PS@MIT-MC@sri-unix (08/04/82)
PS@MIT-MC 08/04/82 11:15:21 Re: The Wall Street Journal flames on General Aviation To: AVIATION at MIT-AI This two part series on general aviation was published last fall. It is filled with out-and-out lies, distortions and exagerations. I was very disappointed with the WSJ, who I generally hold in very high esteem for their objective reporting. Remember, the WSJ is the second highest circulation paper in the country. The first part was published on November 30, 1981, the second on December 3. WALL STREET JOURNAL November 30, 1981 DEADLY SKIES: HIGH TOLL IN CRASHES BRINGS A SEARCH FOR REMEDIES USE OF SAFEST COCKPIT DESIGN COULD SAVE MANY LIVES, CRITICS SAY DO PILOTS WANT PROTECTION? [This is the first of two articles on the safety of general aviation] by Roy J. Harris, Jr. It has been two years since the last airliner disaster in the U.S., a stretch that one former safety official calls "the longest winning streak in commercial aviation history." Yet, at the current pace, about 1,400 persons will die in air crashes this year. Most of them will be killed in small private planes. Others will die in crashes of corporate jets, and even a smaller number in helicopters and even gliders. "General aviation," which includes all civilian aircraft except airliners, claims an average of 27 lives a week. In the first six months of 1981, by the National Transportation Safety Board's taley, there were 377 fatal accidents in general aviation. The resulting 708 deaths totaled more than airliner crashes have ever caused over a full year. Although the absence of many skilled air-traffic controllers hasn't helped the situation, the fatal crash rate, running 16% ahead of last year, hasn't changed much since the controllers strike began. Safety experts and government regulators aren't surprised at the death toll. They have long known that, although flying in an airliner is statistically the safest way to get somewhere, travelling by light plane is the most perilous. MAN AND MACHINE What is fustrating to the safety experts is the inability of industry and government to reduce the carnage through available technology. Structural and mechanical defects cause some crashes, but the lethal problems of light aircraft seem to go far beyond this. There has been little changes for decades in the way pilots are trained and licensed, for instance, even though flying has become more complex and even though crew error is blamed for nine of ten fatal crashes. The de cockpits also gets a lot of attention from critics. Studies show that many deaths could be prevented if most cockpits had even as many "crash-worthiness" features as the average automobile. Until 1978, for example, manufacturers weren't required to put shoulder harnesses in small planes; older small planes still don't have to have them. "It's tragic," says Richard Snyder, a University of Michagan anthropologist who heads the school's Highway Research Institute biomedical depa. He has studied ways to protect both auto and aircraft passengers since the 1950s and he belives Detroit has moved "15 years ahead" of the general aviation industry in crash safety. "People now are getting into their cars, wearing shoulder harnesses, and being surrounded with safety equipment and designs," Mr Snyder says. "Then they get into a small plane that probably doesn't have most of those features." OUT OF THE BLUE Tree, of course, flying in light planes is inherently more hazardous than driving a car. Engine failures or even such a minor problem as the operator getting a cramp can become life threatening. The weather can turn into a deadly enemy quickly and unpredictably. And plane makers point out that many pilots themselves are hardly insistent about getting better safety features. The builders often cite buyer's lack of entusiasm for one extra safe plane that was offered in the 1950s. The issue is an old industry-government battlefield, with the growing general aviation lobby contending that most proposed federal requirements for safety features needlessly limit individual freedom and raise the cost of private flying. In any case, there have been some gains in general aviation safety in recent years. Last years rate of 1.64 fatal crashes per 100,000 hours traveled was down from about two per 100,000 in 1975. But with increased flying in light craft, the total number has held at more than 675 each year. (Private airplanes account for most of these, with fewer than 1 involving such smaller segments of general aviation as helicopters. commuter planes and gliders). THE "SECOND COLLISION" If asked to imagine a light plane crash, a, lot of people might picture an explosive crackup against a cliff or a screaming dive out of the clouds. But such clearly nonsurvivable make up a fairly small proportion of the nearly 4,000 annual crashes. About one-third of last years fatal mishaps in general aviation occured at airports during takeoff or landing. And in 20% of the lethal accidents, rescuers found at least one survivor in the wreckage. In such cases, death appears to result from a phenomemnon called "the second collision." A poorly protected pilot or passenger lives through the initial impact with the ground but flails forward against the instrument panel or is thrown out of the plane and killed. How many these deaths might be averted by cockpit or cabin design is a matter of speculation. All fatal crashes of small planes are investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board or the FEderal Aviation Administration. But the agencies focus chiefly on the cause of the crash, not the cause of death, speding little time on such questions as whether preventing a second collision might have saved lives. Next year an NTSB experiment will require investigators to look more closely at such issues. But the safety board has already reached some conclusions. In a recent report it says that "the majority of serious injuries and deaths in general-avition aircraft crashes result from insufficient occupant restraint and inadequate crashworthiness designs of cockpit and cabin interiors." The report reccomends far stricter standards, especially regarding instalation of shoulder harnesses in older aircraft. Plane makers disagree sharply. "Line by line, that report is garbage," declnley Green, a lawyerfor the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, which represents Cessna Aircraft Co., Beech Aircraft Corp. and Piper Aircraft Corp. and other makers. Mr. Green says the report ignores improvements in cockpit design and underemphasizes such crash causes as bad weather and pilot error. This newpaper reviewed the first 184 complete reports filed with the NTSB during 1981. The sampling, covering more than a quarter of the fatal accidents in 1980, indicate that at least 33 or 18%, might have been survivableif a second collision had been prevented. An example if the case of 33 year old Douglas Bufkin. Flying alone in an older single engine Cessna 150 near his Evansville, Ind home in August 1980, he lost control and crashed into the Ohio River. Though he was wearing the planes cloth lap-belt, Mr. Bufkin was thrown from the cockpit and killed. Local officials's medical report, summarized in the NTSB report, suggested that Mr. Bufkin might have lived had his olf fashion metal on cloth seat-belt buckle held. The friction buckle apparently slid open with theimpact. The NTSB, however didn't note the seat-belt problem, simply blaming the accident on pilot error. Hazards found in other crashes include jammed escape hatches, sharp or protruding objects in the cockpit, post crash fires and seats breaking loose (especially when the seat-belt is attatched to the seat, as it still is in some planes). CAUTION TO THE WINDS? In a substantial number of accidents, pilots and passengers who must have known that they were going to crash-land didn't even use all available harnesses or belts. (The FAA now requires belts to be fastened for takeoff and landing, but the rule is considered unenforcable.) Perhaps such a disregard for protective gear reflects a caution-to-the-wind attitude that is part of flying a plane in the first place, as some industry people say. Or it could be partly the restraint systems design, as suggested by Charles Miller, a researcher with System Safety, Inc., a McLean, VA consulting concern. He argues that seat belts and harnesses in some planes are "thrown together to meet an antiquated specification" rather than designed to be comfortable enough that pilots will use them. As it happens, early research into ways to survive light plane crashes in the 1940s and 1950s had strong support from some manufacturers, at least until one of them tried to turn crash safety into a selling point. The research began over 40 years ago with a Cornell University Engineer, Hugh DeHaven, who had barely escaped death in a crackup as a young World War I pilot. he developed a set of "packaging principles" for a planes human cargo, among them a strong "cage" around occupants, energy absorbing seats that are anchored firmly, shoulder harnesses, and crushable airframe sections in front of the cockpit. A CASE HISTORY The idined momemntum when Army rocket sled research proved that a strapped in human body could withstand deceleration forces 40 times the force of gravity, refered to as 40 Gs. Only 6% of light plane crashes involve more force than that, Prof. Snyder of Michigan estimates. In 1951, Beech went all out to use the De Haven program in its Bonanza and other models, offering as standard equipment such features as double shoulder harnesses. Beech even madea promotional film introducing "Elmer", a dummy that had "survived" its crash testing. Pilots stayed away from the planes in flocks. Of the fliers who did pay a premium for the sturdy plane, many "requested us to remove the shoulder harnesses," says C.A. Rembleske, Beech Senior vice president for engineering. After seven years the company finally made the harness optional instead of standard, he says, and "not a single customer opted to but it." Ever since, many industry executives have been convinced that safety down't sell. CROP DUSTERS ARE DIFFERENT Nevertheless, some improvements have been made in crash protection desgns. Bulky harnesses have been replaced by retractable "inertial reels" devices on newer planes, and some energy absorbing cockpit material is available. But those developments were the result of automobile research, the industry's critics say. And when plane makers install a better safety design, their arketing programs don't stress it. "We design and buld these airplanes to make them airwothy, not to make them crash-worthy," says Ron Neal, the senior vice president for engineering of Gates Learjet Corp. John Berwick, Cessna's chief engineer adds, "We make a Cessna comfortable and non-fatiguing and design it respond in a normal manner. That's safety related too." FAA Chairman J. Lynn Helms, formerly the chairman of Piper Aircraft, hasn't made himself available for the interviews on the topic of general aviation safety. An FAA spokeman, however, says that the "entire matter" of small plane safety - from training requiremnts to standards for cockpit design - was under review before the air traffic controllers' strike hit. Just maintaining the air-transportation system during the strike has held top priority for the past four months, he adds. Manufacturers dp have the technology to build extremely crash-worthy planes. They have been making them for years for cropdusting. That hazardous low-level flying used to "kill people like you wouldn't believe," says Clyde Tuomela, a former Amvy test pilot who now heads the California Agricultural Aircraft Association. "Now these planes rarely kill, although pilots still wreck them like crazy," he says. In recent years, the agricultural-aircraft rate of just over one fatal accident for each 100,000 hours flown has been well under that for general aviation as a whole. Many of today's crop duster planes have 40-G cockpits, rather than the 9-G structure that is required by the FAA for normal aircraft. Often the cockpit is located far back in the airframe to provide plenty of metal in front of the pilot to absorb the energy of a crash. Special wide shoulder harnesses and strong resilent seats help protect too. Crop dusters pay for such safety, of course. Cessna basic Ag Truck model sells for $80,650. This is about four times the price of its smallest private plane, although not all of the price difference is due to safety features. Wayne Handley, who owns a crop-dusting service in Greenfield, Calif., has a pilot who would gladly pay the extra cost himself. Two years ago, the pilot's plane hit an irrigation standpipe, turned a cartwheel and "was smashed do badly that you couldn't imagine anyone could live through it," Mr. Handley recalls. Yet the flier walked away. What if he had been flying a standard general-avition plane? "I wouldn't like to think about that," Mr. Handley says. [This article was accompanied with the following] THE SAFETY BOARD CHECKS ON A CRASH, BUT WHO CAN KNOW WHAT CAUSED IT? By a Wall Street Journal Staff Reporter BIG BEAR CITY, Calif. - The smell of scorched earth still is heavy as two federal investigators scale the steep rim of the canyon. Pulses pounding and lungs pumping, they finally spot the mangled red, white and blue tail section of the Beech Sundowner. "It seem like nobody crashes near the road anymore,: says Wally Funk, managinga last nervous chuckle before th grisly task to come. She is the National Transportation Safety Board agen in charge of this investigation, teamed with Federal Aviation Administration field officer R.C. Morton. (A Beech Aircraft Corp. representative, also invited, shows up at the site separately.) About a third of the 700 or so fatal general aviation accidents actually happen at or near an airport, and many others involve crash landings close to town. But a case like this literally falls out of the clear blue sky, leaving only scattered metal scraps. While all fatal crashes are investigated, they are rarely explained fully. A SKEPTICAL VIEW Fustrated aviation safety experts such as Richard Snyder of the University of Michigan, might call that an understatement. He finds the NTSB's report "almost useless" in helping find root causes of fatalities, such as structural or mechanical failures, lack of pilot training or poor passenger restraint systems. Because of the hurried way investigations are conducted, he says, the determination that 90% of fatal general aviation crashes reflect pilot error "should be treated with suspision." But considering the destruction here - the unwitnessed early-morning crash a day earlier spaked a six acre brushfire - Miss Funk comes up with quite a few details. Diagramming broken trees and the scatter path of landing gear, wing and other fragments helps her estimate an angle of impact. She concludes that the pilot apparently didn't make a last ditch effort to clear the canyon wall. In the wreckage, MIss Funk finds that the control cable running from the cockpit to the tail section haven't been severed, and from the way the propeller is bent, she determines that the plane was under full power when it hit. A phone call to the FAA data center in Oklahoma City has identified the owner of the plane, Sidney Long of San Diego. The medical examiner, who removed the bodies, has identified two occupants, Mr. Long and his wife Lois. Another phone call to Mr. Long's sister, has disclosed that the couple had been ona a mid-week outing to an area of dry lake beds north of here. "WE'LL NEVER KNOW" Her best guess about the cause, after two days of work on the case: The pilot simply failed to plan on crossing such a high ridge and misjudged the clearance. "But why they hit the mountain, I suppose, we'll never know," she confides. Researchers understand the pressures of such official investigations, but still would like to see more people assigned to cases. Miss Funk is called away to another light plane crash the next day. The brief report she files that week on the Big Bear crash will serve as an even briefer "probably cause" determination by the full safety board in Washington, which won't be issued until early next year because of the large backlog of accidents. Far more detailed information emerges in airliner crash invesigations, such as the NTSB study of the American Airlines DC10 crash two years ago in Chicago blaming faulty engine maintenance procedures. Brent Silver, an aviation safety writer, is encouraged that the board plans to increase its emphasis on studying "crash-worthiness" factors in general aviation investigations next year. "After all," he says, "when you bury the problems with the pilot, you're really not going to have much of a safety lesson." [This is the second part] DEADLY SKIES CRITICS OF SAFETY RECORD OF SMALL PLANES BLAMES FAA, PILOT TRAINING LICENSING RULES DATE TO 1938: SOME SAY STUDENTS PRACTICE HANDLING PERILS WOULD SIMULATORS BE A HELP? By Roy J. Harris, Jr. LONG BEACH, Calif. - From his post 120 feet above Municipal airport, air traffic controller LArry Iacoucci is lining up a Piper. Cherokee for a landing on runway 25L. Abruptly, he orders the pilot to circle for another approach. Pointing to a little Beechcraft just touching down on Runway 30, directly across the Piper's landing path. Mr. Iacoucci mutters, "Where's this guy come from?" The Beechvraft's pilot, apparently a student making practice landings, had neglected to tell the controller of his arrival. But the incident hardly raises eyebrows in the tower, where four other persons are at work as soft country music plays in the background. "It isn't a flagrant violation,: says Kitty Kuhlman, the acting tower chief. "It's just the kind of thing we have to watch for up here." Were an airliner to arrive unannounced at Los Angeles International Airport, just up the coast from here, the matter wouldn't be be so swiftly forgotten. Although Long Beach is among the country's busiest airports, the great majority of its 1,700 daily takeoof and landings involve not jetliners but light civilian aircraft, the kind collectively known as general aviation. The way the Federal Aviation Administration treats pilot carelessness is only one of the differences between the regulation of airlines and that of general aviation. Some critics say a lax government attitude - along with poor cockpit design and idustry opposition to being regulated - contributes to a casualty record that is the worst of a@@@@@\DD@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@X@@@@estigates crashes. And even if the official investigation of a light plane accident if often superficial, they say the finding of pilot error in 90% of fatal crashes is an indictment of the training of new fliers. "The world has changed a lot, but we still have a 1930s training program for general aviation pilots," says Clyde Tuomela, a member of the society of Experimental TEst Pilots and the executive director of the CAlifornia Agricultural Aircraft Association. The former Navy flier and instructor helped draft a recent safety report for the test-pilot group that speaks of "an epidemic of unnecessary deaths" and urges other pilots not to accept "the present high incidence of accidynts and fatalities in general aviation as inevitable." (Such accidents claim about 27 lives a week.) But the 1,500 member test-pilot group is somewhat unusual in its concern about general aviation safety. Whether because they are reluctant to dwell on the grusome realities of crash survivability of whether they tend to overrate their flying ability, most pilots shun talking about the high death toll in flying small planes. RIGHT TO DIE? Federal officials try from time to time to strenthen safety regulations. But they meet heavy resistance from industry and pilot lobbyists in Washington, says Langhorn Bond, the chief of the FAA in the Carter Administration. He says he eventually gave up on advancing light plane safety much in the face of industry and pilot opposition, figuring that "if people want to kill themselves, I guess they ought to have that right." Today, Mr. Bond concedes he might have tried harder. "My emphasis on general avition safety wasn't something I would look back on with pride to my grandchildren," he says. Mr. Bond's sucessor, former Piper Aircraft Corp. Chairman J. Lynn Helms, hasn't spoken out publicly on the general aviation safety issue. Light plane flying certainly doesn't espace string regulation by being too small to bother with. The 211,000 general aviation aircraft in the U.S. total 58 times the number of airliners. There are 827,000 pilots in the country - only 8% of them employed by airlines - and more than 50,000 persons are newly certified each year to fly private aircraft. WHO THE PILOTS ARE A survey several years ago by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, which believes it represents a cross section of general aviation pilots, determined that 86% are part time fliers. About 20% of pilots are members of professions, espcially doctors and lawyers, and another 55% are executives or managers. The association figures the average pilot is 43 years old and earns $50,000. But how well is the pilot trained to fly? A student can win a private pilot's license for about $2,000 generally taking several months to complete the lessons. At a minimum, training involves 20 hours with an instructor and 20 solo hours, although a tough instructor ususally requires 50 to 70 total hours. The FAA has given up much of its control over new pilot certification. The agency designates about 1,800 private pilots to check out students and approve them for licenses. FAA employees still perform a few check-rides, but some in the agency suggest that the quality of licensing would be higher if the job weren't farmed out. "Some of the private-pilot examiners are doing nothing but check-rides" and don't give students much guidance about real world problems, says one California based FAA man, who doesn't want to be identifies. When he started at the agency a decade ago, the official says, FAA people did nearly all the licensing and were more in touch with the quality of flight training being given. These days, he finds his job in large part is paperwork. "Now we we don't have a sampling of wha's going on out there. And for certain the system and the airplanes have become vastly more complex." About one pilot in 15 is certified by the FAA as a flight instructor. But the FAA doesn't require formal review of teaching performance, and only attendance at a seminar is needed for recertification. Former FAA chief Bond feels that's one reason that "the quality of instruction is uneven." Mr. Bond believes that "there are a million ways to toughen the standards." The FAA hasn't performed a major overhaul of its basic licesing requirements since the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938. The only innovations in training are the ones teachers themselves inject. Some instructors worry that flying lessons have become so formularized over the years that students are learning how to pass examinations rather than how to manage themselves in the skies. Experiencing hazardous situations is the key to good training, some instructors say. The FAA requires that a trainee learn to deal with a "stall", the chilling loss of aerodynamic lift that can result from flying too slow. The student is also expected to fly "under the hood" - with his vision obscured so that he must depend on cockpit instrumentation for navigation. But a full instrument flight rating takes much more specialized training, and new pilots are supposed to avoid "weather" and low visibility conditions. Nevertheless, about 40% of fatal accidents in general aviation are weather related, many of them involving new pilots. A National Transportation Safety Board finding of "pilot error" includes not only blatant pilot error but also such cases as an inexperienced pilot flying into bad weather, stalling or even overloading his plane. CORPORATE FLYING Such things rarely happen to professional light-plane pilots. MOst corporate pilots, for instance, have periodic training sessions given by makers of the new sophisticated planes they fly. And NTSM figures show corporate flying has the lowest rate of fatal accidents in general aviation - under 0.5 per 100,000 hours flown. Pleasure flying averages nearly four fatal crashes per 100,000 hours. Although the FAA doesn't officially concede that training is a big problem area, the agency is studying possible improvements and could call for a major rewrite of requirements, says Bernard Geier, the chief of general aviation division of the FAA's Office of Flight Operations. "We're looking at innovative ideas on how to best improve training," he says, adding that one study comissioned by the agency even involves "whether pilot judgement is something that can be taught." There also is some concern that the two year flight review required in 1973 for all private pilots is too informal and may fail to catch major flying deficiencies. For now, the FAA says, seminars sponsored jointly with the aircraft manufacturers make safety instruction available to all fliers, although attendance is voluntary. A spokeman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, however, says that group considers government requirements for getting a license to be too stringent rather than too weak. He says much of the material in FAA examinations isn't used in the normal course of private flying. WHY NOT SIMULATORS? One training innovation some safety advocates suggest is the use of simulators, the computerized devices that enable a pilot in a stationary "cockpit" to deal with various flying conditions protrayed on a film in front of him. In military instruction, pilots using simulators repeatedly practice such tasks as flying out of bad weather and correcting for stalls. "Simulators are a great way to force a student into a stessful situation without endangering him," says Mr. Tuomela of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. He would like to see "centers of learning all over the country" where general aviation student pilots would have to use simulators before they could get a license. It's a tall order for now. Simulators are widely usee for training pilots of sophisticated general aviation jets, but they aren't available for the lower en plane makers' product line. Those smaller, single engine planes are the ones new pilots fly. Companies that make flight simulators say that eventually small propellor planes will have simulators of their own for use in basic pilot training. But now there's no demand for them; flight schools make ther money selling flying time, and given a chance to buy a simulator, they would prefer to spend the money on new airlplanes. CONTROLLERS' STRIKE The FAA hasn't spoken out on the issue on the use of simulators in pilot licensing. Like other U.S. agencies, the FAA is undergoing budget cuts, and they could even threaten the existing programs related to small plane flying. The agencies bigest concern at the moment is keeping airport towers operating as smoothly as possible without the air-traffic controllers who struck in August. Here at Long BEach Municipal, there were 23 controllers before the strike; now, eight non striking controllers and four FAA supervisors runthe tower. Every other week, they put in six days. At work, they take more frequent breaks to stay alert and consume ten pots of coffee a day. There have been no near misses or "system erros" involving planes getting too close, according to Miss Kuhlman, the acting tower chief. In the nation as a whole, midair collisions and control tower errors (which account for less than 1% of general aviation accidents each year) apparently haven't increased lately. The FAA has imposed some restriction on general aviation flying done under instrument flight rules, which involves the filing of a flight plan and which is usually done at higher altitudes; but it hasn't restricted flying under visual flight rules. WHAT LIES AHEAD As controllers see it, lapses by pilots - such as the case of that unannounced Beechcraft that Mr. Iacoussi spotted - are the source of most of the towers's worries. "If there's one primary problem," says Miss Kuhlman "it's communications with the pilot. Sometimes he just doesn't radio his intentions." Even with less regulation of general aviation, rather than more, likely in the Reagan administration years, some aviation-safety experts are encouraged about the future. Youngsters who have grown up with electronics such as video games and driving school simulators may be ripe for simulators when they learn to fly, and flight schools could be spurred to modernize. At the same time, the cost of simulators - which now runs over a million dollars for the most sophisticated - will no doubt fall as the technology improves. Further, pilots interest in safety issues appears to have grown in recent years. Several groups have financed studies on how to reduce the dangers of flying. Some pilots say the consumer movement finally is coming to the light-aircraft industry. Aviation Consumer magazine, which investigates a wide range of general aviation safety problems, and often criticizes manufacturers and the FAA, has seen its circulation climb nearly 75% in five years, to 36,000. Brent Silver, an aviation-safety consultant and flight instructor who writes on safety issues for the magazine, says people are only beginning to recognize that flying small planes isn't very safe. (The National Safety Council once determined that, although the number of traffic deaths was much higher, on the basis of passenger-miles travelled, the general aviation safet record was 13 times worse than for cars.) When Mr, Silver learned to fly, would-be pilots were told that "the most dangerous part of your trip is the drive to the airport." Since becoming a student of aviation safety, he says, he has learned that "statistically that isn't so." "I think pilots are drawn to flying because of the aura of danger," Mr. Silver speculates. "But we don't actually want it to be dangerous." [Comments, anyone? --- Pete]