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In the wake of America's first fatal airline accident in 30 months, the Times takes a look at how the FAA has responded to other crashes over the years. Perhaps unsurprisingly, reporter Matthew Wald's tour of the FAA sausage factory concludes that the bureaucracy is a tad "cumbersome." The National Transportation Safety Board, which advises the FAA on regulations, currently cites 429 "outstanding recommendations" which have still not been acted on by the FAA. 146 of them are more than five years old, such as a proposed fix for the malfunction that caused the explosion of T.W.A. Flight 800 (pictured) over Long Island in 1996, which investigators concluded was caused by an electrical flaw in the fuel tank. (Many others have speculated that a shoulder-fired missile took down the plane.) After some 12 years of debate about a solution, the FAA now reports that airlines should finally have the problem fixed... in another eight years.
FAA Slow to Implement Changes
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So the flaw that caused the 1996 TWA flight to crash has not been implemented, and has not occurred again in the 12 years and thousands of flights since? You have to wonder if the fix is even relevant any longer.
FAA knows why its pointless to adopt that recommendation ;-)
Between the previous fatal crash in 2006 and the Buffalo crash, over 1.5 billion passengers boarded aircraft in the US. That put the odds of dying in a crash during this period around the same as any young child growing up and getting elected President of the United States, or any single person being struck by lightning dozens of times.
I meant to add... given this amazing run, I'd say the FAA is doing a pretty good job. Unlike, say, the auto industry, where there can always be a cost-benefit advantage to not implement a safety feature, commercial aviation is one market where companies can generally be trusted to do the right thing. Airplanes, wrongful death lawsuits and loss of goodwill are extraordinarily expensive and do not make shareholders happy.
the explosion of T.W.A. Flight 800 (pictured) over Long Island in 1996, which investigators concluded was caused by an electrical flaw in the fuel tank that allowed a spark to ignite nitrogen vapors
Egads. What the hell has become of science in NYC schools? Nitrogen is neither flammable nor explosive, JDS! If it were, we wouldn't be here since the air around us is 80% nitrogen. It was jet fuel vapors that ignited. In fact, nitrogen is the solution, since injecting pure N2 into the fuel tanks to displace most of the remaining oxygen means fuel vapors can't burn, a process called "inerting."