboard a TWA jumbo jet in 1996, the NTSB says.

Wiring is also one of the suspects in the crash of a Swissair plane that killed all 229 aboard near Nova Scotia in September 1998. That accident remains under investigation by Canadian authorities.

"The airlines are exempt from all state and local fire codes," says consumer safety advocate Paul Hudson, who is also a member of the FAA's rulemaking advisory committee. "We've requested over and over to plug this deficiency. Commercial airliners are the only major public spaces not required to have fire-detection and suppression equipment wherever a fire could break out."

Unbelievable really what the airlines get away with, isn't it? They are exempt from fire codes yet they have their customers at an average of 30,000 ft above the ground when these fires break out. Simply makes no sense to me.

You know, it is really funny what the airlines, and aircraft manufacturers get away with. I found out, that on some planes, the entry and exit doors are as narrow as 26 inches. I work in the building supply industry, and where I live the building codes require you to have at least 32 inch doors in your house. (exterior doors) In a house where you have 4 people living, they have to be 32 inch, but in a plane where you may have 250 or more, the friggin doors are only 26 inches. Something's wrong here.

Beanspiller

Beanspiller and how about this? Lately I notice that the airlines are really jamming large numbers of passengers into smaller and smaller spaces and yet the regulators know that if an emergency evacuation were to take place, some may die because they couldn't get off the plane quickly enough. Places such as restaurants, nightclubs, hotels, etc., have public occupancy laws requiring a limited amount of people so that a safe evacuation can take place in the event of a fire. Why on God's earth would we exempt the airlines who are carrying large numbers of passengers at 30,000 ft. from common sense laws or codes that are enforced on the ground?

Just for information purposes, here are some links to the current regulatory requirements for the design of new, transport category aircraft:

FAR 25.803 ~ Emergency Evacuation

AC 25.803-1 ~ Emergency Evacuation Demonstrations

FAR 25.807 ~ Emergency Exits

FAR 25.809 ~ Emergency Exit Arrangement

FAR 25.810 ~ Emergency Egress Assist Means and Escape Routes

FAR 25.813 ~ Emergency Exit Access

Why on God's earth would we exempt the airlines who are carrying large numbers of passengers at 30,000 ft. from common sense laws or codes that are enforced on the ground?

For one simple reason......it's the oldest one on earth...money. The more passengers you can cram on one plane, the more the airline makes, and the more the government makes in tax revenues. IF you have, let's say 20 flights leaving a day with 100 people on each flight. That's 2000 people who have paid for a ticket, departure taxes etc. If we can get 50 more people on board, that's an extra 50 percent in gross sales. It's one of the oldest games in history. Human life, for monetary gain, and it's sickening.

Beanspiller

I'm afraid you are correct Beanspiller and unfortunately I believe that the passengers of Flight 111 were victims of exactly that- greed.

Now on the subject of overcrowding on airplanes here is an interesting interview with the author John Nance who mostly seems to defend the airline industry (he works for one) but also expresses concern about overcrowding and safe evacuation of an aircraft in the event of an emergency. Nance besides being an author is an aviation consultant for ABC's Good Morning America program. "Nance is also a licensed aerospace attorney and a full-time working airline captain for a major US carrier."

TBR: Additionally, you are recognized as an airplane safety advocate, and have appeared in both the electronic and print media as the "go-to guy" on this subject. What, in your opinion, is the major safety problem which the airline industry needs to address at this time?

JN: We're actually doing pretty well, but there are a few worrisome areas, all of them having to do with overcrowding in an attempt to make more money. First, the so-called "seat pitch" (the number of inches of leg room between the front of your coach seat and the back of the seat in front of you) has been reduced to the point of ridiculousness. Certainly from a passenger comfort point of view there is zero efficacy to a seat pitch so tight that a passenger of average size can't lean forward, and there should be equal outrage when the passenger ahead of you reclines and you end up with your nose practically on the top of his or her head. But there is a safety aspect here, too. In an emergency evacuation, the crammed-together seat rows in today's jetliners are a major impediment to getting people safely off the airplane in time. Has anyone tested this? No, because emergency evacuation demonstrations are carefully orchestrated exercises conducted during the FAA certification of new airliners before they enter service; and there are no requirements to go back and recheck just because an airline has tried to add ten more seat rows by reducing the "seat pitch." But there should be! Since safety may be affected, and since the airlines are taking a laissez-faire approach to moving the seats around; it's the responsibility of the FAA to make them prove that these sardine-can arrangements will not impede the ability to meet the original standards.

The rest of the interview can be found at:

http://www.bookreporter.com/authors/au-nance-john.asp