FAA Is Seeking Safety Czar to Help Prevent Accidents : Aviation: Agency’s slowness to act underscores need for reform. One step is appointment of in-house monitor.
Fourteen years ago, the government’s air safety experts first noted that many passengers involved in small airplane crashes lived through the impact but died in subsequent fire and explosions.
To give passengers more time to escape and survive such crashes, the National Transportation Safety Board on Sept. 9, 1980, recommended that the Federal Aviation Administration require crash-resistant fuel lines and fuel tanks on commuter planes.
Agreeing the recommendation had merit, the FAA launched a study. Then it launched another study. And another. But no definitive action was taken.
When the NTSB convenes today in Washington to discuss last April’s crash of a commuter airplane in Connecticut, it will take up the issue of crash-resistant fuel systems in small aircraft.
Again.
“This is one of the oldest recommendations on the books,” said Barry M. Sweedler, the NTSB’s director of safety recommendations.
“Back in 1980, we asked for some simple, logical things--to us--that the FAA could do” to make these kinds of crashes survivable, Sweedler said. “And here the issue has emerged again.”
Last April 27, a twin-engine plane overshot an airport runway and crashed through a fence in Stratford, Conn. All nine people aboard the Piper Navaho survived the impact. But eight of them perished when the plane exploded seconds later. The ninth person, Paul Hagopian, suffered burns to half his body. The pilot’s last words to the passengers, according to Hagopian: “Don’t worry. It’s all right.”
To aviation safety experts, the FAA’s handling of the fuel system issue underscores the need to restructure the nation’s airline regulatory agency and establish the equivalent of an in-house safety czar, an observation first made six years ago by a special presidential commission on air safety.
While FAA Administrator David Hinson says safety is everybody’s main concern at the agency, he too acknowledges that the FAA needs a high-ranking official whose sole responsibility is to monitor safety issues and shepherd them through the bureaucracy.
In an interview with The Times, Hinson said the FAA plans to compile a computer database from airlines, manufacturers and other sectors of the air travel industry to set up an early warning system that will help identify potential hazards before they become accidents. Critics have long held that the FAA does not lend enough credence to anecdotal accounts of potential problems, service difficulty reports and near-crashes, which air safety experts believe can portend future accidents.
“If you keep score by accidents only, a bald tire is safe until the blowout,” said former NTSB official Ira J. Furman. “The tire is ‘safe’ no matter how thin the rubber.”
Hinson said he has launched a search for an individual to take over a newly created systems safety office within the FAA.
“I’m doing a very careful search for the right person for that job,” said Hinson, adding that the person who fills the safety job will report directly to him. “It’s supposed to help me see problems before they happen.”
Creation of the new systems safety office comes four months after a joint investigation by the U.S. Department of Transportation and the FAA concluded that the agency did not have the proper procedures in place to ensure that safety concerns are acted upon in a timely manner.
Transportation Secretary Federico Pena and Hinson had ordered the internal review in mid-June after a series of reports in The Times indicated that the FAA knew about the potential danger of Boeing 757 wake turbulence long before two crashes that claimed 13 lives, including a 1993 accident in Santa Ana that killed the top two executives of the In-N-Out Burger chain and three others.
“One of the reasons the President asked me to take this job dealt directly with flight safety,” said Hinson, whose appointment to the top post in the FAA was confirmed in August, 1993. “Our objective is to get zero defects.”
Hinson acknowledges he faces a “formidable” task.
A four-month Times review of government documents showed that in some cases years have passed and hundreds of lives have been lost before the FAA acted on safety problems, such as the 757 turbulence issue, even though the agency had long been aware of the hazards.
“That’s one of the things I’m trying to address,” Hinson said. “I’m sure there are some examples where the FAA was slow to react.”
Once the new safety chief is in place, “Hopefully, (with) things like the 757 wake turbulence, somebody can say, ‘Here’s a trend . . . maybe we ought to get into this.’ ”
The idea of an FAA safety chief was proposed in 1988 by a seven-member Aviation Safety Commission. The commission, which was established by Congress and appointed by President Ronald Reagan, recommended that the FAA be made an independent agency with a “safety czar” to oversee regulation of the airline industry. The commission said the restructuring was necessary “to act on the backlog of potentially worthwhile safety improvements that have been languishing.”
Over the last six years, the Government Accounting Office, the Department of Transportation’s inspector general and the Office of Technology Assessment have reached similar conclusions.
Some congressional officials have suggested that the nation’s skies would be safer and more efficient if the day-to-day air traffic control operations were taken away from the FAA so it can focus on airline surveillance and safety issues.
There have been numerous suggestions on how to restructure the FAA’s responsibilities, including one from the Clinton Administration that would privatize the air-traffic system. Under the proposal, a corporation, known as the Air Traffic Control Corp., would oversee air traffic, while the FAA would be free to deal with safety and airline regulation.
To make a significant difference, observers agree, Hinson’s new safety chief must be shielded from operational worries, such as airport capacity. Critics believe there are times when safety has taken a back seat to such issues.
When the FAA considered whether to require more landing distance between Boeing 757 jetliners and planes following behind them, the agency calculated how many flight reductions could result from any measures it might take.
At the heart of such calculations lies the FAA’s sometimes conflicting mandates: to ensure the welfare of the flying public but also to nurture the economic welfare of the aviation industry.
“We should define promoting aviation as fostering safety,” said Hugh E. Waterman, who worked for the FAA for 27 years before retiring in 1986. “That’s the best--and only--way the FAA should be promoting aviation.”
In striking the balance between economics and safety, the “fulcrum is placed too close to the economic side of the equation,” said former NTSB Chairman James E. Burnett Jr. A safety chief accountable to the FAA administrator would provide “checks and balances within the FAA,” Burnett said.
“The image of a vigilant FAA is as important to the industry as the image of the Boeing Co.,” he said.
Scores of air safety experts interviewed by The Times, including past and present FAA officials, agreed that having someone within the FAA with the authority to ferret out potential safety problems and the power to act on them could be the one change that would significantly reduce the delays in acting upon safety issues.
“You need dedicated, continuous follow-up on issues,” the NTSB’s Sweedler said. “I’ve been in this business 25 years, and I cannot recall any accident that has not happened before if you look back far enough and dig deep enough.”
Other potential safety reforms that emerged during The Times review:
* Amend a law that requires the FAA to perform lengthy, cost-benefit analysis when it wants to make changes in regulations.
“The safety professionals in the FAA really are committed, dedicated people,” said Rep. James L. Oberstar (D-Minn.), outgoing chairman of the House Committee on Public Works and Transportation’s subcommittee on aviation. “But they’re in the trenches, dodging regulatory bullets, trying to cover their tracks, and document and substantiate everything they propose.
“There’s safety, but then it’s ‘What about the cost? What about the industry?’ ”
* Simplify the regulation process.
Once the FAA decides to seek a regulation change on a safety issue and completes a cost-benefit analysis showing how many people can be saved and at what cost to industry, the proposal must pass through a legislative labyrinth.
The proposed change first goes to the secretary of Transportation, then to the Office of Management and Budget, then back to the Transportation secretary and finally back to the FAA. At any point along the way, it can be “massaged,” forcing the process to virtually begin again.
“Safety should not be conducted this way,” said Oberstar, who has been holding oversight hearings on the FAA for a decade.
* Catalogue, monitor and scrutinize service difficulty reports, non-fatal incidents, anecdotal accounts of problems from pilots and air traffic controllers, and near-crashes to identify trends and potential safety hazards. And rely less on thinking that there needs to be an accident to show there’s a problem.
An April, 1994, report by DOT’s inspector general concluded that FAA had “no formal system . . . to ensure aircraft problems do not fall into a ‘black hole.’ ”
Following the March, 1992, crash of a jetliner at La Guardia Airport in New York--one in a series of fatal crashes that prompted changes in the way the wings of commercial jets are de-iced before takeoff--the FAA said there wasn’t an urgent need to enact such measures for air taxis and commuter planes because those kinds of aircraft had not experienced near as many similar accidents.
In response to the FAA’s stance, the Air Line Pilots Assn. said in a letter, “This is a dangerous philosophy and suggests that the FAA measures the need for safety improvements against the number of accidents and fatalities before they can justify improvements.”
* Be less rigid about past positions on safety issues.
Aviation experts both within and outside the FAA say the agency hierarchy sometimes clings too strongly to positions it has staked out--even in the face of compelling evidence.
“If they adopt an improper policy, they’re very reluctant to change their stand” because they fear the public will perceive a mistake was made originally, said one FAA manager.
* Ensure more stable leadership.
There have been six FAA administrators in the past 13 years. It’s an appointed position, and some experts and legislators have suggested that it be transformed into a five- or seven-year term.
What both the FAA and its critics agree upon is that the agency cannot stand still on safety. Even if the accident rate was to remain constant, the sheer number of commercial airline flights is increasing so rapidly that there will be more crashes more frequently in the not-too-distant future, industry experts predict.
That is a scenario frightening to all.
“It’s important that the government does anything it can to prevent these kinds of things,” said Michele Mikuta of Cos Cob, Conn. Her husband, Thomas, was killed in the March, 1992, crash at La Guardia.
After the accident, which killed 27 people, the FAA acted to prevent such crashes. But records show it had been known for years that the type of plane involved in the accident was particularly susceptible to having ice accumulate on its wings, robbing the plane of crucial lift on takeoff.
Said Mikuta, who is raising her and her husband’s two young children alone: “I never want this kind of thing to happen to anyone else.”
Times researcher Sheila A. Kern and special correspondent Shelby Grad contributed to this story.
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
How the Study Was Conducted
To complete this report, The Times reviewed about 20,000 pages of internal documents obtained from the Federal Aviation Administration through the Freedom of Information Act. The newspaper also reviewed a computer analysis of the causes of airplane crashes between 1983 and last July by the National Transportation Safety Board. The Times also studied dozens of reports by government oversight agencies and interviewed scores of present and past FAA officials, airline industry sources, aviation safety experts, members of Congress, crash survivors and the families of crash victims.
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Safety Board’s Priorities
Earlier this year, the National Transportation Safety Board released a “Most Wanted” list of air safety recommendations. Here are the four items discussed:
* Develop ways to avoid runway collisions, including use of new runway lights and signs.
* Require more structural fatigue tests for new aircraft.
* Make technical changes to brake-wear tests for aircraft.
* Add collision-avoidance system known as Mode C Intruder Alert to radar used by many airports.
Source: National Transportation Safety Board
Researched by JEFF BRAZIL and SHELBY GRAD / Los Angeles Times
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Aircraft Census
The total number of registered aircraft in the United States has increased only about 1% since 1987: ‘93: 279,056
Source: Federal Aviation Administration
Researched by JEFF BRAZIL and SHELBY GRAD / Los Angeles Times
