Between fiscal years 1994-1996, 10 U.S. Part 121 air carriers suffered 16 fatal accidents where 800 people were killed, including two in 1996, the TWA 800 disaster off Long Island, NY, and the ValuJet crash in the Florida Everglades that together took 375 lives.
The series of fatal accidents prompted a call for action at the federal level, with two U.S. government reports providing the framework for the formation of the Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST).
The White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security Report released in February 1996 challenged the government and industry to reduce the fatal accident rate 80 percent over a decade.
The National Civil Aviation Review Commission Report followed up in December with a recommendation that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and industry work together to develop a comprehensive integrated safety plan to implement many existing safety recommendations and develop performance measures and milestones to assess progress in meeting the lofty safety goal. The Commission also said that the global nature of aviation demands that aviation safety needs to be exported.
So what has transpired over the last decade? Although the numbers don’t exactly match, the end result does, which is the fact that the fatal U.S. air carrier accident rate has been cut by 65 percent over the past 10 years. While pleased with the numbers, all those involved with air safety say more needs to be done and the work set out by the CAST and others will continue.
The deadline for achieving the accident reduction goal was midnight Sept. 29, the end of the fiscal year 2007. An accident rate of about 65 percent was achieved, one fatal accident in about 4.5 million departures, from one in nearly two million in 1997. Expressed a different way, last year the U.S. recorded 0.223 total accidents and 0.018 fatal accidents, per 100,000 departures. The International Air Transport Association called 2006 the safest year ever for world aviation with 1.0 accidents per 1.5 million departures and 0.65 fatal accidents for every one million departures.
Robert A. Sturgell, the acting federal aviation administrator, said recently that in the past 10 years, the commercial fatal accident rate has dropped 57 percent. In the past three years, the U.S. averaged approximately two fatal accidents per year and 28 deaths per year. “While any loss of life is tragic, this statistic is remarkable, given that there are well over 100,000 aircraft operations per day,” said Sturgell.
“This is the golden age of safety, the safest period in the safest mode in the history of the world,” said Marion Blakey before giving up the top job at the FAA.
But airline accidents and incidents still occur both in and out of the United States. MD-82 engines still catch fire and Congolese transports still crash on takeoff. Runway excursions are hardly a thing of the past, and work continues on halting runway incursions. See related articles in this issue of Air Safety Week for details regarding air carrier accident/incidents over the past 10 years.
Founded in 1998, the Commercial Aviation Safety Team has developed an integrated, data-driven strategy to reduce the commercial aviation fatality risk in the U.S. and promote new government and industry safety initiatives throughout the world. CAST’s goal is to maintain a continuous reduction in fatality risk in the U.S. and international commercial aviation beyond 2007.
The ‘CAST of characters’ include: the FAA, European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA/JAA), NASA, Transport Canada and the Pentagon. The Air Line Pilots Association, Allied Pilot Association, International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association are also parties to the cause.
Industry CAST members include the Aerospace Industries Association, Airbus, the Air Transport Association, Boeing, the Flight Safety Foundation, General Electric Aircraft Engines and the Regional Airline Association. Although not an official CAST member, the National Transportation Safety Board supports the safety team’s work.
CAST is co-chaired by Peggy Gilligan, deputy associate administrator for the FAA’s Office of Aviation Safety. Captain Henry P. Krakowski, until recently vice present for flight operations at United Airlines, had been the other chair, but assumed command of the FAA’s air traffic organization in early October.
Gilligan is “very satisfied” with the accident rate reduction. We believe we’ve effectively reduced the (aviation accident) risk.”
She said CAST’s work was “a fairly elaborate process. We looked at a series of accidents with common elements, sought potential improvements that might address the causes of the accidents, searching for workable and viable items to implement.”
Jay Pardee, director of the FAA’s Office of Safety Analysis, said over 500 accidents were studied. “We identified contributing and causal factors for each, established ‘indicators’ and set about creating a database to monitor the frequency of the underlying problems.”
CAST then looked for indicators of effectiveness and measured implemented solutions. “So we measured implementation and effectiveness,” he stated.
Subtle problems were discovered in looking for patterns. For example, airliners approaching Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina were all coming in fast and at a steep angle. The ‘unstabilized approaches caused pilots to work flight controls while landing. Analysis of flight data showed the practice was universal. The FAA changed the approach procedure.
CAST has evolved to the point that the group is moving beyond the “historic” approach of examining past accident data to a more proactive approach that will focus on risk prediction and mitigation strategies.
“You can’t wait for accidents to occur and then decide what happened and why it happened, proposing rules that take effect three years down the road,” says Gilligan. “We need to better understand the risks that occur every day and intervene ahead of time to prevent catastrophic failures.”
Gilligan says “it is a matter of gerbils and gremlins. The gerbils work in the background, looking for safety risk that should have been reduced. They point out recurrences. That’s how you continue to evaluate those areas you think you made an impact on.
“On the other hand, the gremlins look at the unknowns. They develop tools to watch for anomalies never seen before. They alert us to areas of risk not previously identified,” she added.
As the figures would indicate, the air safety measures taken over the past decade have helped keep at bay the ghosts and goblins of Christmas past.