Financially, most US airlines had cause to celebrate by the end of last year, but 1996 had its darker side. A total of 380 people were killed in US large carrier accidents - the second highest annual number of deaths in the past 15 years.
Statistics that illustrate the extreme safety of airline travel relative to other methods of travel are well documented. What is new, however, is the mood of the US public, which has come to the conclusion that those statistics, however good, simply are not good enough. It is an attitude spawned by the high-profile nature of 1996's tragedies. Frankly, America's citizens feel vulnerable.
To be fair to the industry, it is not just events in the skies that have triggered this unease. Terrorist attacks in recent years, most notably the Oklahoma and World Trade Center bombings and the Unabomber campaign, have created an environment in which Americans feel they have become potential targets. Rightly or wrongly, they feel their status as a target is particularly pronounced as airline passengers. The solution is to spend money to improve safety, which begs the questions: how much money to make flying how much safer?
The second question has been answered. The White House commission on aviation safety and security, the so-called Gore Commission, has stated that the accident rate must be reduced by fivefold, or 80 per cent, by the year 2005. This initiative is spurred by the fact that the fatal accident rate of 0.3 per million departures in the US has remained flat for two decades. Consequently, with the projected global increases in traffic, the number of accidents will grow. Boeing estimates that by the year 2015, unless the accident rate is reduced, an airliner will crash somewhere in the world almost weekly, a figure that US Vice President Al Gore, who chairs the Commission, describes as 'unacceptable'.
What it will cost to achieve that 80 per cent crash reduction rate goal, and who will pay, is still anybody's guess. But the US majors have been offered an early sweetener by the Commission's declared support of a user fee to replace the current ticket tax system that pays for the air traffic control system. That support, and the fact that none of the airlines can risk criticising an initiative on a topic as sensitive as safety, means that the Commission's 57 recommendations should win easy acceptance in the industry.
But criticism is forthcoming from the periphery. Stephen McArdle, at consultancy AvSolutions in Virginia, believes that the Commission's report is an over-reaction to last year's crashes and could force some airlines into the bankruptcy courts. 'Inaccurate comments combined with knee-jerk action for the sake of action, resulting in the grounding and possible demise of an air carrier, and quick fix procedures without consideration of benefit relative to cost, is detrimental and expensive,' says McArdle. 'The loss of any air carrier under these circumstances is unacceptable. The possible utilisation of $1.1 billion tax dollars on a one in 8 million probability of incidence is at best questionable.'
Robert Hahn, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, similarly believes that the changes could cost 'billions of dollars' and questions their effectiveness. 'We need to confront the question of how safe is safe enough. The sad truth is that the threat of airline terrorism cannot be eliminated unless air travel is banned, and that is simply too high a price to pay.'
The Commission's report divides into four areas. The first two chapters deal with improving aviation safety, in general and specifically as related to the air traffic control system. The third deals with improving security, and the fourth relates to improving government and industry response to aviation disasters, particularly in dealing with victims' relatives.
Chief among the recommendations are a number of broad regulatory changes - such as expanding the Federal Aviation Administration's ageing aircraft programme to cover non-structural systems, and eliminating exemptions that allow children under two to travel without safety restraints. The Commission also tasks the FAA with developing a revised national airspace system modernisation plan so that an upgraded system can be fully operational by the year 2005, seven years ahead of the FAA's current schedule. So far, the billions of dollars needed for such an accelerated plan are not in White House budget plans.
It is the recommendations concerning security, however, that are attracting most attention. The report itself highlights the fact that much of its work here is based on addressing the public's emotional needs, as opposed to the statistical risks. 'The danger of an individual becoming a victim of a terrorist attack - let alone an aircraft bombing - will doubtless remain very small,' the report admits. 'But terrorism isn't merely a matter of statistics. We fear a plane crash far more than we fear something like a car accident. One might survive a car accident, but there's no chance in a plane at 30,000ft.' The report reaches emotional fever pitch where it points out that when terrorists attack a US airliner '. . . they are attacking the United States. They have so little respect for our values that they would destroy innocent children and devoted mothers and fathers completely at random. This cannot be tolerated or allowed to intimidate free societies. There must be a concerted national will to fight terrorism.'
It is with this 'will' in mind that the Commission is recommending a number of security enhancements, including criminal background checks of airline workers, the establishment of a passenger-bag matching system, and the setting up of a passenger profiling system.
But some of the recommendations could lay the airlines open to legal action, an issue that has already been underlined by proposals made by the DOT in the wake of more recent air disasters. The legal issue falls into three groups: foreign relations, employment, and civil liberties.
Foreign relations concerns stem from a proposed DOT ruling on establishing passenger manifests for international flights, which was expanded on by the Gore Commission with the recommendation that such a list be extended to cover domestic flights. The DOT acted after the length of delays in notifying families of some victims of TWA Flight 800 came to light, proposing airlines collect certain passenger data before or during check-in and transmit it to the US State Department after any air disaster. In its current form, the regulation requires any airline flying to or from the US to collect a passenger's name, passport number, issuing country, and the name and phone number of an emergency contact.
Other nations and their carriers originally feared the DOT might require collection of this data on all passengers, but the proposal narrows that down, in the case of foreign airlines, to US citizens and residents only. That eases some concerns, but it does not eliminate the objections of Swissair, for instance, which fears it could face criminal sanctions under Swiss law for gathering information required by the US.
Japan Airlines and Royal Air Maroc raise similar concerns that collecting such information would violate, or at least be restricted, under their own laws. The Orient Airlines Association says any unilateral attempt by Washington to regulate foreign carriers violates other US laws as well as the Chicago Convention and international principles of comity and reciprocity.
The DOT is in a box because its own law forbids it from developing a passenger manifest programme limited to US carriers. Although Congress has required it to include foreign carriers, the DOT has tried to skirt their concerns by proposing that they not be compelled to solicit or collect passenger information where that would violate their own laws. Instead, carriers claiming such a violation would need to notify the DOT of that conflict and furnish copies of their pertinent laws. The DOT also proposes to waive compliance if a foreign carrier or its government signs a memorandum of understanding with the State Department to achieve the same result through other means.
Whether these exemptions go far enough to meet concerns about the US infringing on foreign sovereignty remains to be seen.
More worrying for US carriers is the prospect that civil liberty concerns of passengers could spawn more litigation than anything else because of the proclivity of Americans to assert their rights and the number of civil liberties issues raised by the new security measures.
Passenger profiling is the most controversial of these measures. This has been around for some time and last September the FAA gave Northwest Airlines a grant to develop a prototype automated passenger profile system. Northwest expects to have the system operational by April and it could eventually become part of the software used by all airlines. The FAA officials claim profiling could reduce the number of passengers and luggage requiring added scrutiny by 80 per cent, an important issue because of concerns that a full passenger-bag match system will cause long delays. This view has received some support from the Gore Commission, which is urging passenger profiling be put in place until an efficient bag-matching system is available.
Profiles are based on secret criteria, but the system Northwest is testing collects some 40 pieces of data from passengers, including their address, credit card number, whether they pay cash for their ticket, how long before departure they buy it, with whom they will travel, their destination, and whether their trip is one way. Information from Northwest's frequent flyer database might also be included, although Northwest claims it would not list prior destinations but only flight frequencies. It also says it will not include passenger credit information.
Gregory Nojeim, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, has voiced concerns about collecting and using such data. His chief complaint is the belief that 'a profile is a stereotype.' It does not identify any probable cause of criminal activity - the key requirement for any search or seizure under the US constitution. Passengers should not be detained for questioning or search as if they were potential criminals, he claims, unless specific facts indicate they may commit a crime. A passenger profile, Nojeim insists, does not do that. He believes profiling often discriminates by singling out passengers based on race, nationality, and other criteria. 'Airports should not be checkpoints,' he adds.
Search devices are also targets for criticism. Scanning cameras now under development would detect items concealed under passengers' clothing, but would also allow scanners to see passengers' bodies through their clothing. Any machine that effectively undresses someone is bound to draw fire even if the FAA says it has no interest in examining navels.
The concern that may worry civil libertarians most is that data in passenger profiles could allow the government to track the travel habits of every person in the country. The FBI has already asked Congress for access without a court order to passenger travel records held by airlines. If those records are enhanced with more data for profiling purposes and then accessed by agencies for other reasons, some fear profiling could make Big Brother a reality. 'The exercise of a constitutional right, like travel, should not be contingent on the sacrifice of another constitutional right, like privacy,' says Nojeim.
Even if all civil rights issues can be addressed, will the changes achieve what is hoped for - fewer fatalities? Even if putting the Gore Commission's recommendations into action reduces the body count from air crashes, Hahn of the American Enterprise Institute suggests this could create another conundrum. 'Although these proposals are well intentioned, they could result in a substantial increase in [ground] traffic fatalities,' says Hahn, who adds that as air travel becomes more expensive or inconvenient, people tend to switch to other modes of transportation. Of special interest here is the proposal concerning infants. If the FAA insists that all passengers, regardless of age, must have a restraint system, then under-twos will require a seat and, therefore, parents will have to pay for an additional ticket. An FAA study, conducted before the Gore Commission was set up, indicated that if the cost of air travel for families were to increase, some would opt to travel by road instead. As road travel is more risky, the result could be a rise in infant deaths.
Still, the media attention that accompanies an airline disaster is difficult to ignore. In an Associated Press survey of US newspaper and broadcast news editors, the TWA crash was voted the biggest news story of 1996, with the ValuJet crash in fifth place. Americans have followed 'selective avoidance' strategies in the past after major accidents. This can cost individual airlines - or, as in the case of the aftermath of the ValuJet crash where other low-cost carriers felt the knock-on effect, whole segments of the industry - millions of dollars.
The Commission is recommending that the federal government should designate aviation security a national security issue and, therefore, allocate substantial annual funding towards capital improvements. The report suggests a budget of $100 million and acknowledges that more money will be needed, but leaves the question open as to how that money will be raised.
Among all these unknowns, Arnold Barnett of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology raises a more basic issue - perception of the traveller. He argues that as most of the travelling public appear to find the current accident rate acceptable, worries over the inevitable rise in the number of accidents due to increases in air traffic are misplaced. 'There are strong and obvious reasons to prevent as many accidents as possible,' says Barnett. 'But why assume that the public cannot understand that two crashes in 10 million flights imply the same level of risk as one crash in 5 million? Why assert that a point that is obvious to aviation professionals is incomprehensible to air travellers, one of the most educated segments of the public?' - The recent terrorist attacks in New York and Oklahoma and air disasters, like the TWA crash, have left US citizens feeling vulnerable in their own country.
Gore's top 20The main recommendations of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security are:
1. A reduction in the fatal accident rate by a factor of five within ten years.
2. More vigorous application of the certification standards for businesses in aviation by the DOT and FAA.
3. A rewrite of the Federal Aviation Regulations into plain English, performance-based rules.
4. Emphasis on human factors and training in aviation safety research.
5. The installation of enhanced ground proximity warning systems in all commercial and military passenger aircraft.
6. The expansion of the FAA's ageing aircraft programme to cover non-structural systems.
7. The introduction of legislation to protect aviation industry employees who report safety or security violations.
8.The elimination of the exemption allowing children under the age of two to travel without FAA-approved restraints.
9. The development of a revised national aerospace system (NAS) modernisation plan within six months, which will have the system fully operational by 2005.
10. Ensure the accuracy, availability and reliability of the global positioning system to accelerate its use in NAS modernisation.
11. Development and operation of NAS should be funded by its users - the Commission believes that replacing the current ticket tax system with a user fee would allow revenues and spending to be correlated more closely.
12. Aviation security should be designated a national security issue with the federal government providing substantial funding for capital improvements. A budget of $100 million is suggested.
13. Amend the law to clarify the US Customs Service's authority to search outbound international mail.
14. Criminal background and fingerprint checks for all screeners and all airport and airline employees with access to secure areas.
15. Assess the potential of chemical and biological weapons as tools of terrorism.
16. Complement existing screening technology with automated passenger profiling.
17. Begin implementation of a full passenger-bag matching system.
18. Improve passenger manifests on international flights and explore the costs and effects of a similar requirement domestically.
19. The provision of extra funding by Congress to the National Transportation Safety Board to help it manage any new responsibilities, arising from the NTSB's federal response plan to aviation disasters due out in April.
20. Implementation of key provisions in the Aviation Disaster Family Assistance Act 1996 by 31 March to improve treatment of family members of victims.
Source: Airline Business
