Critics: Too much emphasis on terrorism in air safety push

February 14, 1998
Web posted at: 9:25 p.m. EST (0225 GMT) From Correspondent Jonathan Karl

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In the wake of the explosion of TWA Flight 800 in 1996, Vice President Al Gore announced a major push to make air travel safer and also to fight terrorism.

The goal: Slash the air fatality rate by 80 percent over the next 10 years.

But more than a year later, some aviation experts say federal aviation officials are placing too much emphasis on fighting terrorism while not doing enough to make general air safety better.

For instance, the federal government is spending $100 million to equip major U.S. airports with a high-tech machine that can detect virtually any type of bomb. The FAA also plans to double the number of bomb-sniffing dogs on duty in airports.

But according to Michael Barr, director of the aviation safety program at the University of Southern California, "In the last 25 worldwide fatal accidents, only one was caused by an explosive."

And at the same time, while a fire in the cargo hold is believed to be the most likely cause of the crash of a ValuJet plane into the Florida Everglades in 1996, airlines still haven't widely installed the sort of smoke detectors that would have given the ValuJet plane's pilots an early warning.

And it took a full 18 months after the TWA 800 crash before federal authorities set up a commission to look into the kind of center fuel tank problems that investigators now think led to an explosion on that doomed flight.

The FAA plans to double number of bomb-sniffing dogs on duty in airports

The lack of progress has left groups representing the families of crash victims unsatisfied.

"Matters can be speeded up. Why do we have to wait four years, for instance, for smoke detectors [to be] installed in planes?" says Hans Ephraimson-Abt, whose group represents families of victims of the Korean Airlines Flight 007 disaster in 1983.

Even critics of the aviation industry acknowledge that air travel is still one of the safest forms of transportation. However, safety advances may have a hard time keeping up with increased air traffic.

Industry experts say that even with today's low accident rate, increased traffic could mean that there will be an average of one crash every week worldwide by 2015.

Related stories:

• Airlines move to improve crash avoidance systems - December 16, 1997

Related sites:

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• Air Transport Association
• U.S. Department of Transportation
• Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)

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