While agencies such as the Transportation Security Administration appear to be doing their utmost to keep up with the evolving threats of terrorism and make air travel as safe as possible, other potential threats to the well-being of those who fly are perhaps not being confronted as assiduously. July 17th was the tenth anniversary of the crash of TWA flight 800, which all available evidence indicates occurred as the result of a buildup of vapors in the fuel tank and their subsequent ignition. In the intervening years, there appears to have been much study of this disaster but limited action to ensure that another such tragedy does not recur, as reported last month by Sylvia Adcock in Newsday:
Government safety efforts during the last decade have done little to prevent an explosion similar to the one that brought down TWA Flight 800, and fuel tank designs on commercial jets still fall short of the U.S. government’s own safety goals, a prestigious lab recently concluded.
The report by Sandia National Laboratories — whose experts are in charge of safeguarding the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons — found that most fuel tank explosions, while rare, could not be eliminated under current regulations.
“We felt like, with all the work done, it’s still not adequate,� said John Hickey, director of aircraft certification for the Federal Aviation Administration, which commissioned the Sandia study. Current regulations “still leave us far short of the goal.�
But while the FAA has used the Sandia conclusions to bolster its argument that airlines need to install a system designed to eliminate flammable vapors, it hasn’t been done. Years of lobbying, coupled with a slow-moving bureaucracy, have combined to prevent the FAA from enforcing such a safety measure.
Even now, as the agency appears poised to require the system on all commercial jets, the airlines say it is too costly and unnecessary. If forced to comply, they want 10 years to do so instead of the proposed seven. Industry groups say Sandia’s conclusions are exaggerated.
Rep. Tim Bishop, (D-Southampton) has called for Congressional hearings on the delays. “Ten years after the Flight 800 disaster, the FAA still has not fixed the problem. That is unacceptable to me and should be to my colleagues as well,� Bishop said in a prepared statement. [full text]
A couple of weeks after the publication of this article, Newsday ran an editorial by David Evans, an aviation expert, who expressed similar concerns about the inadequate response to the crash of Flight 800. Here is a portion of what he had to say:
10 years after Flight 800, just hot air
Now, 10 years after the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board is mightily frustrated with the lack of progress in efforts to improve fuel tank safety. “The most prominent issues raised by the TWA 800 accident concern protection against flammable fuel tank vapors and aging electrical systems,� the NTSB told the Federal Aviation Administration earlier this year.
What has the FAA done to address those issues in the years since the Flight 800 tragedy?
There have been endless and earnest meetings, and various directives have been issued seeking to prevent ignition sources in fuel tanks. But the FAA has only issued a proposed requirement to prevent fuel-tank explosions through an “inertingâ€? process that fills voids in the tanks with nitrogen-enriched air. It also has left airline manufacturers to their own devices by only proposing – not yet requiring – inspections of aircraft wiring.
On its new B787, Boeing is installing an inerting system for both the center section and the wing fuel tanks. European manufacturer Airbus has designed the A380 double-decker without a center wing tank and claims it has eliminated all potential sources of ignition from its wing tanks so the weight and complexity of an inerting system is not necessary.
Thus, we come to one of the problems the FAA has created for itself. The agency has suggested that inerting systems are needed only for center tanks with nearby heat sources (such as air-conditioning packs, which warmed the fuel vapors on TWA 800). But the NTSB has recommended that flammable vapors be eliminated from all tanks.
The May 4 explosion of a Transmile Airlines B727 at Bangalore, India, in which a wing tank exploded as the airplane was being repositioned for ground maintenance, seemed to bolster the NTSB position. In a July 20 letter to the FAA, the NTSB, which was supporting a probe by Indian aviation authorities, said investigation of the incident “revealed that the ignition occurred where [fuel] pump motor wires had melted though aluminum conduit, exposing the fuel vapors to potential ignition energy.� Although the aircraft had been modified in accordance with an FAA directive to prevent the wiring problem, the design change was clearly ineffective. Inerting is necessary, the NTSB said. [full text]
Another safety issue that is perhaps being given short shrift by the airline industry is the aging of aircraft and the various problems associated with such. The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a piece earlier this month on an FAA research program being conducted at Drexel University that is looking into the problem of metal fatigue, a common by-product of aging and extended use. Here is an excerpt from that article:
Drexel works to make aging planes safer
In 1988, an 18-foot section of an Aloha Airlines aircraft tore apart in midair, sucking a flight attendant out of the plane and injuring dozens of terrified passengers. The culprit: a phenomenon known as fatigue.
The accident has spawned years of research, including the Drexel-FAA program, and a new proposal that is causing some turbulence in the industry. In April, for the first time, the FAA proposed limiting how long commercial airplanes could fly.
Most old planes are being phased out anyway; their inefficient engines aren’t viable with today’s high fuel prices, industry analyst Robert W. Mann Jr. said. And airlines can get extensions as long as tests show a model is safe to fly.
But the rule, which the FAA can enact after reviewing comments due in September, would be a significant change for an industry that has long insisted its planes are safe to fly “indefinitely,� so long as they are well maintained. [full text]
At times, such insistence smacks more of resistance, which is understandable in some measure, given the significant financial and logistical pressures now faced by the airline industry. Nonetheless, safety must remain the paramount concern. Both the airline industry and the federal agencies charged with their oversight have an obligation to ensure that those who take to the skies are protected not just from the threat of terrorism but also from the threat of inadequate aircraft design and maintenance. To ignore one or the other, or to allow politics to cloud judgment, would be to invite further senseless tragedy.
Kmareka.com 
In the meantime, learn how the bush tried to cut bomb detection funds.
Link:
It’s all about money, people. Money. Nothing else matters to this group, which consists of the bush and his corporate puppet-masters.
Prior to 9/11, the airlines refused to harden the doors to jet cockpits, because it would cost too much money.
Every time I think that maybe–just maybe–I’ve gotten too cynical, I see something like this to refute the idea.
You are barking up the wrong tree. There is far more evidence that TWA 800 was brought down by a shoulder fired missile than a fuel tank fumes explosion.
CDR William S. Donaldson III, USN (Ret), an experienced aviation crash investigator, compiled a mountain of evidence pointing to a missile impact before his untimely death from a brain tumor in 2001. A Google search of his name will disclose much of this evidence, including the likelihood that this was an Iranian payback for the loss of their airliner shot down by U.S. Navy missile.
Once again our government engages in lies and cover-ups to conceal the politically devastating truth that enemy terrorists successfully smuggled in deadly missile(s) and destroyed one of our airliners from domestic soil.