Salon.com > P. Smith

Crash culture

Thu, 30 May 2002 19:30:00 +0000

Following the crash of a China Airlines Boeing 747 on Saturday, the press has been quick to bring up the seemingly related issues of aging aircraft and the questionable safety records of certain foreign airlines.

The aircraft, a 747 of the original, so-called "classic" series introduced in the early 1970s, went down under mysterious circumstances about 20 minutes after takeoff from Taipei, bound for Hong Kong. Not only had the airplane been in service with the Taiwanese carrier for 22 years, and was due for retirement in the next few weeks, but the airline itself has been battling a dubious reputation because of its record of 12 fatal accidents since 1969.

Although nothing has come to light indicating age-related structural failure or mechanical malfunction, coverage has consistently invoked the 747's age (and made cryptic reference to its ironically scheduled retirement) as a potential factor. "Why did they put this old plane in service?" asked El-Hinn Ibrahim, relative of three of the victims aboard the doomed flight. This inflammatory statement has given various reports of the crash a darkly suggestive tone. Twenty-two years, after all, surely would find most aircraft in the scrapyard, right?

Back in the saddle

Thu, 11 Apr 2002 19:37:00 +0000

I junked my car, an old red Hyundai, back in 1993, and started riding the subway out to the airport. With my black case, and sometimes in full polyester regalia, I was, maybe, one of the more interesting curiosities on the Blue Line.

In time I became an expert at gauging the intent of peoples' stares. Businessmen would check out the stickers on my flight bag. College kids would try to decipher the logo on my brass wings. Others would contemplate the number of stripes on my gold shoulder epaulets: What did three bars mean? Four? Now and then strangers would strike up conversations. "My sister-in-law," they would say, for example, "is a flight attendant, too." And with that I'd politely explain I was not, in fact, a flight attendant, but a pilot.

I won't say that people were impressed, exactly, to run across an airline pilot slogging it out with the rest of the commuters, but I was at least unusual. And I was young enough -- still in my mid-20s when I bought my first monthly pass for the Boston subway -- to seem something of a novelty.

Air travel’s communications killer

Thu, 28 Mar 2002 20:30:00 +0000

Air travel, always a source of stress for the traveler, has gone full scale in the headache department. From the terrorist hijackings and the crash of American Flight 587, to the hassles now confronting travelers at our terminals, our skies have entered a new realm of insufferability in the mind of a worried populace.

It's a given that any vestiges of aviation's glamour days were long ago devoured in post-deregulation chaos, but our ambivalence toward flying never quite evolved into outright fear. It is different now, and the industry cannot afford to miss a step. Should another plane go down, whether from a terrorist's act of sabotage or a proverbial act of God, or should word emerge of some safety-oriented negligence, unprecedented numbers of citizens may be stowing their seat trays for the last time and opting instead for highways, trains and buses.

There are any number of things the airlines could do to preclude this. And one of these cannot be implemented fast enough: the long-needed installation of an inexpensive piece of equipment into the communications radios of airliners. While we fuss over cockpit doors, bombs and preflight security, this simple enhancement could save hundreds of lives.

How safe is your airplane?

Fri, 08 Mar 2002 20:30:00 +0000

A group of pilots at American Airlines, the world's largest air carrier, have been rallying for the grounding of American's fleet of Airbus A300s. Their concerns follow the mysterious crash of an American A300-600 after takeoff from John F. Kennedy Airport on Nov. 12, in which 265 people died. A letter of protest circulated in Miami, New York and Boston, the three stations at which American bases its 34-strong fleet of the European-built wide-body jet, and at least five dozen pilots added their signatures.

American Flight 587, en route from JFK to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, crashed moments after takeoff when, to put it coarsely but accurately, the tail fell off. Why this happened is not known, but the more investigators learn about Flight 587, the more its rudder is coming under scrutiny. The rudder is the large moveable surface attached to an aircraft's tail, controlling side-to-side movement, or yawing, along the plane's vertical axis.

The inherent danger of flying

Tue, 15 Jan 2002 19:51:00 +0000

As airplane nuts in junior high school, my friends and I spent virtually every weekend between Grades 7 and 9 roaming the terminals of Boston's Logan International Airport. I came to know that airport with as much intimacy as I knew my own house. From the 16th-story observation deck of Logan's control tower, equipped with binoculars and notebooks, we logged the registration numbers of arriving and departing jetliners. "Plane spotting," it was called.

But I'll admit that since we were kids on the verge of our teens, these innocent pursuits sometimes gave way to pranks and unauthorized snooping. Logan became a kind of amusement park of harmless but dastardly challenges. We would ride the luggage belts into the airside tarmac areas. We crawled through hatchways, sneaked into elevator shafts and fire escapes. At one point we knew the doorway combination codes to several of Logan's most secure areas, our intelligence gathered simply by spying on employees as they punched in the digits.

Turbulence can kill

Fri, 16 Nov 2001 17:09:00 +0000

More than five years after TWA Flight 800 blew up in the twilight off Long Island, the result of exploding vapors in an empty fuel tank, the conspiracy mongers remain undaunted. They're willing to oppose any version of the truth that is publicly propagated: Theres even a Web site devoted to the idea that Pan Am 103 did not fall on Lockerbie, Scotland, because of terrorists' Semtex-laden bomb, but thanks to a malfunctioning cargo door. In a kind of equal-and-opposite, Newtonian Third Law way, the information age has become a sort of Dark Ages-style incubator of strange suspicions and mistrust, pseudo-truth so easily spread with merely the tap of a Send key.

In the past 24 hours no fewer than four times have I fielded questions about whether the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 might involve some kind of government coverup. The scenario goes like this: A bomb destroyed the plane, and the government, along with the airlines, fearing paralysis of the economy and our collective psyche in the wake of recent events, has decided to play off the crash as an accident. "Turbulence," they are saying. And while no, those men in dark suits and sunglasses (I know because I saw them on "The X-Files") dont have screenwriting credentials, cant they do better than that? I mean, come on, after all, turbulence cant bring down a 150-ton airliner.

In the first plane to land after Flight 587

Wed, 14 Nov 2001 20:16:00 +0000

Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands, world-renowned for security and convenience, features an unguarded observation deck and a bicycle path that follows the contours of the runways and taxiways. The airport's railway station lies along the north-south line linking Amsterdam with Rotterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, and beyond. The station sits not at some outlying transfer point, but within the terminal building itself, a 30-second escalator ride from the ticket counters and arrival halls.

Yesterday, at 10 in the morning, I was clearing immigration at Schiphol. There were no long lines, no soldiers, no ransacking of carry-ons -- just the smooth and orderly flow of passengers through no fewer than three security checkpoints in an atmosphere of cool, confident, European efficiency. Three times I passed through a metal detector -- my luggage was pulled quickly beneath an X-ray machine while the magnetic strip of my passport was swiped for verification. Down below, I knew, suitcases were being sniffed, X-rayed and pressurized. Nobody asked about nail clippers, files, or scissors. Total elapsed time from check-in desk to departure concourse? About six minutes.

Search for bombs, not nail clippers

Tue, 30 Oct 2001 19:30:00 +0000

At a major international airport recently, an airline pilot in full uniform, en route to fly a planeload of passengers to a major city in the Northeast, had a small pair of scissors confiscated from his toiletries bag. When the pilot asked a U.S. marshal what purpose was served by taking a pair of rounded-end Fiskars from the very person responsible for flying an airliner, the marshal shrugged and answered, "That's what they want us to do."

Whether this pilot intended to hijack himself with scissors is, if it can even be suggested with a straight face, a long-shot suspicion at best, but reason and clear thinking aren't a high priority on the concourses these days. At LaGuardia airport more than a week after the Sept. 11 attacks, not a single pay phone was in working order. "For security," nodded a policeman. If there's a relationship between pay phones and security, the Gotham cop had no particular insight. "It's a new world," was his only explanation. In another episode, a U.S. Customs officer reportedly was relieved of his box cutter, a tool he uses to inspect bales and packages, but was allowed to pass with his 9 mm pistol strapped in its holster.