Family Wi&clcly.
August 14, 1960
The Truth About Air Safety
Despite hysteria and hokum, commercial aviation is building an impressive record of
Today By
ROBERT J. SERLING
N airliner crashes and from the tragedy
f come hysterical cries: "Why did this hap
pen? What can be done to prevent another crash?"
Sometimes agitation by the press, Congressmen, .
and the general public brings great strides in air
travel safety. Sometimes it merely adds to the
confusion.
At least the press has a legitimate excuse for its
insistent demands for a "why?" Seldom, however,
is there a fast and accurate answer available. And
that is why a great deal of hokum about air safety
is voiced after each serious accident.--
Because investigators for the Civil Aeronautics
Board usually are reluctant to speculate publicly,
reporters covering a crash must turn to the most
readily quotable and highly inaccurate sources
of information available, eyewitnesses.
Most persons who witness an air crash and offer
testimony on what they saw are sincere and well
meaning. Unfortunately, many also are completely
untrained in reporting the myriad things that can
go wrong with an airplane.
In 1949, for example, a DC-4 airliner collided
with a P-38 fighter plane flown by a Bolivian air
force pilot over Washington's National Airport in
broad daylight
Seldom has any air crash had more eyewitnesses.
But when the CAB gathered the witnesses' state
ments, one investigator remarked sadly: "I wonder
if they saw the same accident." From the various
' accounts, the CAB "learned" that:
-The DC-4 banked left just before the collision.
The DC-4 didn't bank at all.
It banked right, then left, then went straight
The DC-4 gunned its engines before impact.
The DC-4 didn't gun its engines at all, but
the P-38 did. . .
The P-38 hit the transport from below.
The P-38 hit the transport from above.
CAB investigators weren't surprised. They are
accustomed to eyewitness discrepancies.
Unhappily, others accept these accounts at face
value and come to conclusions about air crashes
How Safe Is Flying Really?
Any time the speedometer en your
car panes 60, you ara exposing your
self to a far greater chance of death or
permanent lnury than when you itep
Into a scheduled airliner. And if the
auto accident actually happens, the
oddf against survival are no better
than they would be if you wore sitting
In an airplane seat.
- It is statistical fact that in a recent
year more people were killed riding
bicycles than scheduled airplanes.
It Is a statistical fact that the airlines
spend mora money an projects directly
related to safety than any other trans
portation Industry in the world
research, pilot training, and main
tenance. from 194a through 193, approxi-
Family Weekly, August 14, 1960.
that are far from the true explanations. And this
leads to official demands from Congress that
"something must be done" long before anyone,
including the CAB, knows specifically what that
"something" may involve.
Early in the summer of 1959, there were two
fatal crashes of airliners caught in particularly
vicious thunderstorms. Before the CAB even held
hearings on the twovaccidents, a Congressman had
demanded that the Federal Aviation Agency ban
all pilots from flying "in or near" thunderstorms.
If the FAA had adopted such an order, summer
time schedules would have been cut an estimated
60 percent; thunderstorms occur almost daily in
hot weather, and planes fly through them in per
fect safety. Such a ban would have thrown the air
lines into complete chaos without contributing to
air safety. .
The Congressman made his demand (!) without
knowing the specific cause of either crash, and
(2) completely ignoring the fact that airborne
radar, now installed on approximately 50 percent
of the nation's commercial air fleet, has significant
ly reduced the thunderstorm menace.
In the two crashes mentioned, the radar on one
was out of order, and the Other plane was at an
altitude which permitted little maneuvering out
of the storm's way. The FAA's own reaction made
sense. It issued a new regulation requiring vir
tually all passenger planes to have radar.
Seldom has there been a major airplane crash
or series of crashes that have not been followed
immediately by one or more Congressmen de
manding an investigation of air safety. The out
break of near-misses and mid-air collisions starting
in 1956 was a good example. Subsequent hearings
put the blame on just who was responsible in large
part: Congress itself, for failing to heed 10-year-old
pleas and warnings of the aviation industry
that the CAA' needed funds for vital air-traffic
control improvements.
The money eventually was appropriated, but not
until 189 persons had died in three collisions involv
mately 1,300 persons died In crashes
of U.S. scheduled airliners. In the same
period, 427,992 Americans died In auto
mobile accidents.
" As recently as the late '30s and early
'40s, most life Insurance policies con
tained provisions that warned the
Insured that if he flew, his policy was
ineffective during the flight, few such
provisions exist today; if they do, trips
on hmdulmd commercial airliners are
exempt.
Not too many years ago, airline
pilots were included In the "hazardous
occupation" category that forced them
to pay stiff premiums to protect their
. families. Yoday, pilots pay no mora for
life Insurance than grocery clerks or
bank tellers.
ing commercial airlines between 1956 and 1959.
This is not to say that all Congressional concern
over air safety swings a pendulum between the
hysterical and the hypocritical. It was largely
pressure from lawmakers that accomplished re
form after two fatal collisions involving airliners
and military jets, one over Las Vegas, Nev., and
the other over Brunswick, Md., in 1958. Congress
burned enough Pentagon ears to force closer
supervision of military training flights, and im
proved civil-military liaison in air-traffic control.
Congress has no monopoly on overexcited and
oversimplified reactions to air crashes. It is a very
human tendency to grope for a panacea, one cure
all for a problem that has a thousand facets; to
demand reform before it is known what needs
reforming; to look for a scapegoat before all the
facts are in.
Are New Safety Methods Needed?
Some air-safety cures are worth discussing if
only because they are proposed so frequently, fer
vently, and foolishly.
There is, for example, the demand heard after
so many crashes: "Why aren't airliners required
to carry parachutes?"
There are logical reasons why parachutes are
impractical. For one thing, no airline captain would
want to be saddled with the responsibility of de
ciding when his customers should jump into space.
How about elderly passengers? Children? Passen
gers with heart conditions?
There is also the fact that parachuting is a
highly skilled profession requiring weeks of train
ing. It has been estimated that if 50 parachute neo
phytes jumped out of a crippled airliner, it would
be a miracle if as many as five escaped death or
serious injury.
There is an argument that taking a chance on a
chute is preferable to the certain death that would
come if a plane's wing fell off. True. But in the
past 30 years, there have been exactly six cases
of airliners losing a wing through structural fail-
accident-free passenger miles with even greater advances expected in the future
ure. Add to this four other cases of structural fail
ure that resulted from collisions. That makes 10
instances in three decades where chutes might
have saved a handful of lives.
Even the "handful" is questionable; of the 10
accidents cited, three occurred at such high alti
tudes that passengers would not have been able to
breathe if they had jumped, and one took place at
such a low altitude that chutes would have failed
to open in time.
Then there is the "why-don't-airliners-install-backward-facing-seats"
cry that comes from a
fairly sizable group of experts.
Some British airliners have been equipped with
rear-facing seats for years, on the theory that the
sudden deceleration of a crash throws the passen
ger back against the softest, energy-absorbing
part of the seat instead of being tossed forward,
away from the cushioning.
The Military Air Transport Service has adopted
the backward-facing seats for the majority of its
transports. But MATS concedes it merely hopes
the arrangement is safer; it has no proof that
rear-facing seats save lives.
One group in this country has done considerable
work on the question Cornell University's crash
injury research program. The gist of its verdict:
An aircraft accident in which there are sur
vivors usually occurs at such a low rate of speed
that it makes little difference whether the seats
are facing backward or forward.
One aircraft manufacturer went to every avia
tion research group that had done work on air
craft seats and their relation to accidents and
(Excerpted from "The Probable Cause," copyright 160
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found unanimous opposition to rear-facing seats.
The manufacturer was advised that in many low
speed (or survivable) accidents, the aft-facing
seats were sometimes more dangerous, not less.
This was true in so-called "ground loops" or cart
wheeling, when violent deceleration threw pas
sengers sideways instead of forward. .
Yet there is a great deal that could be accom
plished to increase the percentage of survivable
accidents: strengthening seat anchorings, devel
oping better emergency exits, and adopting fuel
tanks that resist rupture on impact.
Learning for the Future
One CAB survey showed that nearly 100 persons
died in 14 crashes that should not have been fatal
to begin with. They were accidents in which fire
broke out after impact with the ground; there
would have been few if any fatalities if the fuel
tanks had not split open and burst into flame. Yet
the demands for ruptureproof gas tanks have been
a whisper compared with the vociferous clamor for
such items as backward-facing seats.
It is just such side-show issues that obscure both
the accomplishments and the still-to-be-achieved
goals of air safety. Long after the sensational head
lines, long after the "something-must-be-done"
demands, there are dedicated men trying to sal
vage lessons for the future from the tragedies of
the past and trying not to be stampeded into
actions that may only compound the problems.
"Very often we have learned and sadly that
safety is best served by resisting pressures toward
the dramatic solution," says Oscar Bakke, deputy
(Continued.)
by Robert J. Serling; to be publiihed by Doubleday & Co., Inc.)
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