The Constant Quest for Safety

Could it happen again? Could two jetliners collide on another runway and produce a catastrophe to match the one that exploded at Tenerife? The experts will never say "Never," but the chances of such a recurrence are reassuringly slim. Tenerife was a freak accident at a minor airport, brought about by a chain of incidents, coincidences and human failures that are unlikely to occur again. As John McLucas, the outgoing head of the Federal Aviation Administration, told TIME Aviation Correspondent Jerry Hannifin, "We cannot say that it's impossible for a situation like Tenerife to occur in the U.S. But we can say we are doing everything possible to prevent such a situation--unless somebody screws up."

The record speaks for itself. In 1976 the U.S. airline industry had the safest year in its history. The 2,300 airliners flew 2.5 billion miles, carried 220 million passengers and had only four fatal accidents. The record low was in 1975, with three fatal accidents, but only 45 people were killed in 1976--compared with 124 the year before. Flying by commercial jet in the U.S. is now at least 15 times as safe per passenger-mile as driving in a car. The passenger who shows his ticket to the smiling stewardess and buckles himself into his narrow seat has a 99.999% chance of arriving at his destination safe and sound. Indeed, flying has become so routine that the notably pragmatic insurance companies charge pilots no more for policies than they do ribbon clerks.

In Western Europe and Japan, where the goal of reducing the possibility of human error is pursued with zeal and effectiveness, the safety record is also good. For the most part, major foreign airlines fly the same American-made planes as U.S. carriers--Boeings and McDonnell Douglas DC-9s and DC-10s. In Europe, particularly in France, Great Britain, West Germany and the other industrialized countries, airline technology is fully as sophisticated as it is in the U.S., and in some aspects the Europeans are more advanced. France, for example, uses a battery of jet engines to blast away fog from Paris' two international airports--De Gaulle and Orly. That technique has not been adopted in the U.S. largely because of the noise and the pollution it creates. Using their advanced instrument landing systems, the French and the British airlines operate under conditions that would shut down most American airports.

West Germany's excellent safety record has been compiled against overwhelming odds. The nation has the most dangerous airspace in Western Europe: 11,000 private, military and commercial flights a day--one every eight seconds--crisscross an area roughly the size of Illinois. What is worse, the coordination between commercial and military flights is so poor that Chancellor Helmut Schmidt has ordered a Cabinet study of the problem. In 1976 there were 221 "near collisions"--approaches close enough to terrify those who knew what had happened. Says a senior air traffic controller at Koln-Bonn airport: "It's like playing Russian roulette in the air." The fact that there have been no collisions in recent years is testimony to West Germany's wary pilots, sophisticated ground equipment and a superb group of air controllers, surely one of the most harassed contingents in a highly demanding profession.

Despite the hazards that Lufthansa faces daily, it has a safety record comparable to that of U.S. carriers, judged over the years. So do Finnair, Air France and SAS. Americans should also feel safe flying north of the border. Air Canada is considered one of the most professional airlines in business.

In large part, the vast improvement in air safety was brought about by the same factor that created the vast increase in air travel: the development of the jet airliner. Flying in a modern jet is ten times as safe as flying in the noisier and slower piston-en-gined aircraft of the mid-'50s. Over the years, airframes have become sturdier and engines not only much more powerful but much more reliable. The FAA, the manufacturers and the airlines poured millions into developing better flight control equipment--sophisticated radars and navigation aids. Military innovations were adopted for commercial use. The FAA steadily tightened flight regulations, prescribing in minute detail how and where planes should fly, how they should be controlled from the ground.

In recent years, commercial aviation has evolved into a highly integrated system aimed at eliminating human error and demanding perfection from both the planes that fly and the avionics that monitor them from the ground.

THE PLANES. Today's jet is a marvel of engineering and safety. Based on actuarial records for new aircraft, Lloyd's of London had expected the Boeing 747 to have at least two fatal accidents during its first two years. But only one commercial crash has occurred since the jet was introduced in 1970--in Nairobi in 1974--and that was because the Lufthansa pilot did not extend the proper wing flaps while taking off. The 747 was blameless, of course, for the catastrophe at Tenerife. Leaving aside Nairobi and Tenerife, a total of 297 of these jets, operated by 44 carriers, have flown 360 billion passenger-miles without fatalities.

The 747 is packed with intricate warning devices--one now sounds the alarm if the proper wing flaps are not extended on takeoff--and every major control system has backups in case it should fail. Pilots wax eloquent about the aircraft they fondly call "Fat Albert." Says one Delta captain: "Old Albert is straightforward and honest on the ground and in the air. I've got about 200,000 Ibs. of thrust on four little levers. You've got to be careful because you can blow a hangar off the ground. Another thing, you've got 350 tons of momentum when you're taxiing, and you don't go cowboying around. But once it's airborne, it's an absolutely superb flying machine." Former FAA Administrator Elwood R. ("Pete") Quesada insists that "the 747 is the safest and most reliable air transportation yet designed by man."

U.S. airlines--and the best overseas carriers--take painstaking care of jets like the 747. Each plane, and each engine on each plane, gets a series of standard checkups. Even if it has no obvious problems, the jet receives an eight-hour maintenance check four times annually. Every year, in addition, mechanics wheel each plane into a hangar for two weeks and tear it down piece by piece, like federal agents hunting for heroin. Ceilings and floors are removed, every rivet and every cable is inspected. Engines are constantly being monitored and overhauled. The maintenance procedures are so complicated and expensive that TWA estimates it has $300 million tied up in spare parts and equipment, enough to buy a whole airline fleet not so long ago.

THE PILOTS. The men who occupy the left--or captain's --seat of jet airliners operated by the world's major carriers are without question superb flyers. They have risen to the top of their profession through a system designed to weed out the incompetent. In the U.S., typically, the captain of a 747 is in his mid-50s, and has been flying for 30 years or longer. He may have joined his airline in his early 30s and served as a co-pilot for seven years or more before making captain.

Whatever his rank, the training never stops. He is constantly practicing instrument landings and emergency procedures, both in the cockpit of a jet and in remarkably realistic flight simulators. Twice a year, the FAA requires the airline to check out his proficiency. In addition, an FAA inspector--completely unannounced--may show up just before takeoff, occupy the jump seat in the cockpit--and "lift" (start revocation proceedings) the captain's license on the spot if he detects a major failing during the flight.

Every six months the pilot must pass a demanding FAA physical, and every year the company also looks him over. His job is one of the few in which advancing age is considered an asset, for it means he has been in charge of a jet for a reassuring length of time. A 747 captain often has 20,000 or more hours of flight experience. He flies no more than 65 to 70 hours a month and is paid as much as $100,000 a year. It is safe to say that few people riding behind him in the passenger compartment begrudge him a nickel.

Despite all of these precautions, pilots do occasionally crack up airplanes, and one of the main reasons--a reason that concerns the FAA deeply--is simply that they let their minds wander. In a term of the trade, cockpit discipline breaks down. One chilling example of this occurred on Sept. 11, 1974, when an Eastern DC-9, on a landing approach, hit the ground near Charlotte, N.C. While descending, the pilot--as the flight recorder later showed--chatted amiably about racial integration, Richard Nixon's pardon and the merits of Japanese cars. The pilot and 71 others died in the wreckage.

Since that disaster--and a few other ones caused by pilots' ignoring the warnings of their instrument panels--the FAA and the airlines have worked hard to toughen up the discipline. Most aviation experts believe the efforts have produced good results.

THE AIR CONTROLLERS. From the moment he asks permission to nose his jet away from the ramp, the pilot--however silvery his hair and steady his hand--must work in close partnership with an individual who is usually a decade or two his junior and may be as outwardly nervous as the pilot is calm. As a group, air controllers are intense and self-confident men (their ranks include few women) who are polished professionals. Day after day, unheard by the passengers riding in the sky, controllers spot pilots who have strayed into trouble and direct them to safety. A disaster could occur during even the most mundane procedure--beginning with taxiing out to the end of the runway, as Tenerife grimly demonstrated.

Precise communication becomes vitally important. To reduce the risk of misunderstanding between tower and cockpit, a controller is forbidden to tell a pilot to "hold for takeoff." The mere mention of "takeoff" could trigger a response in the mind of the pilot and cause him to throw the throttles open prematurely. The correct command: "Taxi into position and hold."

To help the pilot get the plane to the end of the runway, controllers at ten major airports around the country are equipped with special ground-sweeping radar designed to penetrate the kind of haze that obscured the vision of the KLM and Pan Am pilots last week. During the next five years, 30 more American airports are due to receive the new radar, which still needs to be made more reliable.

When the controller in the tower is sure that the runway is safe, he gives the command to go: "Eastern 158, cleared for takeoff." Soon after the jet leaves the ground, another technician in the station, known as departure control, picks up the jet on radar and guides it out of the general area of the airport. Next, a controller in one of the 20 air-route traffic control centers that blanket the country takes over responsibility, monitors the jet through his section of the sky, and then hands it on to the adjoining control center.

As pilot and controllers, talking by radio, guide the jet to its destination, they are helped by some highly sophisticated warning and navigational devices that in recent years have greatly helped to improve the record of flight safety. Every commercial jet--and every private aircraft that operates at altitudes over 18,000 ft.--is equipped with a "transponder," in effect a miniature radio station that sends out the flight number and altitude. These data appear, neatly boxed, on the greenish radar screen of the controller. As the plane moves through the air, the tiny box proceeds by tiny hops across the screen. A pilot can attract the attention of a controller by making his flight data brighten, as though a tiny supernova had flared on the radar.

In some better-equipped centers (e.g., Fort Worth, Denver, Kansas City), a computer is also keeping its unblinking eye on the action. If two of the little boxes come within two minutes of each other on a collision course, the computer, keeping track of the heading and speed, makes both data blocks start blinking to alert the controller.

Every jetliner is also equipped with a device that stridently warns a pilot who is unknowingly flying toward a mountainside, a tower or the ground. The instrument flashes a red light, sounds a whooping alarm and plays a recording that orders, "Pull up! Pull up!" The system seems to be working well. In 1976, the first year it was universally used, no U.S. airliner rammed into an obstruction. During the previous ten years, there had been an average of six such crashes annually.

As the jet proceeds across the U.S., a constant danger is that controller and pilot will somehow misunderstand each other. This apparently happened on Dec. 1, 1974, when TWA Flight 514 was approaching Dulles International Airport, outside Washington, D.C. Coming in too low, the plane crashed into a mountain while the helpless controller watched the blip disappear from his radarscope. Since that disaster, controllers, while giving the final clearance, read out specific altitude changes to pilots approaching all airports.

The fear of causing such a crash or a collision --known with studied casualness as creating an "aluminum shower"--puts the controllers under tremendous strain from the time they clear a jet for takeoff until they guide it to a landing (see diagram). FAA psychological tests have shown that controllers undergo more stress than combat pilots. At Chicago's O'Hare Airport, the world's busiest, they are allowed to work for only 90 minutes at a stretch during peak hours, landing a plane every two minutes while simultaneously keeping track of half a dozen more.

Roughly one-third of O'Hare's controllers suffer from peptic ulcers, and another third have gastric or emotional problems of one kind or another. While they work, the controllers gulp down antacid tablets from jars kept within easy reach. The Chicago branch of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization has sued the FAA, claiming that the O'Hare unit is understaffed, backup equipment is lacking, and training programs are ineffective.

What are the controllers' thoughts when tension builds? Says Charles Cacace, 33, a controller at New York City's J.F.K. Airport: "You don't look at an airplane as if it were carrying 300 people. It would affect the way you do your job. Makes you nervous.

You look at it as though it were a piece of tin needing to be put someplace, but in the back of your mind you always hope you don't get involved in some mess."

The grim reality of flying today is that the margins of error are slim indeed and that any mistake can create a holocaust. The skies are filled with jumbo jets carrying hundreds of passengers. Closing speeds can reach 1,000 m.p.h. or more, making it difficult for humans to react quickly enough in the event of error. The congestion at major airports is so great at peak hours --late Friday afternoon is especially bad--that air controllers have to order incoming jets to stack up at altitude intervals of 1,000 ft. The landing is a carefully choreographed minuet of the skies as the plane on the bottom of the stack is cleared to come in and all the others moved down a level. During peak hours at O'Hare, jets use not only two parallel runways, but one that cuts across the other two--putting added pressures on the harassed air controller sweating over his radarscope.

If air travel is safe today in the U.S., it is still not safe enough.

The number of flights per day--now 13,000--is expected to edge up 2% to 3% annually. To make matters worse, the number of private aircraft is anticipated to grow from 168,000 to 200,000 in two years. As any air controller will testify, some small planes wander through air corridors rilled with huge Boeings and Lock-heeds coming in to land. Says one New York controller: "There are just too damn many planes in the air around certain airports --too damn many for anybody's health."

Can U.S. flying be made safer? The answer clearly is yes, say the experts. One way, according to FAA Administrator Mc-Lucas, is to help the pilot during his final approach--the time when he shifts from watching his instruments to looking at the runway looming up ahead. Says McLucas: "That transition, from instruments to eyeball, it appears, is the most dangerous part of the flight." A panel of six retired pilots set up to advise the FAA in 1975 argued that it was extremely difficult to make the visual adjustment. Said one pilot: "It's getting to be a scandal up there." At the switchover, says McLucas, "the plane typically dips below the glide slope. It's sort of a lag that's built into the pilot's system. I've looked at data from the flight recorders time after time, and you'll see a smooth descent, and then a dip below the glide scope, and then the pilot pulling the ship back up."

McLucas's recommended solution: an electronics system that would project instrument data right onto the windshield so that the pilot would also be able to watch the runway during the entire approach. Last week a group of specialists from the FAA and NASA began talks about developing an airliner "heads up" display system similar to ones already used on military aircraft.

An irony of air safety is that the airliners are built so well today that many passengers and crew members survive the actual impact but die in the flames that follow. Death often results from breathing the poisonous fumes generated by the burning plastic materials in the interior of the plane. One of the deadly byproducts: cyanide. Now, after years of criticism from safety experts, the FAA has begun an active search for cabin materials that will be both durable and flame resistant. Admits McLucas: "The problem right now is that you can offer the passenger the choice of dying by either cyanide or carbon monoxide in a cabin fire. But we don't know any materials that won't burn in an accident such as that in Tenerife."

An FAA panel, set up by McLucas, has recommended 17 steps that the agency carry out to improve cabin safety. Among them: developing a means of preventing fuel from bursting into flame on impact; making sure that flight attendants man the exit doors during a landing instead of frantically collecting cocktail glasses; giving crews better training for emergencies. Says McLucas: "I think the area of cabin safety has to be given a lot more attention, and believe me, we've started on that."

Criticism of the FAA has been growing. The National Transportation Safety Board (a federal agency that investigates air disasters and can make safety recommendations to the FAA), the 46,000-member Air Line Pilots Association, the 14,000-member Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, and congressional committees have attacked the FAA for not acting aggressively enough. For years the agency has been reluctant to take a tough line with either the airlines or the manufacturers.

A holdover from the Ford Administration, McLucas resigned last week--as previously planned--from the post of FAA Administrator. As his successor, Jimmy Carter has nominated Langhorne M. Bond, 40, the secretary of the Illinois department of transportation. Bond will have the job of finding ways to develop the necessary devices and programs to reduce even further the hazards of flying. Then Bond will have to persuade and direct the nation's great airline companies to do what is best. It need not be that difficult an assignment: as a whole, the industry has been willing and often eager to spend the required money to modify aircraft in the interests of safety. There are few industries where the interests of the providers and the consumers are so inextricably linked.

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