Similar Safety Issues Spur Differing Responses In Commercial And Military Aviation Sectors

Air Safety Week, Feb 4, 2002

* Army: Drafting a FOQA usage policy that mirrors FAA's protection of data. Some aircraft equipped with FOQA hardware.

* Coast Guard: Currently evaluating how best to establish a FOQA program.

The report, by the way, notes that British Airways inaugurated the first airline FOQA program in the late 1960s.

Control cables. In 1999 a former employee of the Strandflex Company alleged in a court proceeding that the cable manufacturer was supplying wire rope to the military without adequate quality assurance. The military moved smartly to fix the problem, while the FAA dithered for a year. FAA officials told the GAO "they had assessed the situation and concluded it did not require urgent action." The Department of Transportation Inspector General (DOT/IG) got involved, and criticized the FAA's unapproved parts management.

Information sharing. When officials with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) were investigating the fatal 1996 center wing tank explosion that destroyed TWA Flight 800, they were dismayed to discover late in their investigation a 1980 Air Force study of high temperature problems in the CWT of E4-B aircraft, a military variant of the destroyed TWA B747 (see ASW, Nov. 15, 1999). Despite the NTSB's attempt to sweep up all available documentation regarding fuel tanks with heat-generating air conditioning packs located under them, the Air Force study did not come to light until March 1999. The study revealed that under certain circumstances, electrical wires running through the CWT could create a potential safety problem. In its final August 2000 report of the Flight 800 disaster, the NTSB observed caustically:

"The Safety Board recognizes that the military variant of the 747 is not directly comparable to the civilian 747 and that the focus of that study was fuel pump functionality, not flammability. Nonetheless, it is unfortunate that potentially relevant information about 747 center wing (fuel) tank overheating and corrective measures were not provided to the FAA or to 747 operators earlier."

Harmonizing 'best practices'

With these case studies in mind, the GAO concluded that gaps persist in how the FAA, the NTSB and the armed forces share safety-related information. The E-4B CWT heating study isn't the only example. The GAO found that the FAA sends its emergency airworthiness directives to just five military addresses with the same level of urgency these directives are dispatched to commercial operators.

Regarding safety-related programs, there are cases where the military is ahead and more aggressive. In other instances, the FAA and the airline industry clearly have led, with the military in the role of catching up to "best practices" in the commercial sector that clearly can improve the safety of military flight operations.

As a modest beginning to rectify the disparity, the GAO recommended a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Transportation to specify the type of safety-related information that should be exchanged, the mechanism for doing so, and the officials responsible for making sure that it's done. The same might be said humbly of the commercial sector alone. As one example, there are vast differences in the rigor of Continuing Analysis and Safety Systems (CASS) among carriers (see ASW, Jan. 2). The CASS disparities among carriers are as great as the differences the GAO uncovered between FAA and military safety programs.