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Thursday's crash of a de Havilland Dash 8 Q400 in Clarence was deeply saddening. 50 people were killed in the tragedy, and the two and a half year period of fatality-free flying in commercial aviation was abruptly brought to an end. What made this crash more than tragic was that it was foreseeable and likely preventable if not for the preference of profit over safety in some of the aviation industry and for the lax oversight of the Federal Aviation Administration in its failure to adequately address known safety risks related to icing. Initial reports strongly indicate that the turboprop aircraft was brought down due to icing either on the wings, propellers or the tail. This type of occurrence is not without precedent. On October 31, 1994, American Eagle flight 4184 dropped from the sky when ice accumulated on its wings. It crashed into a home in Roselawn, Indiana, killing all 64 people onboard and 4 more on the ground. Like Thursday's crash, the plane was a turboprop -- an Avions de Transport Régional 72. Both aircraft were equipped with pneumatic deicing boots, a technology invented in the 1930s which has not changed much since. As Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, I oversaw the investigation into the Roselawn crash. It became apparent that, while deicing boots are more fuel efficient than the heated wing technology that larger jets use, they are not as effective at reducing the risk of an icing accident. Furthermore, the FAA is charged with overseeing the certification process of each make and model of aircraft, yet we found in our investigation that the FAA failed to ensure that this certification adequately accounted for hazards that can result from all known icing conditions. After our extensive investigation concluded, I signed the NTSB's recommendations to the FAA regarding these issues. Over 10 years later, the FAA has not adequately addressed these concerns, and the NTSB has placed safe flight in icing conditions on its "Most Wanted" safety improvements list. The aircraft model which crashed on Thursday was certified by the FAA on January 26, 2000, and the accident aircraft itself was not manufactured until 2008. Type certification and manufacture of the aircraft occurred well after after the Roselawn recommendations were issued and with full knowledge of the dangers that turboprops and deicing boots face in freezing conditions. There was no move to incorporate the more effective (but more expensive) heated wing technology. What's more, an airworthiness directive published by the FAA in 1996 notes that the earlier, 40-seat model of DHC-8 aircraft had an unsafe condition which could result in loss of control of the aircraft when flaps were extended during icing conditions -- as they were in Thursday's crash. But because the FAA basically ignored the NTSB's recommendation to adequately test aircraft in these conditions before declaring them airworthy, the certification of this new version of the DHC-8 went along without a hitch. The most substantial change to the new model was not related to safety: the aircraft was stretched to allow 78 passengers to be carried by the aircraft. In short, even in light of the Roselawn accident, safety was compromised so that these aircraft would be allowed to fly more people at cheaper cost. In this instance, the FAA and the airline industry clearly placed a higher value on profit than on their passengers' safety. Well-known risks were overlooked, well-documented recommendations were ignored. That this plane was allowed to fly in dangerous conditions for which it was not thoroughly tested and prepared demonstrates this. This attitude must change. As it did in the wake of the Roselawn accident, the FAA should ground all aircraft of this type until the NTSB investigation is completed and it is clear they can be operated safely. But the serious safety risks posed by icing conditions must be addressed for more than just the short-term. I hope that this accident will finally cause the FAA and the commercial aviation industry to take these risks seriously so that a tragedy such as this will not happen again. |