Pena Vows Fast Action on Safety of Small Planes

The federal government will speed up what had been a behind-the-scenes program to toughen safety requirements imposed on commuter airlines, bringing them up to the level of the larger air carriers, Transportation Secretary Federico Pena said Wednesday, one day after another fatal crash of a commuter airplane.

Pena promised to conduct “the most comprehensive review ever” of airline safety. He said that within 100 days the Federal Aviation Administration will complete new rules imposing stricter standards on the small aircraft flown by the commuter airlines and put them in effect. And within several weeks the agency plans to convene a meeting of airline chief executives, safety experts, pilots and manufacturers to review safety issues, he said.

Despite their increasingly important role in the U.S. transportation industry, many commuter airplanes have operated under considerably more lax federal regulations than the larger passenger jets. The propeller-driven aircraft ferry passengers between smaller communities and larger airports.

The crash of an American Eagle Jetstream Super 31 as it approached Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina in foul weather Tuesday followed the crash of another American Eagle plane, an ATR-72, in icy conditions in Indiana on Oct. 31.

The North Carolina crash, in which 15 of 20 passengers and crew were killed, focused new attention on the safety of the piston-engine planes and whether the government has done enough to protect passengers and crew.

In effect acknowledging that more can be done, the Transportation Department said that it would step up surveillance of airline safety programs “above and beyond what is occurring now.”

Pena, who visited the North Carolina crash site Wednesday morning, said later in a speech to an aviation group in New York that the FAA would put together rules on the staffing of the airplanes “to ensure that there is always enough experience in the cockpit.”

Under current regulations, pilots of planes with fewer than 31 seats can fly up to 1,200 hours in a year and 120 hours in a month.

Pilots of larger planes are allowed to fly no more than 1,000 hours in a year and 100 hours in a month. The pilots of smaller planes also face less demanding training requirements. Airline dispatchers, who participate in preflight weather briefings and then follow the progress of flights by larger airplanes, are not required to do so for smaller aircraft.

These discrepancies will be eliminated when the tougher rules go into effect, FAA officials said.

Several airlines, including American Eagle, say that they voluntarily follow the stricter standards on all their flights.

Bob Schulz, a Transportation Department spokesman, said that the more intense safety program, which Pena said would take effect within 100 days, originally was not expected to be in place until next November, one year after the review began.

The question of whether the commuter airlines are as safe as the major carriers--and whether the federal government is taking sufficient steps to protect the traveling public--has been troubling to aviation experts, frequent travelers and others flying aboard the often bouncy, cramped airplanes.

As early as 1991, the National Transportation Safety Board said that the FAA needed to beef up its inspections of commuter airlines. In March, 1992, the General Accounting Office, a congressional investigating agency, found that inadequate inspection of commuter air operations contributed to safety risks.

As the aviation industry sought to deal with the latest disaster--in the week before the Christmas travel season--airplane safety experts advised travelers to avoid small airplanes in risky weather.

But following that advice can be difficult. The planes often are the only convenient transportation in communities lacking jet service. In many cases, the skies have become crowded with the commuters--many with fewer than two dozen seats--as they jump from one regional airport to another to feed passengers to the major airlines’ hub cities.

The small planes have grown in popularity among the airline companies because they are cheaper to operate on short hauls with limited numbers of passengers. Since 1983, their usage has increased from 2.3 million departures to 3.1 million last year, when they carried 50 million passengers.

But in each of the three main measures that federal officials use to keep track of safety--accidents per miles, accidents per flight hour and accidents per 100,000 departures--the smaller aircraft showed higher risks.

According to David Stempler, executive director of the International Airline Passengers Assn., which claims 110,000 members worldwide, in the 15 years ended March 31, 1994, commuter aircraft with fewer than 31 seats had 30 fatal accidents, while larger airline jets, flying far more flights, had 15 fatal accidents, and mid-sized aircraft--those with 31 to 109 seats--had one fatal accident.

The smallest planes, he said, “are the real hazard.”

“There’s a paranoia, and rightfully so,” about flying on them, said Jack Skloff, owner of Dimensions travel agency in Washington.

Vicki Fernandez, manager of Travel Bound Inc. in Falls Church, Va., said that in recent weeks “people have shied away from the commuters.”

But Don Watkins, a Chicago electronics salesman waiting in line at Raleigh-Durham International Airport to board a USAir Express commuter flight to Charlotte, said: “Does this accident scare me? Sure, but I’m concerned every time I step onto an airplane. Will it slow me down or keep me from flying? Of course not. Our air safety system overall is the best in the world.”

Multiple factors contribute to the apparent increased risk posed by the commuter lines, said Mike Overly, editor of Aviation Safety, a monthly publication of the Aviation Safety Institute.

For one, he said, “commuter flights do a lot more takeoffs and landings” than the average commercial jet flight, “and these are the most dangerous times of flight.”

It is not uncommon for a commuter airplane to make six flights in a day, and large jets might make half as many trips, he said.

For another, “commuters are flying in much more hazardous terrain,” and often in areas frequently hit with poor weather.

His advice to travelers: “Get a weather report, especially in winter, and exercise your option to stay off a plane if it looks like bad weather.”

Times staff writers Jeff Brazil in Orange County and Robert L. Jackson in Washington contributed to this story.

* ENGINE FAILURE CITED: Cockpit recorder indicates flameout in Tuesday crash. A4