 1 AIRCRAFT EMERGENCY TIPS FOR TRAVELERS
 2 safety tips
 
\1 AIRCRAFT EMERGENCY TIPS FOR TRAVELERS

There are certain rows of the aircraft designated as exit rows. You can tell if you are in an exit row if there is an emergency exit around the window. People seating in exit rows should be prepared to assist the flight attendants and other passengers should the aircraft need to be evacuated in an emergency. An exit row passenger should be physically capable of opening the heavy, bulky exit row door, should be able to assist passengers, should be able to see and hear instructions shouted by the flight attendants.

The passenger must be over the age of 15 If you feel qualified to help in the case of an emergency, and you find yourself seated in an exit row, then just stay put. However, if you are disabled, easily flustered, elderly or for any reason at all unwilling to sit in the exit row, just let the flight attendants know and they will change your seat with someone else. You don't have to give any reason. Just say you don't want to do it and would like a change. After all, switching seats and letting a more experienced traveler sit in the exit row might end up being beneficial to all passengers should an emergency arise.

As the airplane is moving out to the runway, the flight attendants will give you a brief safety demonstration. The high point is the operation of the oxygen mask. I have been on hundreds of flights. NEVER, EVER, have I seen the oxygen masks in use. There are people on this board who could tell you the same thing. However, there is always the first time. If the plane loses oxygen pressure for any reason, the oxygen masks will drop down out of the small overhead compartment. (Look up in your seat and you will see a small panel, which covers the compartment.) 

If that happens, put the mask over your nose and mouth. You might have to tug slightly on the gas line to start the flow of gas. (This way, gas does not flow to empty seats.) There is an elastic band on the mask, which should go behind your head. Relax, and breathe normally. If you are seated next to someone who might need some assistance, such as a child, an individual with limited physical or mental capabilities or just a sleepy, groggy spouse, you should put your own mask on first, then breathe normally as you assist the other person. That way, if the other struggles, you will have a steady flow of oxygen as you fight the person to get their mask on. Remember, this is an extremely infrequent occurrence.

Many, many frequent flyers can say they have never seen the oxygen masks drop. Our airplane seat is equipped with a seat belt. You should buckle the seat belt when you sit down, and it should remain buckled during take off, landing, or when there is turbulence. If you are unsure, there are lighted "seat belt" signs through the aircraft. If the sign is lit up, then buckle up. If it is not lit up, you can unbuckle it. However, many experienced flyers leave it buckled whenever they are in their seat. I do, too. Why not? One tip about seat belts:If you decided to sleep, put your blanket over your body, then buckle the seat belt over the blanket. If, later during the flight, the seat belt light comes on, the flight attendants will be able to see you are buckled up without having to remove the blanket and wake you up.

When you sit in your seat, do a quick check to see where your nearest emergency exit is. Figure that the aircraft might be full of smoke, or it might be dark with no interior lights. Therefore, mentally count the seats so you could find your way in smoke or the dark. ("Hmmmm...one, two, three, four rows then turn right.") Then relax, and pull out your book or magazine. There is one final, very important point to make. On most US domestic flights, smoking is prohibited. On some international flights, smoking is allowed only in certain designated smoking rows. On those flights you may smoke only while seated in your seat, but not in the aisles. If you are standing with a lit cigarette, and there is a bump of unexpected turbulence, you might lose your balance and the cigarette might burn someone. You may only smoke cigarettes, but not pipes or cigars. 

In addition to smoking being prohibited from the aircraft, many air terminals are now banning smoking from all but a few places. The end result is that a passenger must go many hours without a puff. This drives people crazy. Some try to sneak a smoke in the airplane bathroom. Folks, this is one of the MOST DANGEROUS things you can do. The airplane bathroom is full of paper. The waste bin is full of used paper towels. The airplane is pressurized with oxygen. 

Throwing a smoldering cigarette into the waste paper bin turns the airplane into a flying bomb. The airlines have installed smoke detectors in the airplane bathrooms, and the flight attendants are authorized to break down the door with a fire extinguisher in their hands if the lavatory smoke detector goes off. Don't be an asshole trying to die in the bathroom.


How to Survive an Airplane Crash

According to the statistics, two-thirds of the people involved in air crashes survive. Approximately one-third of the third who do die could have survived if they had known what to do and almost all of these died from smoke or fire. If it seems certain the plane is going to crash, here's what to do while the plane is going down.

1. Put your seat belt on and fasten it as tightly as possible.

2. Check where all the emergency exits are, put them in order of priority and plan your route to each one. Interviews with survivors of air crashes confirm that the common element among the overwhelming majority was that they had a specific plan of action and followed through with it on their own. If you have time, study the emergency safety card; studies have shown that you are three times more likely to be injured during a crash if you haven't read the emergency safety card.

3. Take sharp pencils, pens out of your clothes and remove dentures, high-heeled shoes and eyeglasses.

4. Empty your bladder to reduce the chance of internal injury. 

5. If you don't have a personal smoke hood, moisten a handkerchief, headrest cover or shirttail, so if there's smoke after impact, you can hold it over your mouth. If no other liquids are handy, use your urine.

6. If you've got time, pack for outside the plane, such as a sweater or Coat to keep you warm and any medicines you will need.

7. Cover your head, preferably with a pillow. Then either cross your arms over your calves and grab your ankles or put your palms-forward, crossed wrists between your head and the seat in front of you. In the latter position, it's best to slide your feet forward until they touch the seat leg or under-seat baggage in front, so your legs are less likely to snap forward on impact. 

If you're still alive after the plane comes to a stop, that's when you should do the one thing which will most likely save your life, and that is, very simply, get out of there as fast as you can. In crash after crash in which the passengers survive impact, they just sit there, stunned, waiting to be told what to do. Often, the flight attendants, themselves stunned, fail to give directions right away. When the flight attendants finally do start talking, many of the passengers will still sit there as though in a trance. 

By the time the passengers finally get moving, the plane has filled with smoke, with flames and/or with panic-stricken fellow passengers trampling each other to get out. So, as soon as the plane comes to a stop, undo your seat belt, leap out of your seat and move quickly to the exit. Don't take anything with you; you'll need your hands free to keep your balance in the aisle as you step over bodies and luggage or find yourself being pushed from behind by panic-stricken passengers. If the aisle is blocked, walk over the backs of the seats.

Don't waste your time crawling on the floor to avoid any smoke; you'll only end up being trampled by and/or buried under all the other passengers who are suffocating. But if there is smoke, do keep your head down. You'll know you've arrived at the doors when the floor lights are red rather than white. Do not push the passengers in front of you. You won't get through any faster and will only increase the chance of your being punched in the face, trapped by squirming bodies in the aisle or, most seriously, stuck behind a blocked door (see below).

When you finally arrive at an exit door, if it's not open, take a quick look out the window to see if there's fire there. If there is, run to the other side of the plane and open the door there. For further information consider our book "

AIRLINE EVACUATIONS TRIGGER FEDERAL ALARM. HUNDREDS INJURED EACH YEAR ESCAPING PLANES, FAA SAYS.

Evacuations of commercial planes are occurring about every five days in the United States, prompting concerns that pilots may be making too hasty a decision to send passengers scampering off wings or down escape chutes where the risk of injury or even death is high.

Alarmed by the frequency of evacuations and the hazards posed, the Federal Aviation Administration has undertaken a major study of procedures, using 2,500 volunteers who are run through a variety of evacuation scenarios.

Meanwhile, an advisory committee is in the process of issuing new recommendations to the agency that will cover issues ranging from the difficulties passengers have opening the plane hatch to the safety instructions given by flight attendants before a plane departs.

Officials say a number of incidents in recent years underscore the need for the evaluation. When a Boeing 727 landed short of the runway at O'Hare International Airport and crashed into a light structure in February 1998, a life-raft storage bin in the ceiling fell open, blocking access to an exit. A flight attendant reported having to rock a separate exit to get the emergency slide to deploy. Some of the 23 injuries in the accident were evacuation-related, investigators said.

Two of the passengers killed during the crash-landing of an MD-82 in Little Rock, Ark., two years ago survived the impact, but died from smoke inhalation while trying to escape from the plane.

"How tragic to have survived an accident and to be killed while trying to get out of the airplane," said George Black, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, after surveying the crash debris in Little Rock.

More recently, a flight attendant died after falling to the runway in Miami from an Airbus A300 during an evacuation in November that was prompted by a suspected cabin pressure leak.

Nationwide, there were 519 precautionary evacuations by U.S.-registered air carriers from 1988 through 1996, according to the latest data available from the FAA. The 60 to 70 evacuations that occur each year represent a tiny fraction of the overall flight operations, but they affect thousands of passengers. Though the FAA and the safety board say totals figures aren't available, officials maintain several hundred individuals a year are hurt during evacuations.

90-second rule questioned - Safety watchdogs contend the management of most major airlines provides little or no guidance to pilots during simulator training to help the flight crews determine whether significant dangers exist that warrant evacuation, versus taxiing to a gate and simply opening the doors.

"No airline wants to put it down in writing or to even set parameters about when to bail out," said a pilot who has worked for several carriers.

The experts also question a blanket federal regulation that states passengers must be able to evacuate all types of commercial aircraft--from 50-seat regional jets to behemoth Boeing 747s with spiral staircases--within 90 seconds. The regulation may provide some peace of mind to passengers seated closely together, but the NTSB and other safety advocates contend the 90-second rule is arbitrary and may add to evacuation-related injuries.

"There's nothing wrong with the philosophy `When in doubt, get out,' but 99 percent of the evacuations are unnecessary because they are based on a rote checklist response instead of sound aeronautical decision-making," said Michael Hynes, an aviation consultant whom the FAA hired to help frame the problem.

"We are trying to get the airlines to change their thinking, such as when landing gear catch fire. Let it burn, because those things are designed to contain the fire and there's rarely a need to evacuate the passengers," Hynes said.

American Airlines' highly regarded flight training academy in Ft. Worth is one place the airline industry and federal regulators expect advances in evacuation procedures to emerge.

The challenge of improving the evacuation safety record is expected to become more difficult as the number of airline travelers is projected to exceed 1 billion a year by 2012, up from 733 million in 2000. Adding to the problem are aircraft manufacturers that design futuristic jumbo aircraft equipped with three aisles and multiple decks capable of carrying perhaps up to 1,000 people.

"The absolute number of aircraft evacuations is increasing because of the increase in total flying hours being flown," said Dr. James Whinnery, a researcher at the FAA's Civil Aeromedical Institute in Oklahoma City.

American's 11,000 pilots and 23,000 flight attendants undergo annual refresher training at the airline's academy on the campus of its Texas headquarters. Starting in September, the regimen will be repeated every nine months, said Robert Kudwa, vice president of flight. The FAA requires training every 13 months.

'My worst nightmare' The sprawling training complex features cockpit simulators and passenger cabins that can be depressurized, bounced around by computer-generated turbulence or filled with dense smoke. There also is a pool used to practice evacuating passengers into inflatable life rafts after ditching at sea.

"A water landing is definitely my worst nightmare," Onna Williams, who teaches emergency procedures to flight attendants, said as she pointed to 42-person rafts floating in the pool. Nearby, a raft full of flight attendants practiced cutting the tether of their rubber lifeboat from a burning and sinking fuselage. One member of the team caught a life-size infant doll that was thrown from the plane and immediately began massaging the mannequin to stimulate blood flow and raise body temperature.

Although more than 99 percent of the 26 million takeoffs and landings by U.S. carriers last year went routinely, a passive attitude about safety among passengers and a high failure rate of some emergency evacuation equipment threaten to increase the number of aviation disasters, experts said.

Safety board officials reported that half of the exit-row passengers surveyed after evacuations said they neither paid attention to the preflight safety instructions nor read the briefing card placed in every seat pocket. In addition, at least one emergency slide per plane malfunctioned in more than one-third of the evacuations that the safety board recently studied.

Officials said passengers also routinely endanger themselves and other evacuees by insisting on taking their carry-on baggage with them because, after all, many of them have a connecting flight to catch.

The safety board said in a March report that more than 95 percent of passengers survive airliner accidents and more people could be saved by reforms such as redesigning the safety placards and the pre-flight safety presentation.

White smoke often harmless - Engine fires and indications of smoke or fire in a cargo bay are the leading causes of evacuations, and they pose the biggest challenge for pilots to decide whether ordering an evacuation is the correct call, said Capt. Aubrey Landry, American's managing director of flight training standards.

Landry said white smoke is a fairly common occurrence and is generally harmless, often caused by overheating air-conditioning units. But in the wake of the TWA Flight 800 disaster five years ago, in which a spark is believed to have ignited fuel vapors that were superheated by air-conditioning packs, pilots and flight attendants have become skittish, Landry said.

Dilemma for pilots - "What am I going to do?" Landry said. "I don't know if this thing is about to erupt into flames or not. I cannot for sure pinpoint the source of the smoke. So do I dump the people out on the runway via the slides and take the risk that I may have a few badly broken bones? Or do I bet on the odds and say, `I think we're going to be OK'?"

"That's why we see one evacuation a week. The crew members are trying to be as cautious as they can be," he said.

The FAA, meanwhile, continues to resist some NTSB recommendations to improve passenger cabin safety. The FAA cited concerns about cost in rejecting a safety board proposal that would require the carriers to retrofit older planes to meet current fire-resistant standards.

And though FAA regulations require a minimum of 20 inches of clearance in the emergency exit rows so that passengers can flow through the hatch unimpeded, the agency has granted exemptions since 1995 allowing the airlines to reduce the width of the exit rows to only 13 inches.

The FAA also allows each airline to decide whether passengers opening the exit hatches should throw the doors out of the plane, eliminating the possibility that it would become an obstacle, or to place the hatch on a seat, which could pose a hindrance. As a result, most carriers instruct their flight attendants to tell passengers during an evacuation to keep the door inside the plane--not for safety, but to avoid damaging the wing.

Recognizing that the flow rate of evacuating passengers depends on how quickly the doors can be opened, Boeing Co. has designed an automatic overwing exit on its new 737s. Instead of requiring removal, the hinged door swings up and away from the fuselage, offering an unobstructed escape route. Safety officials at Southwest Airlines were so impressed by the door design that they voluntarily replaced the old-style doors on the airline's entire fleet.

Last year, six evacuations took place at O'Hare International Airport and one occurred at Midway Airport. None involved crashes, but were precautionary measures based on situations that ranged from the activation of a fire-warning indicator light to a tire blowout, the Chicago Department of Aviation said. No major injuries resulted from the events.

Airline crew members, and sometimes passengers, initiate many of the evacuations at U.S. airports out of fear that a life-threatening situation has developed, although no such emergency may exist and passengers would be safer remaining aboard the aircraft.

Passenger sets off panic - On April 19, 1998, at O'Hare, a 10-year-old boy suffered a broken arm and two other passengers aboard an American Airlines Boeing 727 received leg and ankle injuries as they jumped off a wing after a passenger yelled "fire," sparking a panicked evacuation that the pilots discovered only when door lights suddenly activated in the cockpit.

The passenger who started the stampede became alarmed when he saw residual fuel in an auxiliary power unit briefly ignite into a vertical flame near the wing, resulting in a frightening but completely harmless "torching" that is somewhat akin to a car backfiring.

Even when the emergency has been real, passengers have needlessly died trying to evacuate aircraft, the NTSB said.

Ten people on board a USAir 737 that collided with a commuter plane on a runway at Los Angeles International Airport in 1991 died while waiting in line to use an overwing exit. None of the passengers on the 737 was killed on impact, but 19 succumbed to smoke inhalation.

\2 safety tips

Travel by commercial airplane is among the safest ways to travel. But there are still some risks. To improve your chances of surviving in the event of a crash:

-  Sit near the wings, as the airplane is reinforced there to support the wings.

-  Wear natural-fiber clothes. Synthetics can melt or ignite, producing smoke and toxic fumes and causing burns.

-  Wear comfortable shoes or sneakers, without high heels. High heels can snag on the escape slide.

-  Bring your own infant safety seat. Use one which has been approved for use in motor vehicles AND aircraft. Don't use one which was made before Feb 26, 1985.

-  In the event of a crash, don't take no shit or other items with you. They can cause you to tumble on the slide, leading to broken bones or more serious injuries.

There are two things you should do every time you board a plane, since they vary from aircraft to aircraft:

-  Count the number of seats from you to the nearest exits, both in front of you and behind you. This will let you find the exits even if you've been blinded or the smoke is so thick you can't see the way out.

-  Locate your personal flotation device. It may be your seat cushion, or it may be an inflatable life vest in a plastic bag stored beneath your seat. Sometimes a life vest is stored in or under your armrest, especially in business or first class. If you personal flotation device is missing or damaged, bring this to the attention of the flight attendant before takeoff.

If you do this, you'll save yourself precious seconds in the event of a real emergency. Those seconds can mean the difference between life and death.

Fatal accidents involving plane crashes are extremely rare. The chances of your being on such a crash is less than one in a million, according to figures from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). 

During the past ten years there have been usually only one or two fatal crashes a year, involving no more than 300 deaths. In contrast, in a typical year there are more than 40,000 fatal automobile accidents in the US. Of course, these numbers aren't really comparable. A more accurate comparison would involve the fatal accident rates per passenger mile and per passenger trip. But even so, air transportation is definitely safer than ground transportation.

The airlines transport millions of passengers safely and cheaply.  Comfort, good food and promptness might just be too much to expect.  MERICAN AIRLINES runs 699 restaurants, and each has dozens of seats  with a really superb view, but in all of them, the food is lousy.  United boasts that it has removed a row of seats to make coach  passengers more comfortable, but its interior decorating is mediocre  at best. Continental shows lots of movies, but the selection (not to  mention the sound and the picture quality) is much better at the local cineplex. 

Catching a flight at Baltimore-Washington. The number of travelers on domestic airlines rose 40 percent in the 1990's.


How good are the airlines? It depends what you grade them on.  Passengers might be forgiven for being confused on this point; after  all, they expect to get more than just transportation. An airline  customer is different from the customers of most other kinds of  companies, being dependent for everything, from a place to sit to  pretzels to eat, even air to breathe. Most airlines do not distinguish  themselves in any of these categories.  But as transportation companies, they have a good product that is  selling well. The industry will record more than 600 million domestic  passenger "enplanements" this year, a statistic that counts a single  passenger walking onto a plane, whether that is the entire trip or one  leg. That number has risen sharply in the last few years, far faster  than economic growth or population growth, and will grow further in  years to come, as plane trips become more common than ship voyages or  intercity train rides ever were, and almost as ordinary as long drives  in the car. They move their customers at hundreds of miles an hour,  day and night, winter and summer, sometimes late but almost always  very safely.  And as the system grows, size helps. Collectively, the scheduled  carriers move nearly two million people a day in the United States, on  about 20,000 flights. As the system gets bigger, each flight is more  valuable to the public as a whole, because more people can connect to  it.  Still, the perception is that since the federal government deregulated  the industry, in 1978, service has declined. Alfred E. Kahn, a  professor emeritus of political economy at Cornell University, who was  instrumental in deregulation as the last chairman of the Civil  Aeronautics Board before its demise, says he has heard the argument  over and over. It was repeated quite eloquently, he said, in a letter  from a business executive who was an acquaintance, complaining about  "an unshaven and unwashed hippie" sitting next to him on a recent  flight. The executive, Mr. Kahn said, preferred the old days, when he  sat next to an empty seat.  Mr. Kahn said he answered the letter like this: "Before responding,  I'm waiting to hear from the hippie."  "The market is shifting out there," Mr. Kahn said in a telephone  interview. Often the first complaint people had in the years following  deregulation, he said, was that the planes were more crowded, often  with people who formerly did not fly. But that, he said, was "in a  genuine sense, a counterpart of the cheap fares we wanted people to  have."  In fact, in the decade before deregulation, planes on average flew  just over half full. In the 1990's they broke into the 70 percent  range and some are now above 80 percent full.  And that is certain to annoy passengers.  "The airline industry is a victim of its own success," said Clifford  Winston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes  in airlines and other transportation issues. With more traffic, he  said, "there is general tension in coach, people fighting for luggage  space, and even if the space is there, you've got to climb over  someone, and somebody's stuff is there, and you're in the middle row." 

The good and bad news is that fares are down, he said: "With lower  fares, you find people who couldn't do it before are now on the  plane." Those who flew when fares were regulated, and higher, remember  when planes were empty and airlines competed with amenities like  better meals.  Mr. Winston, in fact, argues that the level of complaints to the  government about airline service would be declining, but for the increasing crowding on planes. 

There are other reasons, of course. In fact, the airlines are the  companies everybody loves to hate. They charge prices many people find  reasonable -- unless the traveler has a specific date and time in mind  in the near future. When the airline knows the customer has little or  no scheduling flexibility, it is merciless, and with sophisticated  computer programs, the airlines always seem to know where demand will  appear and they can ration supply, to achieve high prices.  Another airline innovation, frequent flier miles, also bothers some  people. The miles may be the rubles of the American economy -- a  currency that is easier to earn than to spend on anything worthwhile,  since free seats are seldom available on popular routes at popular  times -- but the strategy has helped make the airline industry a  success, so other businesses, like hotel and rental car companies,  have followed.  Probably at the top of every traveler's list is safety, a field in  which the airlines excel. The Surface Transportation Policy Project, a  nonprofit group in Washington that lobbies for help for mass  transportation, calculated recently that the fatality rate per billion  miles traveled by air carriers was 0.2. Car travel was more than 50  times more dangerous, with 10.5 deaths per billion miles traveled.  That means that if you drive 10 miles to take a 300-mile flight, your  chance of death is higher in the car than on the plane. 

In fact, air travel is safer than every other mode but one, public city buses, which recorded deaths of 0.1 per billion miles traveled. By comparison, Amtrak was 0.5. Walking was somewhere between 147 to 316. 

Getting There: A Reality Check
 Those statistics give context to occasional catastrophes, like the  Alaska Airlines crash off Los Angeles in January, or reports of  aircraft parts that may not meet the required specifications.  The airlines are so safe, that you are arguably safer in the air than  on the ground. In some years, the biggest cause of death on planes is  heart attacks. There are about 60 such deaths a year, but that number  will probably fall as the airlines install defibrillators on board.  For people at risk of heart attacks, that may make a plane a safer  place to sit than their own living rooms.  They are likely to get safer yet, although not through any public  policy. The airlines are heavily regulated, but what drives them  hardest in directions that are good for passengers -- in everything  from flight safety to defibrillators -- is self-interest, not  government regulation.  Take the defibrillators, for example. On May 20, President Clinton  used his Saturday radio address to announce that the Federal Aviation  Administration would propose making the defibrillators mandatory on  all planes that carry at least one flight attendant. But most major  airlines already have them on most of their planes. A defibrillator  pays for itself quickly, they have determined, by reducing the number  of times a plane must land for a medical emergency. 

In the safety area, the F.A.A. proposes dozens of times a year to  require inspection or replacement of a part that has been found to be  causing trouble on some airplane somewhere. By the time those orders  reach major airlines, they have generally already begun the  inspections or replacements, and have often completed them, simply  because acting fast reduces the possibility of disrupted operations.  That does not make them timely, of course. Only about three-quarters  of planes arrive within 15 minutes of the scheduled time, and in bad  months, about one flight in 40 is canceled altogether. There are a  variety of reasons, but chief among them is congestion in the sky. Not  much of that can be blamed on the airlines. Part of the problem is on  the federal level; even the F.A.A. acknowledges that its air traffic  control system is antiquated and inadequate. Part is local; in the  last 20 years, only one major new airport has opened in the United States, Denver International. 

David R. Hinson, a former administrator of the F.A.A., has been  traveling the country lately arguing that every major airport should  be trying to triple its runway capacity, because it takes so long to  double the capacity, even more will be desperately needed by the time  that work is done. 

The airlines, in fact, don't like delays any more than passengers do.  Their crews fear gridlock, too. A story among pilots, with a ring to  it that is apocryphal but telling, deals with an airline nightmare  called "the death spiral." A pilot brings his plane in very late,  taxis to the gate and finds it occupied by another plane. The other  plane is ready to push back, but can't because it is waiting for its  crew. And who, asks the pilot waiting on the apron, is supposed to be  on the plane at the gate? "Well," says the dispatcher, "you are."

VIOLENCE

As violent, unruly flyers turn the friendly skies into a high-altitude riot, airlines are finally clamping down on air rage
 Like any seasoned flight attendant, Fiona Weir has had her share of disgruntled passengers. But Steven Handy, 37, an unemployed  Englishman who boarded an Airtours late-night flight from London to Spain six weeks ago, was a different breed. Apparently drunk at takeoff, he ignored Weir's warnings not to smoke in the lavatory, cursed her and demanded liquor, Weir says. Then, just as the plane was landing in Malaga, Handy reportedly smashed her over the head with a duty-free vodka bottle before being restrained by fellow passengers.
  Unfortunately, Handy, who's out on bail pending an investigation in Spain, isn't the only traveler venting air rage. Ten days ago, a drunken, unruly Finnish passenger on a Malev Hungarian flight died after the crew reportedly strapped him to his seat and injected him with tranquilizers. With record numbers of passengers taking to the skies and the busy holiday-travel season at hand, stressed-out travelers with less room to stretch are increasingly directing their anger at flight crews, punching an attendant, head butting a co-pilot or trying to break into the cockpit. "Passenger interference is the most pervasive security problem facing airlines," Captain Stephen Luckey of the Air Line Pilots Association testified before Congress. Though still relatively small, the number of incidents is estimated to have at
  least doubled in recent years. Nearly a thousand episodes took place within U.S. jurisdiction last year.
  The airlines are finally fighting back. Leading the way is Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Atlantic Airways. In the aftermath of the assault on Weir, who required 18 stitches, Branson engineered a
 British lifetime air-travel ban on Handy. As the industry convened last month in London to address the overall problem, he urged carriers to establish a worldwide air-rage database to blacklist the worst offenders. "There [must] be a deterrent against this behavior," Branson says.
  Some carriers have already taken action. Northwest Airlines has permanently blacklisted three violent travelers from flying. Yet prosecuting air rage isn't easy; many countries have no jurisdiction over a passenger who arrives on a foreign airline. In the U.S., the Justice Department is working harder to convict defendants; last summer a man who threw hot coffee on a flight attendant and tried to open an emergency door was fined $10,000 and sentenced to three years in prison. This fall British Airways began handing out
 "warning cards" to anyone getting dangerously out of control. Some airlines include a pair of plastic handcuffs as standard onboard equipment, and flight attendants on KLM and USAirways undergo training to deal with aggressive behavior.
  What accounts for this decline in decorum? Airlines run a virtually free, open bar in first and business class, where some of the nastiest episodes occur. The booze is supposed to keep customers
  calm but may be having the opposite effect on some. Others say being deprived of a different vice, cigarettes, is a major cause of unruliness. No wonder Austrian Airlines has said it will offer nicotine-substitute inhalers to passengers once a soon-to-come smoking ban takes effect. Then there are those who blame the airlines themselves. Says Hal Salfen, of the International Airline Passengers Association: "Flights are full, there are fewer flight attendants, and there's a general indifference toward the passenger." He sounds a little angry, doesn't he?

\3 Air Safety by Jack Keady, MBA

About The Author - Jack Keady is a transportation and marketing consultant for the airline and airport industries. His extensive experience includes long term resource planning and analysis for McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Company, manager of marketing development for American Airlines, and proposal writing for Lockheed Martin Corporation. His company, John J. Keady Transportation Consulting provides travel, airline and airport consulting together with logistics management and proposal writing services. He holds a B.S. from Northeastern University and an MBA from the Harvard School of Business Management. He is a member of the American Association of Airport Executives (AAAE), the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) , the Airports Council International (ACI) and the Wings Club.

The odds against dying in a commercial airliner are low and get lower every year. Depending on the carrier and continent, a US flyer has somewhere between a one-in-one-million and one-in-four-million chance of not surviving his flight. In every year more people are killed on the highways. In some years more people are killed by snakebites, lightning strikes or bee stings than by airliner. In some years no one dies in an airline crash. Then why all the headlines, why all the television exposure, why all the publicity, angst, and even panic over air safety?

One reason is that the public loves a conspiracy. Currently two or three conspiracy theories remain rippling through the aviation world; the first is that some mysterious negative force exists over Long Island east of JFK. If not, how and why else would three aircraft crash within several years? An associated, and equally disproved conspiracy theory is that TWA flight 800 (one of the three crashes) was brought down by a missile. The third conspiracy is that Korean Airlines is a dangerous airline that should be avoided at all cost.

Rather than a conspiracy, a statistician might tell you that these are all just examples of bunching theory. Events are not evenly distributed over the universe. They cluster or bunch. A good example would be the famous Bermuda triangle. There was a bunch of accidents there in years past, but as time goes on, randomness sets in, and the phenomenon abates. This is not to debunk truly connected events. The British Comet, early delivery 727s, the Lockheed Electra all had either design flaws or new flight characteristics that did cause a related series of accidents. But what we are talking about now is trying to push a series of random, totally unconnected events into a circle or bunch based on scant evidence. Another human behavioral characteristic is that mankind refuses to accept as explanation that an accident was a random event never to be repeated again. Lightning strikes in a random fashion; we accept that. People sometimes contact bizarre diseases such as flesh eating
bacteria; we accept that. Earthquakes open up huge holes in the ground; we accept that. A murderer stalks an office building; we accept that. But let an isolated fault, a one-in-a-billion occurrence take down an aircraft and we don't accept that. The center fuel tank explosion of a TWA 747 appears inexplicable and not capable of being ever again duplicated and yet we refuse to accept that. In another sense, of course, perhaps there was a reason that can be discovered and fixed. We must not stop investigating and trying for a fix. And, we must learn from the past. The issue is how long and how deeply do we want to research past improbabilities while neglecting future possibilities. Where, in the grand scheme of things should we simply say, as the Arabs do, that it is written and that our money and efforts are better spent on other areas, such as air traffic control.

This randomness of air disasters can be illustrated in looking at past history. Not too many years ago, Delta Airlines, a carrier as safe as any, was suddenly being avoided and investigated due to a series of accidents and incidents that ultimately proved unrelated. Currently it is American Airlines' turn in the barrel as an equally unconnected series of accidents leads regulators to suggest that something is endemically wrong with AAs flight operations practices. And of course since added scrutiny of anything in life will bring about revelation of some imperfection, improvements will be suggested which will always serve as adequate justification to regulators. This leads to the debate about whether the media inflames the public or the public inflames the media. Considering the vast publicity gained by alarmists such as John Nance and Mary Shivao it leaves little doubt that the public is uniquely fascinated by aircraft accidents. But that does not exonerate the media. As this is
being written, the Los Angeles Times has run a series of articles trying to connect an Alaska MD-80 crash to poor manufacturing practices at the McDonnell Douglas factory 10 years ago. There is no connection. Few, if any crashes have ever been attributed to sloppy assembly line procedures but this does not stop the flow of ink. The Alaska crash just mentioned illustrates somewhat what has been written here and highlights another peculiarity of the airline safety industry. This is the rush to generalize. The Alaska crash appears to have been perhaps a unique situation yet to listen to the media one would believe that every stabilizer on every one of this aircraft type was about to bust loose. Not true. In the continuum of randomness to epidemic causality, stabilizer problems would appear to be rather low on the series-of-related-problems list. Think for a minute. Are we to believe that the same part in every MD-80 manufactured over a span of more than 10 years suddenly became failure
prone and dangerous in exactly the same month? Now, not a day goes but that some pilot somewhere makes an emergency landing due to stabilizer problems.

If there is one good thing that arises from all this, it is that, even though many of these are random events, it does lead to increased air safety. We now have ground proximity warning devices to tell a pilot when he is dangerously close to the earth, we have terminal collision avoidance systems which warn of two aircraft flying close together, and as a result of the TWA fuel tank explosion we have improved the margin of safety with respect to fuel and vapors.

What we don't have is an improved program for the single largest cause of accidents. This is the pilots brain. Human judgment. Time and again pilots get disoriented, ignore safety warnings, mis-hear controller instructions or react too slowly. We have poorly trained pilots. We have medicated pilots. We have angry pilots. We have marginal pilots. And yet the percentage of pilots found unsafe and released from duty is (a) a statistic that has never been revealed and (b) if revealed would be surprisingly low. Note that this is not an indictment of this skilled and courageous group. But, the fact remains that in at least 40% or more of occurrences of aircraft accidents, no mechanical failure was found at fault. And in some cases, sadly, even when mechanical failure was the primary culprit, slow reactions or poor judgment of the aircraft commander compounded the situation. In short, air safety will always be on the front pages. While the percentage of accident continues to decline, the
sheer addition of airliners in the skies will increase faster than the accident rate declines. This will inevitably lead to more crashes while we are simultaneously getting safer. And so the headlines will continue.

There is an old adage in the public relations sector of the industry that a single crash remains on peoples minds until the next crash, after which it is old news. Just this year has been a good example. The EgyptAir crash was pushed off page one by the American Airlines Little Rock crash. This in turn was rendered history by the Alaska crash.

In similar fashion, a series of disasters lasts in the spotlight only until a new series pushes it off-stage. First it was the 737 rudder problems. These were rendered less important by the 747 fuel tank panic. And then the Swissair MD-11 insulation problem made the last problem unworthy of discussion. And now we have jackscrews in MD-80 tails that are the air safety problem of the week and will be until some greater disaster comes along. In summary, accidents will always happen. The only objective is to successively, year after year reduce their incidence. The media will always follow the motto if it bleeds, it leads. Regretfully, the headline nothing bad happened today does not capture viewers or sell magazines. If only the headlines were as big in those years with no accidents as they in years with when a significant airline accident occurs". But we must never forget the old but proven adage so faithfully uttered by flight attendants as the plane pulls into the gate the safest part of your journey has just ended.