The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Air Safety

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. More than a hundred people were killed yesterday when an American-operated cargo plane crashed in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. All but three victims -- the three crew members - were killed on the ground. The plane faltered seconds after takeoff and skidded in a ball of flame along the main avenue. Most of the dead were school children, caught on their playground.

It was the worst air crash in history involving people not actually on board the aircraft. There were two other air disasters in the past week: 95 people died in an Indian Airlines crash at Bombay Airport; 73 people were killed when a Cuban Airlines jet exploded off Barbados. Despite these recurrent disasters, statistics demonstrate that air travel is still safer than most other forms of transport, especially automobiles. But is air travel as safe as it could be? In particular, are the U.S. government agencies responsible for air safety doing their job? Two books just published bring searching attention to the subject: The Last Nine Minutes, by San Francisco journalist Moira Johnston, and Destination Disaster, by three reporters for the London Sunday Times. Both books concentrate on safety questions raised by the worst plane crash in history, when 346 people died in a Turkish Airlines DC-10 in France. Here is an excerpt from a documentary broadcast last year on PBS. The British reporter is Peter Williams.

PETER WILLIAMS: Orly Airport, Paris. At noon on March 3, 1974, Flight 509, a Turkish Airlines DC-10, was being loaded ready to fly to London Heath Row. It had on board 346 men, women and children -- 346 people at risk because of faults in the rear cargo door. The weather was fine and clear as the DC-10 climbed out of Paris. It reached a height of 12,500 feet. Nine minutes after takeoff, over the French village of San Patou...(sound of explosion)...the rear cargo door blew off. The rear section of the floor of the DC-10 collapsed into the cargo hold, and two rows of seats collapsed with it. Six seats and the six passengers sitting in them were sucked out through the hole in the side of the aircraft where the door should have been. The DC-10 nose-dived. The cables that operate the flying controls in the engine in the tail of the DC-10 run through the floor that separates the passengers from the cargo. Because the floor had collapsed the cables were cut or jammed and the aircraft was out of control.

The DC-10 was traveling at 475 miles per hour when it crashed. It cut a giant swath in the forest. There were no survivors. The awful question that hangs over the tragedy is this: Could, and should, the crash have been avoided? To begin to answer that question we must go back nearly two years to Detroit Airport in the United States. On June 12, 1972 an American Airlines DC-10 was preparing to fly to Buffalo, New York carrying 56 passengers and 11 crew. The DC 10 took off at 7:20 p.m. and climbed to 11,000 feet, urging to pass over Windsor, Ontario. Five minutes after takeoff the rear cargo door blew off. (Sound of explosion.) Part of the floor collapsed, taking with it a cocktail bar. Luckily, there were no passengers in that part of the plane. Luckily, some control cables remained intact. The crew had at least a chance to fight to regain control. 67 people had had a miraculous escape, and the warning about the vulnerability of the cargo door was there for all to see. How is it possible, then, that nearly two years later a similar failure could lead to a DC-10 crashing near Paris in France, killing 346 people in .the worst disaster in aviation history?

It was relatively simple for the investigators to find out what had gone wrong, and immediately they had done so McDonnell-Douglas came up with an idea to stop the same thing happening again. It was to insert a peephole here, about one inch in diameter, which the ground crewmen could look through to see whether the locking pins were in place -- to see, in fact, whether the door really was locked.

But how could they be sure that the one-inch peephole would be quickly built into every DC-10? In the United States the manufacturers or the government may set about this in three ways, each with a greater priority: a Service Bulletin, or SB, can be issued; or an Alert Service Bulletin, ASB; or an Airworthiness Directive -- an AD. A Service Bulletin, or SB, carries the least weight. An AD carries the force of law. It sets a rigid time limit for the change, or the plane is grounded; and the AD is made public through the media and foreign embassies, so that any country operating the aircraft will know that changes fundamental to safety are being made. An AD is issued by the Federal Aviation Administration -- the FAA -- who are responsible for air safety in the United States. John Schaeffer was head of the FAA at the time of the Windsor, Ontario accident.

JOHN SCHAEFFER: We knew what the problem was, we knew how to fix it, and we would have the fix accomplished in all airplanes by Friday evening, as I recall. And that`s an agreement; in other words, we agreed upon the work we would accomplish. Now, someone else has subsequently give the word "gentleman`s agreement."

WILLIAMS: What had happened was that John Schaeffer, head of the FAA in Washington, had spoken by telephone to Jackson McGowan of McDonnell-Douglas and they had decided not to issue an AD, an Airworthiness Directive. Instead, they agreed between them that the best course of action was to make it a Service Bulletin, that it was sufficient to leave it to the manufacturer to see the job was done rather than give the modification the force of law.

The United States Congress had since condemned the FAA`s conduct of the DC- 10 affair. Congress said, "The FAA showed a sluggishness that approaches an indifference to public safety. Congress said too much had been left to McDonnell-Douglas when modifications were obviously necessary. Even before the Windsor accident Douglas had received more than a hundred reports from airlines who had had trouble in closing the door, and in June 1972 a subcontractor had written the following memo: "It seems inevitable that in the 20 years ahead of us DC-10 cargo doors will come open, and I would expect this to usually result in the loss of the airplane."

Senator Vance Hartke was a member of the committee that investigated the FAA`s performance.

VANCE HARTKE: Basically the FAA is a public instrument -- a public agency - - which is supposed to make sure that those of us who fly will fly in safety. Unfortunately they have not put safety as their priority. Safety for them has been a matter of if it is convenient, and if it works in conjunction with the manufacturers and with the people running the airports and the local communities. They`ve put safety second; it should be first.

WILLIAMS: Are you saying that there is a perhaps unhealthy closeness between the industry itself and the FAA?

HARTKE: No question that it`s not alone unhealthy -- it`s unsafe.

MacNEIL: That film was a coproduction between Thames Television in London and WHET New York, in association with the London Sunday Times. One of the reporters for that newspaper who both worked on that documentary and is one of the three authors of the new book, Destination Disaster, is Bruce Page. Mr. Page, that Congressional committee ended its report by saying, "The FAA must cease viewing passenger safety and the economic health of the airlines as competing interests to be balanced." From your research, has that been corrected yet?

BRUCE PAGE: I don`t believe it has, no. And the shortest way of pointing that out is to say that we still do not know exactly what explanations McDonnell-Douglas gave to the FAA, if any, about how the aircraft that crashed in Paris went out with false documentation.

MacNEIL: Which false documentation?

PAGE: It carried documentation, or records were certainly produced at the McDonnell Douglas plant, suggesting that safety modifications had been made to that aircraft, and we now know they were not made. In our book we`ve pushed As far as we can, using some previously testimony extracted by lawyers, to try to find out how that happened at the McDonnell-Douglas plant; but I have to say we haven`t been able to get the whole truth of that. Whether the FAA got the whole truth or not we don`t know, but they have certainly not published it if they did.

MacNEIL: But that is still referring to the past. What about the present? Could the FAA fail now, as it apparently did then, to issue an Airworthiness Directive having the force of law in similar circumstances?

PAGE: Yes, indeed, because it always is an act of will by a government agency to do anything; and the only way that we can feel sure about the FAA acting correctly in the future is for them to show us that they`ve investigated their past thoroughly. And obviously they have to decide particular cases, they have to say, "Well, this time we should do something," or not do something. At the moment we have no reason to think, still, that they`re taking their job completely seriously.

MACNEIL: Is that because these competing interests are still pulling them two ways, between promoting -- you point this out in your book -- promoting the airline industry, its economic health, and regulating its safety?

PAGE: Yes. When the Administration was set up nobody thought there could be a conflict between those two objectives.

MaCNEIL: Thank you. We`ll come back. We asked the Federal Aviation Administration to send us a representative for this program, but unfortunately, because of an Air Conference in Denver, they were unable to. However, a gentleman who knows them well and has worked in the area of aviation safety for 23 years is with us -- Chuck Miller. For six years he served as Director of the Bureau of Aviation Safety for the National Safety Transportation Board, which studies accidents and makes safety recommendations to the FAA. He`s currently a safety engineering and management consultant to the aviation industry, and he`s in our Washington studio. Mr. Miller, is the FAA still dragging its feet in the safety area?

CHUCK MILLER: Yeah, on occasion I think, Robin, that`s true. I am a little concerned with something I heard a moment ago about this so-called "competition" between economics and safety. I`ve heard this; it concerns me because most of us who are in the profession of safety take the view that if you have competition it`s only in the short term. That is, you may save a few dollars in the next few months by taking a competition attitude but over the long run, as I think this DC-10 case shows, they`re not competing; you have to be safe to be economically sound.

MacNEIL: Can you give me an example of where the FAA is dragging its feet - - is there anything you know about at the moment that should be being corrected and is not?

MILLER: I`m not as close to it as I`d like these days, but I heard very recently that in the proposed work to strengthen the floor of the DC-10 it appears that -- and the figure $14 million came up that there`s been a one- year extension of the time that the manufacturers and the airlines can take to have this modification included in all wide-bodied jets. I`m personally not in possession of all the facts that led to this position, but it`s the kind of thing that I`m sure is going to cause a lot of questions.

MacNEIL: Well, not to put the question too simply, but I`m sure people would want to know -- does that mean that there is still some factor in the DC-10 which should be corrected, that same plane we just saw?

MILLER: I`m not sure this is the DC-10 we`re talking about.

MacNEIL: It`s another floor in another plane.

MILLER: Right.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Could I ask you this: should the two functions of the FAA -- its function to promote the American aviation industry, to help sell planes and keep it economically healthy -- be separated from its function of regulation and safety?

MILLER: I don`t think you can. I think it`s nice in theory, but you have to face real-world situations in terms of the health of an industry; but I do wish the FAA would adopt a philosophy that to be economically viable and progressive you have to be safe. And they seem to continually take this trade-off atmosphere, which I, for one, can`t support.

MacNEIL: Thank you. With Mr. Miller in Washington is Del Mott, who has worked as a flight attendant for ten years. She is currently the Director of Safety for the Association of Flight Attendants, rep resenting 20,000 flight attendants throughout the United States. The Association has been devoted to occupant safety aboard commercial aircraft for over a decade. Mrs. Mott, are there unsafe features of planes now flying which the FAA knows about and which are not being corrected?

DEL MOTT: Yes, Mr. MacNeil, there are. I think that a lot of people forget what the primary function of the flight attendant is aboard the aircraft, and that is of safety. We are required by the government to be aboard the airplane and our function is that of safety. However, there are some service amenities that we perform as per the carrier, and we find that our own environment is not protected, that the FAA has taken the responsibility for our health and safety according to the federal register in 1975. However, they have provided us with no regulations to govern our safety.

MaCNEIL: That means that if you, the flight attendants, are not yourselves safe, you won`t be in a position to help passengers in the event of an emergency.

MOTT: This is primarily it. The fact that we`re on board to provide leadership to the passengers, we`re trained, and the requirement for our training is set up by the Federal Aviation Agency; how ever, we`re not protected properly, either by the flight attendant seating and surrounding environment, the types of uniforms that we wear, the training that we`re provided -- recurrent refresher training is indeed lacking; passenger information briefing that we give aboard the aircraft just prior to departure is deficient -- we`ve tried many ways to upgrade this. To date, there are only a few areas -- at the present time the card on your right- hand side is primarily what you find aboard your aircraft. This is the important information card; again, passengers generally don`t read it. However, the information card that is on the left illustrates in a much better manner the safety aboard that aircraft, and this is a type that the airline or the FAA could require and that the airline could purchase, and it`s a lot more effective. Of course, I think that we also have to look into the fact that the passengers themselves, I think, should carry a better responsibility, they should listen to the announcements -- they don`t; they should read the important information card. Airline personnel, even though they may be familiar with the aircraft, they themselves should read important information cards and watch the demonstrations.

MacNEIL: But your point is that they are not encouraged or forced to do so by the interest of the manufacturers or the airlines or the FAA -- is that what you`re saying?

MOTT: No. Basically what I`m saying is that the information that is provided to the passenger prior to takeoff is deficient; there is not enough information given to them, and the requirements for that information that is provided on the card that they read are also not sufficient. There is not enough information.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Patricia Kennedy is a former airlines employee and currently is Associate Director of the Aviation Consumer Action Project, a Ralph Nader organization which advocates the interests of airline passengers in safe and economical air transportation. Miss Kennedy, is the FAA doing enough to protect the consumer?

PATRICIA KENNEDY: I don`t think they are at all. I think one important thing to remember is that the majority of people who are killed in airline crashes die unnecessarily -- the vast majority of crashes are survivable. People don`t get out of them because, number one, they don`t know what to do, and number two, the interior of the aircraft -- the seats and the panels and the rest of it -- is constructed with a combination of synthetic fibers and plastics that, when they burn, they emit a very deadly combination of cyanide and carbon monoxide gases. Now, there`s no information whatsoever on this, which is really the major hazard, on the little passenger seat pocket.

MacNEIL: But haven`t I read about that being discovered and corrected, and materials being required to be used which will not burn with those kind of gases?

KENNEDY: It has. It was discovered, indeed, back in 1969; and at that point the FAA announced that it would be a good idea to set standards, and issued what they call an advance notice of proposed rulemaking. That was 1969; it`s now 1976, and there`s no action in sight any time in the foreseeable future.

MacNEIL: What changes do you consider most crucial?

KENNEDY: There are two. I think that there are materials that are much safer than the materials that are in use today, as far as the seats are concerned. Number two, until they can get them on planes there are, for example, smoke hoods, which is like a big baggie kind of thing, but it`s made out of flame-resistant plastic. It can be pulled over your head, it gives you maybe two minutes of air, which is really all you need to get out of the plane. I think that also the seats, for example -- a human body can withstand anywhere, depending on how it hits on impact, about 35 gees of force. Your airplane seat can withstand nine, which is not really very much force. So people are injured on impact unnecessarily. And in an accident a minor thing -- a bump on the head, a broken leg -- can kill you, because you can`t get out of the plane as a result.

MacNEIL: All of you have, in one way or another, some complaint about what the FAA isn`t doing, and we saw in the plane crash in Paris that if the FAA had done a certain thing that crash might conceivably have been avoided. What does the FAA need to do, either in changing its organization or just changing its behavior, to correct these things? Mr. Miller, what needs to happen to the FAA?

MILLER: Well, Robin, first of all, let`s appreciate that a couple of things have happened since the DC-10 that I think are on the positive side. I`m referring now to `a far improved follow-up system, and in fact a system for issuing Airworthiness Directives. They have made an organization change to strengthen the professional safety level near the administrator. There are two things, though, that I would like to clear out, for what they`re worth. I am still concerned that the FAA,, and for that matter, the National Transportation Safety Board, fail to appreciate what in the trade is called the human factors in this whole business. The DC-10 crash, as the book will reveal, involved a French baggage handler; and everybody then, and to a great extent today, looks for somebody to blame as a person/human failure when in fact it can be shown, as it was in the DC-10, that this was designed into the system.

MacNEIL: Mr. Miller, you know a great deal more about this than I do, but I thought it had been an established principle in air safety years and years ago that -- and I don`t know the technical term for it -- that you had to design things so that human beings couldn`t do it wrong.

MILLER: You`re absolutely right; the only trouble is., I`m not sure that this is fully appreciated or implemented by the regulatory process. And I say again, I think the fixes they tried on the DC-10 shortly after Windsor is a good example. The other thing I would like to mention is this question of leadership. Many of us saw the DC-10 Paris crash as an example of what happens when people at the highest levels in government are chosen purely for political reasons. And I, for one, am waiting for Mr. Carter or President Ford to come out and say, "In our next administration we`re going to look at technical as well as political backgrounds to put people in charge of FAA`s or NTSB`s or other such agencies,

MacNEIL: Thank you. What do you think, Mr. Page, the FAA needs to do institutionally or in its behavior?

PAGE: I think I`d follow Chuck Miller there. I think that you have got to recognize in any government like the U.S., which relies so heavily on regulatory bodies, the idea of controlled conflict within the government. You must not allow any administration to start smoothing out that conflict. You can look at the DC-10 business as one effect of the way that I think the Nixon administration tried to change the nature of the Washington system -- to remove from it the checks and balances that are necessary to make it work. I hope that won`t happen under either a Ford or a Carter administration.

MacNEIL: Mr. Miller, do you think it would make sense to separate the FAA from the Department of Transport, which, of course, has a political head?

MILLER: There`s part of me that is the aviation side that says, Yes, I`d like to see it done." As a private citizen appreciating the entire transportation question, no; I think they have to live together, they have to be balanced, and I think we`re smart enough to make it work if you get the right kind of people in the senior positions.

MacNEIL: Thank you. I`d like to come back to you, Mr. Page. In an appendix to your book, Destination Disaster, you have a 78-page examination of the safety records o the world`s airlines, and you`ve grouped the airlines into six categories. All eleven of the U.S. airlines you included are in the first three. In group one they are Delta, American, Continental, United, National, Eastern and Braniff. In group two, TWA, PanAm, Allegheny; and in group three, Northwest. Now, what does this list mean to anybody who might read your book or read about it -- what are they supposed to make of that kind of list? Is that actually a consumer guide to airline safety which a potential passenger could use?

PAGE: It`s certainly not intended to be, in the sense that people should stand at a ticket desk and try to choose between two American airlines on the strength of this. What we set out to do - remember we were looking at a case where a very big and enormously sophisticated machine, the DC-10, had found its way into the hands of a small and not very experienced airline. We then found that the manufacturer of the aircraft appeared to think that the airline was highly inexperienced, and indeed, in subsequent lawsuits tried to blame everything on the airline. We set out to try to find out what the differences really were; and of course you discover as soon as you go into this that the official religion of the international aviation industries -- there is no difference; all airlines are gray. Now, that`s not true. I think it is true that pretty well all of, the American domestic and international carriers are very good indeed, which one is inclined to think probably has something to do with a very tough legal environment within which they function.

That is not just an FAA matter. That`s a matter of the liabilities for compensation that they have always attracted in this country. But it may be that the safety records of the U.S. airlines are due to the ferocity with which compensation suits are addressed to them.

MacNEIL: Okay. How much safer is an airline in group one, like Delta, than one in group two, like TWA, or one in group three, like Northwest?

PAGE: I wouldn`t regard those as differences that you could choose between...

MacNEIL: The criteria is passenger deaths per ... how many miles, per million miles?

PAGE: One of the great difficulties about making any judgment like this is to know which criteria to use at all. Airline accidents are fairly rare events as pieces of statistics, and you have to ask yourself, "How do you compare an airline that does all short flights with airlines that fly long distances?" What we`ve really tried to do, if you look at the appendix in enough detail, is give several different ways of measuring it.

MacNEIL: Judging by where these American airlines are grouped in the safer categories, if that`s the way to express it, you think that American airlines as a whole have a relatively good safety re cord as compared with airlines of other countries?

PAGE: We think they`re very good. What we`re interested in is the sudden appearance of a grotesquely unsafe chain of events in an overall safe pattern.

MacNEIL: Thank you very much. Thank you all in Washington, as well. Jim Lehrer is off on assignment tonight, he`ll be here tomorrow night. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.