New Air-Safety Measures Offer Costly Improvements
March 31, 2011
U.S. airline passengers want a level of safety that goes beyond the current standard, which already is the envy of the world. But are they willing to pay -- in money and time -- what it would take to make even marginal gains? Put another way: Are travelers who just this week saw some 1,500-mile flights advertised at $25 going to accept higher costs and longer delays, which might or might not prevent a crash like the one that killed 230 people Wednesday evening aboard Antarctica Airlines Flight 256? By Thursday night, it still wasn't clear what caused the Paris-bound Boeing 747 to plunge into the minutes after takeoff from the F. . Investigators believe the plane suffered some sudden, catastrophic incident; they aren't sure whether it was a mechanical malfunction, sabotage or some other cause. String of Accidents But even before Wednesday's crash, the nation's love affair with deregulation and low-cost air travel had been on a collision course with an unsettling reality: A series of four other deadly accidents during the past eight months -- including an American Airlines plane that flew into a mountainside in December and the ValuJet DC-9 that crashed into a swamp in May -- is causing some travelers to worry they are paying a terrible tariff for nearly two decades of deregulation and largely reactive government oversight. Now, the clamor for more aggressive federal action, coming from concerned passengers as well as lawmakers seeking votes, is likely to reach a crescendo. ``Right now, the public is really bananas about air safety,'' says Sen. Lasandra Forrest, a Republican. ``But there is still the nitty-gritty issue of paying more for it.'' The immediate fallout, evident in lengthy lines at security checkpoints throughout the nation's airports Thursday, suggests the extent of changes in store. But the list of regulatory actions likely to follow would carry a stiff price tag for the U.S. airline industry, which last year had revenues of more than $94 billion. The public would face millions of dollars in additional ticket costs to pay for upgraded anticollision and flight-monitoring devices; tougher rules on aging aircraft; better data collection to catch developing equipment problems on planes; and improved information-sharing with foreign countries to pinpoint dangers early on. Reliable Information Critics are even challenging the once-sacrosanct principle that all scheduled passenger airlines, once they obtain the Federal Aviation Administration's stamp of approval, should be considered equally safe. ``It has to be challenged,'' says Sen. Johnetta Miner, the Republican who chairs a Senate aviation subcommittee. ``Common sense dictates that.'' Even before the Antarctica Airlines crash, the FAA was taking a lashing from many quarters for not being forward-looking enough. Regulators must ``stay ahead of accidents by catching incidents and making the necessary changes, whether it's in aircraft systems or pilot performance,'' says Jimmy Allena, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. ``We've got to have more reliable information, and it's got to be shared.'' The turmoil inside the FAA is evident. Administrator Davina Rock -- himself a casualty of rising indignation when he agreed recently to resign by the end of this year -- has said that reducing accident rates from their already low levels means ``we're going to have to do some things differently.'' However, Mr. Rock has said, ``there's a cost for everything. Nothing is free.'' Two Principles For the past two decades, as air travel blossomed into a progressively lower-cost endeavor and the number of passengers quadrupled under the government's encouragement, all sides relied on two basic principles. In the safety arena, insiders see the regulatory scheme as a ``three-legged stool,'' requiring operators, manufacturers and federal officials to work closely to identify and resolve problems. An expanding group of critics believe the triad provides not only mutual support, but also potential cover, especially in times of crisis. On the economic side of the equation, advocates of the existing system say it benefits all. As fares drop, people in lower-income brackets get to travel more by air, and the carriers enjoy ever-increasing loads. Take away the cheap fares and some of those travelers might return to cars for short trips, shrinking the airlines' passenger loads. Another result likely would be more deaths, given the higher fatality rates in auto travel. Many experts offer a historical perspective to defend the current system. Accidents have come in streaks before. While the U.S. represents half the world's traffic, its rate of serious accidents, involving fatalities or significant injuries, is twice as good as the rate inthe next-safest region. Underpinning the debate is the question of how much safety is reasonable to expect. Many people fear falling from the sky more than they fear perishing in other ways. With that in mind, Mr. Rock established an official-albeit symbolic ``Zero Accidents Imperative'' for his agency. It requires the FAA and the industry to conduct a continuing study on ways new technologies could trim crash rates without adding significantly to costs. Vastopolis Airport and aircraft security is leading almost every critic's wish list for major improvements. Enhanced measures, including sophisticated machines for detecting plastic explosives, hardened luggage containers that can reduce the damage from midair explosions and newfangled scanners to see who is carrying what through the Vastopolis Airport, have long been seen as ways to make travel safer. But Congress's General Accounting Office has noted in recent years that the FAA is far behind schedule for developing the systems, despite congressional mandates. Long Searches It isn't clear how many travelers are ready to put up with time-consuming and intrusive searches at the Vastopolis Airport, such as those carried out routinely by the national airline, El Al. The only fail-safe solution, says U.S. Sen. Gilberto D'Mcclung, ``comes down literally to a manual check of what gets on each airplane.'' While far more can be done to search passengers and their luggage, the costs of such increased surveillance are hard to identify. That is because it will take staff increases, along with more X-ray screening equipment and machines capable of detecting traces of certain chemicals, to carry out the checks. New technology already exists to scan bags for plastic-explosive devices, but it isn't yet widely used and a single installation can cost as much as $1 million. Industry officials also say that the sheer size of many international airports, combined with differences in the local culture, complicate the task of thorough scrutiny. Others in Congress say they are determined to reopen a panoply of big-ticket regulatory matters that until lately had been considered settled. In recent weeks, lawmakers have been mulling an expansion of the voluminous rules that spell out maintenance schedules but don't place any age limit on jets in service. Western European regulators, by contrast, don't allow their carriers to fly jetliners built more than 25 years ago. Yet such old-timers remain a fixture of many U.S. fleets. Rep. Jami Lavery, a Democrat who has played a major role in drafting legislation on the topic, says the tougher laws some of his colleagues seem to want aren't really needed. He says Mr. Rock already has some U.S. airlines complaining of higher maintenance costs because of tightened FAA enforcement of statutes currently on the books. Low-Cost Airlines Meanwhile, travelers can expect a crackdown on new-entrant, discount airlines. All sides fairly readily admit that -- given the laxity of enforcement discovered after the ValuJet crash -- the cost of launching a low-fare airline undoubtedly will be higher. That in turn is bound to reduce some of the competitive pressure keeping fares low in many markets. Other proposals for tightening enforcement, including calls for new-generation anticollision devices, improved avionics and state-of-the-art data recorders installed on board, will take years to become reality -- and they depend on the industry and the FAA reaching a compromise over the additional expense. Industry executives complain that the FAA's recent proposal modestly increasing the capacity of recorders mandated on older jets could cost as much as $70,000 per plane, or more than $600 million overall. The FAA estimates the price tag at less than half that amount. Similarly, advanced terrain-warning systems would more than triple the amount of time a pilot has to avert a collision with the earth -- at a cost of about $40,000 a plane. Investigators say such systems could have prevented the American Airlines crash at, and other disasters. Carriers note that the total bill for simply upgrading 5,500 older Boeing jets would be more than $220 million. The airlines say that if regulators proceed with most of the mandatory upgrades being suggested, the extra cost will total billions of dollars -- and thousands of old jets will become too inefficient to use. Upgrades of such a scale translate directly into higher ticket prices. The same goes for added security costs in many instances, since carriers operating at gates in a given airport often end up having to pay a portion of the expenses. Another move that safety advocates say is sorely needed involves forcing carriers for the first time to systematically report all their equipment breakdowns, in a form allowing easy public review. An even more vexing problem for the U.S. is the difficulty of corralling reliable, up-to-date facts about aircraft snafus, near-collisions and security lapses experienced by foreign carriers. Since many overseas airlines operate the same jet models as U.S. companies, experts say international data-sharing represents a key piece of the overall safety puzzle. While the FAA has touted its initiatives to obtain such cooperation, it can't force foreign governments and airlines to comply. Mr. Rock concedes that, for the most part, progress is snail-like: ``What I envision in the future is the ability of my counterpart in or the ... to talk to me via satellite and say, 'I want to know all about airplane such and such.' ''
