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U.S. NEWS Wednesday 8 May 2019

Recent airline crashes run against trend toward safer flying

By DAVID KOENIG and TOM grounded airplane, if you
KRISHER don't have the right surge
Associated Press suppressors, it's possible you
With plane crashes making can take out some of the
headlines over the week- avionics or electronics."
end, one in Florida with no Sunday's fiery crash in Mos-
fatalities and another in cow raised questions about
Russia that killed dozens, making an emergency
travelers might question landing shortly after take-
whether flying has become off, while the plane is still
less safe. fully loaded with fuel and
Aviation experts regard the likely over the maximum
recent incidents as a statis- landing weight.
tical blip, however, point- Only very large airliners
ing out that such accidents have the ability to dump
and fatalities are a fraction fuel. Most jetliners includ-
of what they were as re- ing the popular Boeing 737
cently as the 1990s. and Airbus A320 do not.
Advances in aircraft and That leaves only one option
airport design, better air for lightening the fuel load
traffic control, and im- on a plane like the Russian-
proved pilot training are made Sukhoi SSJ100 — cir-
often cited as factors in re- cling long enough to burn
ducing accidents. fuel.
"I don't think we'll ever get John Cox, a former airline
to zero accidents, but avia- This March 27, 2019, file photo shows a Boeing 737 MAX 8 airplane on the assembly line during a pilot and now a safety con-
tion is still the safest it's ever brief media tour of Boeing's 737 assembly facility in Renton, Wash. sultant, said he would only
been," said Seth Young, di- Associated Press circle if he were concerned
rector of the aviation pro- that something was wrong
gram at Ohio State Univer- In each case, investigators cow and the case of the about once a year on av- with the plane's landing
sity. are examining the role of charter airliner that ran off erage. gear, or the runway was
In the U.S., no airline pas- flight software that pushed a Florida runway into a riv- Planes are built so that the too short.
sengers were killed in ac- the nose of the plane down er; no one died in that one. fuselage acts as an elec- Video of the landing
cidents from 2009 until based on faulty sensor Investigators probe crashes tricity-conducting shield, showed the Aeroflot plane
April 2018, when a woman readings. in search of clues to pre- keeping the voltage away seem to touch down on its
on a Southwest Airlines jet That raises concern about vent more accidents from from passengers and criti- main landing gear, then
died after an engine broke safety around automated the same cause. In the cal systems. The jolt is of- bounce up before coming
apart in flight. flight controls, said William case of the Aeroflot jet that ten dissipated off wings or down hard a second time.
Worldwide, there were Waldock, an expert at caught fire, killing more the tail. Critical electron- At that point, flames can
more than 50 fatal airline Embry-Riddle Aeronautical than 40 people on board, ics have surge protection. be seen coming from the
accidents a year through University. attention is likely to turn Nitrogen is used to reduce jet.
the early and mid-1990s, "Pilots are not being trained to Russian media reports the risk that electrical arc- Video also captured pas-
claiming well over 1,000 as much as pilots as they that lightning disabled the ing could spark a fire in a sengers toting their carry-
lives annually, according are system operators and plane's communications fuel tank. on luggage as they fled the
to figures compiled by the system managers," he said. system and whether pilots Newer planes like the Boe- burning jet. Passengers on
Flight Safety Foundation. "So when something hap- should have burned off ing 787, which uses carbon U.S. airlines are told to leave
Fatalities dropped from pens and the automation fuel before the emergency composite material instead personal belongs in an
1,844 in 1996 to just 59 in fails, they get flummoxed." landing. of aluminum, includes fine emergency because it can
2017, then rose to 561 last Beyond the two Max crash- Lightning strikes are not un- wiring in the wings to direct slow the evacuation when
year and 209 already this es, safety experts see little common. In the U.S. alone, current off the plane, said seconds are precious. "We
year. immediate connection be- there are about 25 million John Hansman, an aero- will never know if more lives
Nearly half of the airline tween other incidents such every year, according to nautics professor at MIT. could have been saved if
deaths in 2018 and 2019 oc- as the deadly weekend the National Weather Ser- "They should be designed the bags were left behind,"
curred during the crashes crash of a Russian plane vice. A Federal Aviation to take a lightning strike," said Sara Nelson, president
of two Boeing 737 Max jets that caught fire after an Administration spokesman Hansman said, "but if you of the Association of Flight
in Indonesia and Ethiopia. emergency landing in Mos- said airline planes get hit don't have a perfectly Attendants.q