Experts Debate If Decontrol Has Impaired Safety : Many Say That Air Lanes Are No More Hazardous; Unions Sharply Disagree

How safe are the nation’s skyways and highways in the deregulated environment of the 1980s?

The jury is still out on that question, but it was hotly debated for three days last week at a conference at Northwestern University. On hand were about 300 representatives of government, industry, academia, labor and consumer groups.

On the airline side, there was some, but not total, agreement that safety has not been compromised in the decade since the elimination of federal controls on the air carriers in 1978. Some conferees, notably representatives of the pilots union, went so far as to label the session a “whitewash.”

Delegates also agreed, however, that the traveling public does not believe that the skies are safe, largely because of the nation’s strained and understaffed air-traffic control system.

Some conferees, while agreeing that there is evidence that safety has not been ignored since deregulation, warned about complacency. John H. Enders, president of the Flight Safety Foundation, an industry group that promotes airline safety, said there should be no “smugness” on the question.

“Scheduled air transportation safety has improved (since deregulation), and air travel is safe,” he said. “But the margin of safety levels over that required by law is vulnerable to erosion. Investment in such research is diminishing, thus threatening continued progress in safety improvement. It is possible to skate on thin ice and it is possible to skate on thick ice. Let’s not let the ice get too thin.”

Airline safety has simply become a matter of economics, some said. “While economic deregulation of the airline industry never envisioned competition so intense that managers would inadvertently begin asking, ‘How much safety can we afford?’ instead of ‘How much safety is enough?,’ this is precisely what has happened,” said John J. Nance, an author specializing in aviation subjects.

Representatives of labor insisted that flying is unsafe, despite statistics that show a declining number of air crashes in recent years. “The system is woefully inadequate,” James A. Damron, a United Airlines pilot and an official of the Air Line Pilots Assn., said in an interview. “Safety is being held hostage to productivity.”

Damron said he was speaking mainly about the possibility of more midair collisions such as the one over Cerritos last year. “Deregulation has resulted in a dramatic increase in traffic and a predictable and alarming increase in all the precursors to accidents.” The airline industry, he said, “is paranoid about (the possibility of) re-regulation, not about a major disaster.”

But some in the industry concede that deregulation has resulted in congested airports and strained traffic control systems that present safety hazards. In a major speech before the conference, the head of American Airlines said airlines must give up some of the benefits of deregulation to improve safety and restore public confidence in air travel.

American Airline’s Robert L. Crandall called on the Transportation secretary to set up a committee to determine how much traffic the air-traffic control system can handle safely.

“The time has come to end the quibbling--public and private--about how much capacity can or cannot be handled safely,” Crandall said. “We don’t have time to bicker any further.”

John E. O’Brien, director of the Engineering and Air Safety Department of ALPA, said the effect of deregulation on aviation safety “can be determined by analyzing the vast amount of data collected by industry and government. Such analysis leads one to the conclusion that exposure to risk has increased over the past eight years and, therefore, safety has been impacted in a negative manner.”

But James H. Burnley IV, deputy secretary of the Transportation Department, said in an interview here that while the system is not immune to future air tragedies, “the rhetoric about unsafeness leads one to believe that we are about to go over a precipice, that flying has become totally unsafe, which is untrue.”

But to some gathered at the meeting, that was not good enough to stem concerns about deregulation’s effects on safety in the air.

“Aviation safety is a serious business,” Professor Michael E. Levine of Yale University said. “Only the fanatic few among us are prepared to die for the right to buy a deep discount ticket. And it is natural to worry that the same system that is giving us the discounts must be cutting corners on safety.”

And a satisfactory safety record in the past is nothing to be complacent about, said John K. Lauber, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, which examines all transportation accidents and seeks to pinpoint their cause.

Lauber said that even though actual numbers of accidents have declined since 1978, that is not necessarily an indication of safety in the future.

“An accident is clear evidence that safety is lacking,” he told the group. “But, by itself, the absence of an accident does not demonstrate that safety has been achieved.”

He suggested that what is needed is a set of “leading safety indicators,” along the lines of the government’s leading economic indicators. These, he said, would be used to examine more extensively the effects of airline deregulation.

Lauber said that in the competitive environment resulting from deregulation, the indicators might include measures of the effectiveness of an airline’s training, its safety and medical departments, as well as its expenditures on aircraft maintenance. Another question that should be examined, he said, is whether there is excessive competitive pressure on airlines to reduce turnaround times at hub airports.

Despite the pessimism by some, one high government official maintained that aviation safety has even gotten better since deregulation. “Although theory suggests that safety might be lower in a competitive environment than under regulation,” Thomas G. Moore, a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, said, “empirical evidence not only shows that safety has not declined since transportation industries were deregulated but actually has continued to improve.”

While airline safety was an important focus at the conference, much attention also was paid to highway trucking safety. The trucking industry was deregulated in 1980. Since then, it is often charged, trucks are poorly maintained, loads are too heavy and drivers put in too many hours behind the wheel--in an effort to earn more--and become tired and accident-prone.

“Economic deregulation at the federal level has had an adverse effect on the entire motor carrier industry with regard to safety on the public highways,” said Maj. James E. Daust of the Michigan State Police and president of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance. “One of the most understated causes for large traffic crashes today is driver fatigue.

“Detailed studies indicate the problem is more widespread than ever before,” he added. “Driver-related causes, coupled with poor vehicle maintenance programs, are by far the largest contributing factor in the rise of heavy truck fatalities and severe-injury crashes.” He also said unqualified drivers--”the direct result of poor licensing procedures, poor truck driving training or no training and the increased demand for more drivers”--have become major contributors to accidents.

According to Robert E. Farris, deputy administrator of the Federal Highway Administration, there are more than 5 million commercial motor vehicle drivers in the United States. It is widely recognized, he said, that driving certain commercial motor vehicles requires special skills, knowledge, training and other qualifications. But in 18 states and the District of Columbia, he complained, any person licensed to drive an automobile also can legally drive a tractor-trailer or a bus.

“As a result, too many drivers are operating motor vehicles they may not be qualified to drive,” he said.

While it is not a product of deregulation, the question of alcohol and drug abuse was a major topic of discussion at the conference.

“Today, members of the traveling public have little assurance when they board a plane, a train or a bus, or get into a car, that they will not be putting their lives into the hands of a drunk or drugged pilot, engineer, bus driver or trucker,” said W. Allen Moore, chief of staff for the Republican minority on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

“We do not routinely test these transportation employees whose alertness and judgment may separate us from safety and disaster.” He called for such drug testing to be required.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, he said, this month published a study of truck drivers that showed that almost 30% of 300 on-duty drivers tested positive for alcohol or for drugs, with the potential for abuse. “Illegal drugs are being bought and sold with the aid of the CB radio at virtually every truck stop in the country,” he said.

“The public expects that the individuals who choose to serve them in safety-related transportation careers are neither drunk nor drugged on the job,” Moore said.