Further action still needed
Metro Halifax
Robin Young


Anger is audible in Lyn Romano's voice as she explains that a decade after her husband was killed in the crash of Swissair Flight 111, she hasn't got over the pain.

"It doesn't matter, 10 years, 20 years, it's raw. It's very raw," she said in a phone interview from her Westchester, N.Y., home.

The crash of the McDonnell-Douglas MD-11 off the coast of Nova Scotia 10 years ago today resulted in a number of safety improvements in the aviation industry. But the Transportation and Safety Board of Canada – and the wife of Ray Romano, seat 19C – maintain it's not enough.

Romano used the Swissair settlement money from her husband's death to create the International Aviation Safety Association in March 1999. She has spent the better part of the last decade advocating for improved safety standards on board aircrafts.

In March 2003, the Transportation and Safety Board of Canada released a final report on the investigation into the crash that listed 23 recommendations for regulators of the industry.

Board representative Kathy Fox recently told the Air Line Pilot Association's air safety and security conference in Washington, D.C., that while progress has been made since the crash, "further action is still needed to mitigate the significant risks identified in 18 of the 23 recommendations."

Jonathan Seymour, a member of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, says only six of the recommendations have been rated "fully satisfactory."

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/488810