Two Air Disasters Make For Deadly Year
This wasn’t just the deadliest year for commercial aviation, it also was the most shocking.
Two major disasters occurred under bizarre and mysterious circumstances.
Last May, a ValuJet DC-9 plunged into the Florida Everglades, suspected of being doomed by a dangerous cargo of oxygen-generating canisters erupting into fire.
Two months later, a Trans World Airlines 747 exploded near New York’s Long Island, breaking in two and raining down in a fiery storm into the Atlantic Ocean.
Those created just some of the bold headlines proclaiming calamity in 1996.
In July, a Delta Air Lines jet engine exploded into a passenger cabin in Pensacola, Fla. during takeoff. Last month, a United Express turboprop commuter collided with a small plane in Quincy, Ill.
There were four major crashes in the Caribbean and Latin America, another three in the rest of the world.
That does not include the crash of an American Airlines Boeing 757 near Cali, Colombia, which rammed into a mountain last December, killing 159. Some consider that accident the start of a string of disasters that occurred over the course of the year.
In all, 355 U.S. air passengers were killed in 1996, more than double the 175 U.S. fatalities in 1995 and the highest domestic death toll in the past decade.
Globally, 1,460 air travelers died, the most ever. The previous death record was in 1985, when 1,179 air passengers died worldwide.
That was the year a Japan Air Lines Boeing 747 crashed into a mountain, killing 520, and a Delta Air Lines jumbo jet out of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. crashed in Dallas, killing 137.
“It was a bad headline year,” said Mike Overly, of the nonprofit Aviation Institute in Worthington, Ohio, which studies aviation accidents. “This is likely going to be the worst year in aviation for fatal crashes and body counts.”
Overly and other aviation experts say each accident is the result of its own special set of factors. And in terms of accident rates, which those in the industry consider the true measure of aviation safety, 1996 was an average, if not low, year. Seven of the past 10 years were worse.
The U.S. accident rate this year is expected to be about .044 fatal accidents per 100,000 departures, up from .024 in 1995. That is based on four fatal accidents this year compared to two last year.
The rate remains low because the number of U.S. airline departures climbed sharply, from 8.2 million in 1995 to about 9 million this year, according to the Air Transport Association, a trade group representing most major air carriers.
The chances of dying in an airplane crash are still about 8 million to 1, said David Fuscus, the association’s spokesman.
That, however, is little consolation to many nervous travelers, who think of ValuJet Flight 592 and TWA Flight 800 when they board an airliner.
The ValuJet DC-9, bound for Atlanta, crashed into the Everglades about 10 minutes after takeoff from Miami, killing 110. It was the deadliest crash in Florida history.
Because it shattered into pieces, it initially appeared as though it disappeared into the muck. Several other factors about the flight also captured the nation’s attention.
It was the first major crash of a discount air carrier. It showed how often dangerous materials are carried in airliner cargo holds. And it revealed a lax federal scrutiny of the airline industry.
On the positive side, aviation experts say, the Federal Aviation Administration is in the process of addressing all those issues.
The TWA Boeing 747, bound for Paris, exploded at 13,000 feet over Long Island after taking off from Kennedy International Airport in New York, killing 230.
Initially, many witnesses saw a streak of light go up to the jumbo jet before it blew apart, leading to suspicion of a terrorist missile. Although federal investigators now believe a fuel-system problem may have been at fault, the crash remains a mystery.
On Nov. 19, a United Express Beech 1900 turboprop attempted to land at a small airport with no control tower in Quincy while a twin-engine Beechcraft King Air took off on an intersecting runway. The two collided, killing a total of 13.
Overly, of the Aviation Safety Institute, said while these accidents may be unsettling, “body counts are not a good indicator of safety.”
What concerns him, he said, is that there appears to be an increase in other categories of aviation accidents.
For example, he said there were a high number of military fighter jet accidents, possibly caused by cutbacks in spending and training.
There also were an unusual number of cargo plane accidents worldwide, including the crash of a Boeing 707 operated by Miami-based Millon Air into a densely populated barrio in Manta, Ecuador, killing at least 30. xxxx SAFETY AND THE NUMBERS Accident rates have been steadily improving as the skies have gotten more crowded. In 1960, U.S. airlines carried a total of 58 million passengers and suffered 12 fatal accidents. That equates to a fatal accident with every 316,000 departures. Last year, the airlines carried almost 550 million passengers and had two fatal accidents - or an accident once every 4 million departures. In recent speeches, David Hinson, former administrator of the FAA, said aviation must continue to get dramatically safer because of the industry’s projected growth. The FAA has estimated the number of U.S. air carrier flights will increase by 40 percent to about 11.5 million departures in 2015, and the number of passenger deaths will double. In the meantime, David Fuscus, of the Air Transport Association, a trade group representing most major air carriers, said flying remains the safest form of travel. In a three-month period, he said, more people die on the nation’s highways - about 9,000 - than have died in the entire history of commercial aviation.