For Airline Safety, Stay Cinched

Some advice for airline passengers: Gather all the reading material you need before takeoff so you won’t have to get up during the flight to fetch a magazine; hit the restroom before departure and go easy on the libations, and cinch up those seat belts until they feel like a pair of designer jeans.

The need for these precautions is reemphasized by the recent spate of so-called “clear-air turbulence” incidents in which several dozen passengers were injured. In those incidents the planes violently dropped, flinging unbelted occupants toward the ceiling.

On April 18, 29 people were injured on a Tower Air flight from Paris to JFK International Airport in New York. A month later, seven were hurt when a Continental Airlines jet bound for Hawaii hit rough air. Four days after that, six were injured on a U.S. Airways flight to Los Angeles. On May 27, 17 were injured on an Ansett Australia flight to Japan. Last Saturday, four were hurt when turbulence hit an Olympic Airways flight from Greece to Montreal and forced an emergency landing at London’s Heathrow Airport.

The problem in the roughly 16 turbulence incidents that occur annually is the surprise and suddenness. Potentially dangerous wake vortices from passing aircraft and other forms of clear-air turbulence cannot be spotted by radar. (Radar can often detect danger areas that are part of storms.)

Two new types of technology are being tested that might give warning to pilots. But these are expensive and offer little in the way of near-term solutions. One would use ground-based lasers to “hear” the distinctive sounds of turbulent air. An aircraft-based program would bounce laser beams off swirling dust particles, detecting light-to-moderate rough air about 3.1 miles ahead of a speeding airliner, or eight to 10 seconds distant. In other words, with little time to change course and avoid the problem.

That puts the onus on decidedly low-tech solutions. The pilot in one of the recent incidents, for example, was apparently warned by other pilots to expect rough air ahead but he didn’t respond. Injuries can be avoided by acting quickly on such information.

Most of the injured in the recent incidents were not wearing seat belts. The Federal Aviation Administration has already called for mandatory in-flight seat belt use. TWA says it is the first airline to require that seat belts be fastened throughout a flight. Others should quickly follow suit. Until technology catches up with the problem, cinching up is the only sensible thing to do.