Under a Cloud

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

When Dawn O'Day, a New York homemaker, saw a TV report last week on commuter- airline safety, she got worried -- and then she got on the phone. Her daughter Misty, a junior at Elon College in North Carolina, was due to fly one leg of her trip back from school last Tuesday on a small commuter-airline turboprop. O'Day canceled those reservations and arranged for Misty to take a limousine from Greensboro to Raleigh and then catch a jet home. Says O'Day: "I told my husband, 'I don't want her on that plane.' " It was a nearly miraculous choice. American Eagle Flight 3379, the plane Misty had been booked , on, crashed last week in Morrisville, North Carolina, on its way from Greensboro to Raleigh, killing 15 of the 20 passengers aboard.

Airline safety is coming under increased scrutiny in the midst of the holiday travel season, the most awkward time for a crisis of confidence in air travel. A recent string of airline crashes and mishaps has compelled passengers, federal regulators and aviation experts to take a suddenly more skeptical look at an industry that had steadily been improving its safety record over the years. Statistically, air travel remains more than 100 times as safe as travel by car. But so far this year, more than 250 people have been killed in air crashes within the U.S.

A conspicuous number of crashes have involved commuter airlines, including the October wreck of an American Eagle ATR-72 in Indiana that killed all 68 people on board. One reason for the increased number of commuter crashes is simply growth in traffic. Regional airlines that tend to operate smaller, prop-driven planes carried 50 million passengers in 1993, up from 15 million in 1980.

After the crash of the American Eagle ATR-72, the Federal Aviation Administration barred ATR model planes from flying in icy weather. That forced the carrier to move other planes more suitable to cold conditions to northern cities. But late last week, American Eagle canceled all its flights at Chicago's busy O'Hare International Airport after a pilots' union complained that the replacement fleet's crews had not adequately been trained to fly during cold weather.

In one of the most severe setbacks for the commuter-airline industry, the International Airline Passengers Association warned members about flying in planes with 30 seats or fewer. Some airline experts said the association, which also sells insurance to passengers, was overreacting. Says Aaron Gellman, director of the Transportation Center at Northwestern University: "It's not against their financial interests to make people worried."

But government officials were also becoming increasingly concerned. Last week, after touring the muddy crash site of Flight 3379, Transportation Secretary Federico Pena said that within 100 days, tougher safety regulations for small commuter planes will be formulated. He also announced plans to bring aircraft makers, pilots and other industry members to Washington for an aviation-safety summit. Jerome Lederer, president emeritus of the Flight Safety Foundation, says the airline industry needs to take advice from people in the field: "The airlines express an interest in safety, but the guys in the shops regularly are not consulted." Other experts say the problem lies not in the plane hangars but in the offices of the FAA. An aviation authority says the agency should have grounded the foreign-made ATRs long ago, but "the U.S. government didn't want to offend foreign countries like France."

Two other developments in the industry last week added fuel to passenger concern, this time about small airlines that fly large planes. Kiwi International Air Lines, an upstart carrier formed by laid-off airline workers, suspended flights for a time after FAA inspectors raised questions about its pilot-training records. And at New York's Kennedy Airport, the FBI disclosed that it was investigating sabotage in the electrical wiring of several jumbo jets belonging to Tower Air.

Travel agents said last week that few passengers were canceling flights, despite their increased anxiety. Said Chicago travel agent Carol Peters: "A lot of people see these things as acts of God." But the Rev. John Peter Pham, a Catholic priest flying from Chicago to Peoria, disagreed: "I would object to blaming God for plane crashes when they are really due to human error or some other negligence."

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: Sources FAA, Regional Airline Association

CAPTION: Commuter passengers in millions

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: Sources FAA, Regional Airline Association

CAPTION: Passenger carrier accident rates per 100,000 aircraft hours

With reporting by Wendy Cole/Chicago, Seth Effron/Morrisville and Jerry Hannifin/Washington