Attention All Passengers (26 page)

“We've developed more fire resistance,” said Krieg. “Trains and cars don't come close. We work to a much higher set of standards.” Those standards stem from the industry's ninety-second rule, which requires that all occupants be off the plane within the “golden time” of a minute and a half. Carlo explained that there are fire detection and suppression systems in the engines and cargo areas, but in the cabin the focus is on postcrash. This means using better materials in seats, carpeting, bulkheads, and bins, so the hazards of both flammability and smoke inhalation are held off long enough for all to get out. He pointed to the 737 in Denver; in that case the metal itself burned before the interiors, allowing all to escape that aircraft.

Corky Townsend, Boeing's director of aviation safety, explains that her fellow engineers work toward three main goals for occupants: surviving an accident's impact; surviving a postcrash fire; and safely evacuating. She also states there have been marked improvements in evacuation slides; the historical failure rate has been so high that during drills the industry assumes that 50 percent of all doors and/or slides will not be available. An important point: the NTSB estimates that evacuations occur on U.S. aircraft once every eleven days on average.

But improving aviation safety through advanced technology is a never-ending pursuit, and one way to enhance survivability rates is to better understand fatal accidents. For example, the NTSB's “Most Wanted” list of improvements in aviation includes installing “crash-protected image recorders in cockpits to give investigators more information.” What's more, Star Navigation Systems of Canada has developed an in-flight safety monitoring system that uses Global Positioning System tracking software to record the information currently stored in flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders (the orange boxes the media refer to as “black boxes”). Considering that the recorders from Air France Flight 447 were found in the spring of 2011—nearly two years after the Airbus A330 disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean—the concept of transferring such vital data to ground-based systems could greatly aid accident investigators.

Simple Steps That Could Save Lives

Of course, some types of airline accidents remain nonsurvivable, and it's likely that will never change. In fact, Barnett's research has unveiled a key point: approximately 80 percent of passenger fatalities occur on flights where there are no survivors. But the good news is quite good: experts now say that 90 percent of all commercial aviation accidents are survivable. In fact, an exhaustive NTSB study that focused on all domestic airline accidents over seventeen years found that overall, 95.7 percent of occupants survived.

Having undergone emergency egress training at Tower Air and again in the Air Force Auxiliary, what I learned affects me on every flight I take. That's why experts say that passengers themselves have a big part in determining who will live and who will not. Captain Haynes says: “I tell people all the time: It's your own personal responsibility to get out of the airplane. You need to think about where the exits are and what you'll do.”

Wearing the Right Clothes

The TSA has invoked and revoked numerous policies since its formation in 2002. It has even flip-flopped on flip-flops; a few years ago the TSA suggested: “Footwear that screeners are less likely to suggest you remove includes ‘beach' flip-flops or thin-soled sandals.” That advice was in direct opposition to the FAA's recommendation to wear shoes that won't easily slip off on an evacuation slide (the FAA and TSA have since synchronized their message). However, shoes should not be high heels—especially spiked heels—because they will likely cause a broken ankle on that slide.

The flip-flop issue underscores an important point: too many passengers dress for the destination rather than the departure. The flight may be headed to Nassau or Maui, but the departure may be aborted in snow, ice, rain, or mud. Those 155 people in the freezing waters of the Hudson River can affirm that. Jan Brown invokes the terror of Flight 232 and recalls, “I saw that one man's shirt was burned right off him and I remember thinking: polyester.” By contrast, another passenger had dressed safer by choosing all-natural fibers such as wool slacks and cotton socks. Brown herself suffered second- and third-degree burns on her ankles from her flammable pantyhose, and stopped wearing skirts and dresses on airplanes after that.

It's about common sense, not investing in a new wardrobe. Keep shoes on during takeoff and landing, and make sure they are flat-heeled shoes that won't fall off easily. Avoid highly flammable fibers, and think about the outside weather; a tank top in New England in February doesn't make sense.

Choosing the Right Seat

It's not preordained that all airplanes will respond in the same way to a given accident scenario. The industry is filled with pilots and mechanics who swear by one particular manufacturer or model. Crew members can be spotted carrying airline-issued cases known as “brain bags” through airports with the bumper sticker:
IF IT AIN'T BOEING, I AIN'T GOING.

Then there's the size issue, which like so much else about aviation safety ultimately comes down to a matter of physics. “Basic awareness will help you out,” says Todd Curtis. He points out that the larger the aircraft, the greater the chance of survival, and suggests if the Airbus A340 in Toronto had been a DC-9, many might not have lived. On the other hand, larger passenger totals raise the evacuation X-factor, as was seen in 2005 as Airbus executives sweated the safety trials of the A380 superjumbo, when 873 people were given ninety seconds to evacuate.

While some factors are beyond the passengers' control, choosing a seat is not. It's important to select a seat in an emergency exit row, or close to an exit or multiple exits. As aviation expert Mary Schiavo notes, the row behind is better than the row in front, primarily because in an emergency people will instinctively move forward.

For decades myths have sprung up in airline circles that passengers in the rear of planes have a better chance of surviving. This stems in part from the obvious assertion that an aircraft moves at great speeds in a forward direction (hence the old axiom “You can't back into a mountain”). Also, in many cases the rear empennage sections of airplanes—which on most commercial planes today don't house engines and fuel tanks—often break away from the fuselage. So I put it to the experts: Are some rows or seats statistically safer than others? “I don't believe one seat is safer than the others,” said Dunham. MIT's Barnett agreed: “One can get too obsessive about it. In some ways it really is all or nothing.” Boeing said it has not explored the issue.

As for rear-facing seats, the NTSB's Nora Marshall notes the issue of debris flying forward in an accident scenario. She also explains that such configurations require “much, much stronger floors,” which of course add weight. So like so much else about the airline industry, there is a cost component. In 2005, the FAA implemented the “16g Rule,” requiring that passengers be able to withstand forces equal to sixteen times earth's gravity (unrestrained infants, of course, were exempted). Engineers soon realized that meeting this new requirement would require removing seats from cabins to expand the distance between rows or installing “three-point” shoulder harnesses, which require reinforcing cabin floors. The airlines hated both ideas because removing seats and adding weight are costly solutions. So a third alternative was developed by Phoenix-based AmSafe: an aircraft airbag built right into the nonbuckle end of a passenger's seat belt. “Over five to ten years, it will be as ubiquitous as seat belts are today,” says Bill Hagan, president of AmSafe. But Corky Townsend of Boeing states, “There are some concerns with failure rates.”

Buckling Up

Overwhelmingly, most airline accidents occur either during the initial takeoff stage or the final landing stage of flight; there's a reason that seat belt sign is lit at those times. A Boeing study of accidents and fatalities examined commercial jet aircraft crashes between 1959 and 2010, and adjusted them for an average flight time of ninety minutes; the findings for fatal accidents:

• 17 percent occur during takeoff and initial climb (2 percent of total flight time)

• 5 percent occur during flaps-up climb (14 percent of total flight time)

• 16 percent occur during descent and initial approach (23 percent of total flight time)

• 36 percent occur during final approach and landing (4 percent of total flight time)

In fact, just 11 percent of fatal accidents occur during cruise, which represents 57 percent of total flight time for a ninety-minute flight, and obviously a much longer period for lengthier flights. The good news is that survivability increases when airplanes are closer to the ground, because they're operating at relatively lower speeds and often there is more maneuverability to land the aircraft safely near an airport. And airports, of course, have trained crash and rescue crews standing by for just such events.

That said, buckling up may be the simplest of all smart steps to take. But a veteran pilot believes crew members can do more to educate passengers: “The crew should explain when the sign is on. The passengers don't understand why. Often there is poor communication between cockpit and cabin crew, and between crew and passengers.” One expert cites United Flight 811 in Honolulu in 1989 as a striking example; when a cargo door blew out at twenty-three thousand feet, the “explosive decompression” sucked out nine people, including one passenger not buckled in.

Securing All Loose Items

Schiavo offers explicit advice for passengers: “Do not let anyone block your exit by overstuffing the underseat area so it blocks the row.” She also advises monitoring what goes into the overhead bins, to ensure the items are not too heavy and not blocking good closure of the latch. That image of a pregnant Maria Trejos being struck in the head and stomach by baggage when Flight 1404 crashed in Denver serves as a reminder. She feels the airlines and FAA could do more to educate passengers, and recalls a fellow passenger evacuating the plane on a cold night in December without her glasses or shoes because she had taken them off prior to the takeoff roll.

Avoiding Alcohol, Drugs, and Sleeping at Key Times

Dianne McMullin, an associate technical fellow at Boeing and an expert in human factors and aviation safety, examines airplane accidents from a physiological and psychological perspective. She also notes an industry that by definition is global in scope will encounter cultural and language challenges that make rapid evacuations much tougher.

Then there is the drinking issue. Several studies have been conducted to determine if the effects of alcohol are exacerbated at high altitudes, and while the results have been mixed, medical experts do agree that alcohol acts as a diuretic and will exacerbate the dehydration effects felt when airborne. Simply put, there is no denying that drinking and flying don't mix well. At a minimum, McMullin notes that alcohol impairs judgment, slows reaction time, and induces drowsiness: “The combination of all these things and putting on an oxygen mask is not a good thing.”

However, this stark reality conflicts with the airline industry's newest sacred cow: ancillary revenue. Most carriers are in the bartending business, so with all that cash flowing in, they're not about to declare last call. It's worth noting that flight attendants on board Virgin Atlantic Airways include a warning about the dangers of consuming alcohol at high altitudes; then again, the carrier's site notes there is “a free bar service” in economy class. Coincidence?

Monitoring Situational Awareness

Boeing's McMullin observes that most human beings “overestimate the probability of good things and underestimate the risks.” While flying needn't be a morose undertaking, staying aware of surroundings is all about establishing good habits on board an airplane. It means paying attention to all instructions and advisories from crew members, and shutting off headsets and iPods so you can listen during takeoff, landing, and other critical phases of flight. It also means counting the number of rows to the nearest exits, in both directions, and not removing shoes and eyeglasses before takeoff. In addition, some passengers may want to invest in a smoke hood, a proposition Ralph Nader has supported for years.

Captain Haynes notes the dangers of frequent flyers who mistakenly believe they know it all: “We've become so blasé. Even if you fly a lot, every airplane is different.”

Preparing for the Unexpected

In addition to a lack of passenger awareness, two trends are working against faster egress from commercial airplanes. One is that larger Americans are being squeezed into smaller airline seats. A 2001 study by a British ergonomics firm found that most economy-class seating dimensions provided hindrances to egress, and that was
before
planes became fuller, seats became even smaller, and Americans became even bigger. The second factor is those ever-increasing passenger load factors; an obvious corollary is the fuller the flight, the greater the chance not everyone will safely escape the airplane. Haynes knows it firsthand: “The high loads make it tougher to get off.”

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Lights, Camera, Strip Search:

The Tragicomedy of Airline Security

You should neither be asked to nor agree to lift, remove, or raise any article of clothing to reveal your breast prosthesis, and you should not be asked to remove it.

—TSA.gov

A
nd then there was the time I was convinced I was the only United States citizen in the world who knew the details of the next terrorist attack against America.

In early 1989, Tower Air sent me on an extended worldwide road trip to oversee a “wet-lease” operation for London-based Air Europe, a carrier growing so fast that it literally did not have enough planes and pilots to operate all its flights. My job was to oversee the airport handling. I spent some time living in a bed-and-breakfast in Crawley, just outside London's Gatwick Airport, while ironing out details at Air Europe's headquarters. Then it was on to the Dominican Republic, Barbados, and Bangkok, before settling into Bahrain.

A tiny island country in the Persian Gulf, Bahrain is about three times the size of Martha's Vineyard if you're measuring in square miles, but during the oil boom it was one of the richest per capita nations on earth. It's connected to Saudi Arabia via the King Fahd Causeway and we soon learned that many devout Saudis often crossed that bridge on Friday evenings, because the hotels in Bahrain offered everything from alcohol to gambling to prostitution—and apparently what happens in Bahrain, stays in Bahrain. Later, during the First George Bush Gulf War, Bahrain warmed up to America and the island became a de facto U.S. air base. But in 1989 relations with Uncle Sam were still pretty chilly, as I was soon to find out.

It's worth noting that I became the manager of worldwide ground operations for Tower Air when I was just twenty-six. On most of my international trips I traveled without business cards or even a credit card, and sometimes without a pen. My only supervisory experience was as the assistant manager of a gas station on Long Island. But there I was, the face of Tower Air—and sometimes even America—around the globe. That year I routinely provided my signature for more than $1 million in billings for jet fuel alone.

On my second day in country, I met with Bahrain's aviation ministers, carrying a lengthy legal pad list of
THINGS TO DO TODAY
. I entered a plush room on the roof of the airport and found myself at a table with ten other men. I also noted the obvious, that I was the only one not wearing a keffiyeh on my head. But the meeting went well and I was treated cordially. We secured arrangements for fueling, baggage handling, and light maintenance of the Tower Air 747 that would be carrying five hundred Air Europe passengers from London.

Then things took an odd turn. Suddenly the head man, who was effectively Bahrain's secretary of transportation, smiled and asked if I was American. I told him I was. Interesting, he responded, an American working for a British airline? I explained that I worked for the airline actually operating the flights for the next several weeks. Twenty eyes turned toward me. And what airline is that? “Tower Air,” I replied.

Ten mouths opened and ten barely audible gasps could be heard in unison. The aviation minister stared at me. “That's a Jewish airline,” he said. “No,” I replied, thinking that perhaps I could go for a quick laugh and change the subject. “In the United States airlines don't have religions.” The room was not amused. And the aviation minister continued to stare. “You know what I mean,” he told me.

I did know. He was referring to Tower's close ties with Israel, particularly since our chairman and senior executives were Israelis, and former employees of El Al. In fact, virtually our entire security staff had come over from Israel's flag carrier. The JFK–Tel Aviv route remained Tower's bread-and-butter source of income. In response, I shifted gears. There was plenty I didn't know about finance and management, but I thought I could reason my way out of what was quickly developing into a bit of a sticky wicket, as the folks back in Crawley might say. I quietly explained that Tower Air was a U.S. flag carrier, headquartered at JFK in New York City and incorporated in Delaware. We flew the Stars and Stripes on the tails of our planes (though in some countries we whited out the flag). And we transported U.S. military troops around the world.

The aviation minister shook his head. “You work for a Jewish airline,” he said. Thankfully I averted disaster by not laughing, because I instantly and regrettably recalled the scene in the movie
Airplane!
in which an El Al aircraft taxis in with pais ringlets attached to either side of the cockpit. I took a deep breath, unsure of how to proceed, and quietly pointed out that a Tower 747 was scheduled to arrive in Bahrain in about seventy-two hours. One of the other men at the table, who looked as if he could have been a relative of the aviation minister, suddenly spoke up. “If that airplane attempts to land here this week,” he told me, “it will be blown out of the sky.”

Talk about a deal breaker. I attempted the oldest stall tactic in the book, by politely asking the gentleman to repeat himself. But he would have none of it. There was no question that I had heard him. For a few long moments, I sat in silence, my stomach churning and my ears pounding. I felt as if I had intercepted a telegram on December 6, 1941, and the news out of Tokyo wasn't good. Was I really the emissary being warned of the next major terrorist attack on the United States? It was April 1989, and the recent history of the industry I was working in wasn't pretty. U.S. aircraft and cruise ships had been targeted for hijackings throughout the 1980s, and at that very moment they were still collecting pieces of the Boeing 747 that had operated as Pan Am 103 and been blown to bits over Lockerbie, Scotland, that December. The implications were staggering. There was a new president in the United States, and new presidents were known to assert themselves early in their terms. Would the world be witnessing a cataclysmic war by week's end? And was Bill McGee really the only American who knew what was to come?

My head hurt. Severely. But as I stared at all those unhappy faces, I was suddenly struck by a simple idea. Why not table this item—you know, the unsettled matter of the 747 with more than five hundred souls on board being blown to proverbial smithereens. Instead, why not move on to the other bullet points on my legal pad. For instance, who exactly would be dumping and replenishing the aircraft's lavatory fluid? And what about fresh ice for the crew meals?

Somehow I made it through that meeting, gastric juices stirring and cranium pounding, and within an hour or so I was free to leave. I shook all ten hands and then raced downstairs and into the oppressive Persian Gulf heat. I was already sweating when I caught a taxi back to my hotel. Once there, I raced upstairs and calculated the time difference and placed a call to the States. Not to Tower Air's offices, but directly to the chairman's home. Morris Nachtomi answered from a sound sleep, and I identified myself.

He owned a small and troublesome global airline, so he was used to such calls. In fact, I had woken him more than a dozen times myself. “Yes, Bill? What is it?” I felt relieved, knowing that soon I would not be the only person from the Western Hemisphere carrying this terrible burden. Was my phone being tapped? Fuck them, let them tap it. Anything to prevent our aircraft, tail number N602FF, from making history. “We've got a situation here. A very serious situation. We're going to have to cancel all the Air Europe flights.”

Nachtomi was an easy guy to anger but a hard guy to rattle. “Why is that?” I paused. “Well, I just came from a meeting. With the aviation authorities. The ministers. And . . . and, well, they told me that when six-oh-two comes in this week . . . to Bahrain . . . well, they're going to shoot it out of the sky.” I instantly felt better for having shared the grim news.

Nachtomi sighed, and that sigh carried quite audibly all the way from Westchester County. “Is that it?” he asked.
Is that it??
“Well . . . yes,” I answered. “Bill,” he explained patiently, “they
always
say that in Bahrain.”

Oh. Well, who knew? The proverbial rookie mistake! Finally I blurted out, “They seemed pretty serious.” But Nachtomi had already moved on. “Is there anything else, Bill?” Anything else? You mean, anything besides the pending international terrorist incident, the imminent explosion of a U.S. commercial jet, the killing of more than five hundred innocent civilians? “No, not really,” I said quietly. Thus my introduction to the world of airline security.

Welcome to the Show

For years a cult of sci-fi readers has worshipped Philip K. Dick's 1974 police state novel
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
, in which paramilitary law enforcement officers in Los Angeles arrest citizens without valid ID at impromptu security checkpoints. Dystopian fantasy? Maybe in 1974. But not so much for Americans venturing outdoors after 9/11, who regularly encounter such ad hoc screening in train stations, office buildings, and baseball stadiums. (In 2006—in an aviation irony way too extraordinary for fiction—Comic-Con organizers ordered a remote-controlled android of Dick, but en route to San Diego the folks at America West Airlines misplaced the android's head.)

Of course, androids aren't the only ones losing their heads over aviation security. It's a murky and at times bizarre world, and many of the people I speak to are characters that would fit in at Comic-Con. When I tap into the security network, my inbox starts filling with anonymous emails. I'm drawn into internal feuds. One expert asks me to pay him for his opinions (I decline). Another urges me to carry a pineapple taped up with wires in my checked suitcase to demonstrate how poorly bags are screened. Some question my patriotism for even writing about the Transportation Security Administration, while others question my patriotism for not writing about it more often. But one belief unites nearly all the professionals: the TSA—which they maintain stands for “Travelers Standing Around”—is all about security theater, not security. And passengers are just unpaid extras in this drama.

For many of us, this show has gotten old. As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: “So we beat on, boats against the current.” We remove our jackets, our shoes, our belts, our dignity. We glance at a June 2011 headline from CNN.com: “TSA Denies Having Required a 95-Year-Old Woman to Remove Diaper.” We raise our hands while complete strangers with no medical training prod our most sensitive regions. And we note that confidence in the system was not rewarded in December 2009, when news broke that the TSA had accidentally leaked its airports screening manual via the Internet.

What it all comes down to is risk. And just as aviation safety experts debate the acceptance of risk, so too is aviation security inherently risk-based as well. As travel columnist Joe Brancatelli says, “With both safety and security, we've created a zero-based model. That's the TSA and it's a nightmare.”

Of course, any discussion of risk becomes a discussion of cost, and there's no doubt the airlines are still concerned about the cost of security—whether it's paid by the carriers themselves or paid by passengers via that $2.50 “enplanement” September 11 security fee. Sometimes the squabbling between the industry and the TSA spills over into public, as in October 2010 when the Air Transport Association openly asked that air marshals not occupy first-class seats, acknowledging that the airlines' concerns were triggered by the loss of revenue in profitable first-class sections.
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As a nation, we haven't had a robust discussion about security or risk, let alone how they affect aviation. Instead classified information has been doled out through the highly questionable color-coded Homeland Security Advisory System and its successor, the National Terrorism Advisory System. And all the important decisions are made for us.

“Virtually everything we do is based on illusion and there is very little substance,” says Bogdan Dzakovic, a government whistle-blower and aviation security expert who worked for both the FAA and the TSA. Former American Airlines chairman Bob Crandall is characteristically blunt: “There isn't one goddamn politician with the balls to say what we're doing is silly. Because if he does and then an airplane blows up, someone is going to play it back to them.” He adds, “It's all theater, that's all.”

It should be noted that I was granted access to the top officials at the DOT, FAA, and NTSB, but my request for an interview with John Pistole, the administrator of the TSA, was not acted upon.

Playing Whack-A-Mole

Mention airline security and nearly all discussion is steered toward the kabuki of screening passengers in airports—the pat-downs, the X-rays, the confiscation of shampoo. But experts note that the most discussed point of entry is just one of many points of entry into airline security, and for more than a decade not enough research, focus, resources, or money has been channeled into other sectors that are potentially more dangerous than passenger checkpoints.

Prior to 9/11, the airlines themselves were charged with providing adequate security for commercial aviation. And in August 2001—just one month before the terrorist attacks—the Air Transport Association testified the industry was spending $1 billion annually on security. One month later the worst security breaches in U.S. history occurred, and the ATA revised its prior estimate and noted that . . . well . . . um . . . it's actually not $1 
billion
and is more like . . . $300
million
.

“After 9/11 it became apparent the FAA had dropped the ball and the airlines were looking for the lowest-cost providers,” says aviation law expert Paul Dempsey. “Security regulations have become Kafkaesque and well beyond the scope of what's necessary to prevent bad guys from getting on a plane.” Before 9/11, carriers resisted every security measure, with one exception: airlines like that passengers must provide positive ID, since that has helped reduce the industry's problem of passengers reselling tickets.
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