Air safety: Flying into the unknown

The outlook
In late September, ICAO announced a five-year plan to reduce global accident rates and drastically narrow the safety gap between the regions with the best and the worst records. Are these reasonable goals? With the crash in mid-September of the One-Two-Go aircraft in Phuket, the fatality numbers for 2007 totaled 653—in line with the annual average for the past ten years. This sobering figure suggests that there's still much to be done.

"People talk about how much it will cost to make safety improvements," says IFALPA's Gideon Ewers. "But we want people instead to think of the huge cost to an airline, and to the public as a whole, each time a plane crashes."

Rundown on recent accidents
Fatal crashes on scheduled flights this year, through September

Determining the factors that lead to an airplane crash often takes years. The causes of each of the following are still under investigation.

Jan. 1, 2007
Airline: Adam Air
Crash site: Java Sea near Sulawesi, Indonesia
Fatalities: All 102 on board. The Boeing 747-400 crashed into the sea during a domestic flight from Surabaya to Manado.

March 7, 2007
Airline: Garuda Indonesia Airways
Crash site: Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Fatalities: Twenty-one of the 140 on board. The Boeing 737-400, on a domestic flight from Jakarta, approached the runway too fast, overran it, and caught fire in a rice paddy.

March 17, 2007
Airline: UTAir
Crash site: Samara, Russia
Fatalities: Six of the 57 on board. The Tupolev 134, on a domestic flight from Surgut to Belgorod via Samara, undershot the runway at Samara during a storm, causing the left wing to break off. Officials found that poor weather conditions were not communicated to the crew, who attempted to land without the aid of approach lights.

May 5, 2007
Airline: Kenya Airways
Crash site: Douala, Cameroon
Fatalities: All 114 on board. The new Boeing 737-800, on a flight from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, to Nairobi via Douala, nose-dived into a swamp less than a minute after takeoff from Douala.

June 25, 2007
Airline: PMT Air
Crash site: Sihanoukville, Cambodia
Fatalities: All 22 on board. The Antonov AN-24, on a flight from Siem Reap, crashed into a mountain at a height of 1,640 feet while on descent into Sihanoukville.

June 28, 2007
Airline: TAAG Angola Airlines
Crash site: M'Banza Congo, Angola
Fatalities: Five of the 78 on board and one on the ground. The Boeing 737-200, on a domestic flight from Luanda to M'Banza, overshot the runway on landing and crashed into two buildings.

July 17, 2007
Airline: TAM Linhas Aéreas
Crash site: São Paulo, Brazil
Fatalities: All 187 on board and 12 on the ground. The Airbus A320, on a domestic flight from Porto Alegre to São Paulo, overran the runway and crashed into a building.

Aug. 9, 2007
Airline: Air Moorea
Crash site: Moorea, French Polynesia
Fatalities: All 20 on board. Air Moorea has shuttle service between Moorea and Tahiti. The Twin Otter crashed into the ocean shortly after takeoff from Moorea.

Sept. 16, 2007
Airline: One-Two-GO by Orient Thai
Crash site: Phuket, Thailand
Fatalities: Eighty-nine of the 130 on board. The McDonnell Douglas MD-82, on a domestic flight from Bangkok to Phuket, crashed while landing in driving rain and wind. At press time, wind shear was being investigated as a possible cause. — Alex Pasquariello

Blacklists and mixed messages
Official guidance on airline safety can sometimes confuse more than help

It stands to reason that the airline watch lists issued by various governments and aviation watchdogs would be consistent with one another: Virtually all of these groups—from the FAA to the International Air Transport Association (IATA)—report that they hew to the same criteria set by the UN's International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the de facto last word in aviation safety standards.

But reality proves far less tidy. Consider the following:

• Pakistan International Airlines, perhaps the most prominent carrier on the European Union's airline blacklist (its 777s, 747s, and A310s are exempt), has nonetheless successfully completed the rigorous safety audit required for membership in IATA, which accounts for 94 percent of all passenger and cargo traffic. To further confuse matters: The FAA ranks Pakistan as Category 1, meaning that, overall, the country conforms to the highest safety standards.
  
• Ukraine is ranked as Category 2, or below par, by the FAA; and two of its airlines—Volare and Ukrainian-Mediterranean—were banned by the EU this year. Nonetheless, Ukraine's largest carrier, Aerosvit, has successfully passed the stringent IATA safety audit and has an operating certificate from the FAA, which is required of all foreign carriers that land in the United States.
  
• Indonesia's recent rash of accidents drew swift sanctions from the EU, which has banned all of the country's airlines, and the FAA, which designated it as Category 2. But several other nations that have had a string of crashes, including Brazil and Russia, are rated as Category 1 by the FAA, which has not assessed either country since 2001.
  
• These apparent inconsistencies have prompted some companies to rely on their own research. Bruce McIndoe, chief executive of iJet, a Maryland-based safety and security consultancy, says that the company began doing its own due diligence on airlines when the EU made its blacklist public in 2006. "Our travel agent clients told us that there was a potential liability concern if they booked someone on an airline that was blacklisted," he says, noting that iJet consults on some 12 million travel itineraries per year. According to McIndoe, his company regularly vets more than 300 carriers for its clients, and has placed about 80 on a "non-preferred" list. Many of these, he says, are obscure airlines used mainly by relief workers or NGOs in war zones. "We want to let our customers know when a carrier has planes that are held together by quick fixes—that way, they can reconsider their plans."
  
• Short of hiring a security company to review an itinerary, what can travelers do to avoid airlines with questionable—or downright terrible—safety records? First, look for carriers that have voluntarily submitted to IATA's rigorous safety audits (most airline alliances and code-share partnerships now make this a pre-condition of admission). Second, refer to the European Union's roster of blacklisted airlines. Third, check out the Web sites listed in "Safety First" for information on recent accident reports, carrier safety records, and other data to help you make informed choices. — B.S.P.

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