European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - August 19, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse Is d Vidito Wpafb a National Ayat emt Are rib uting to air traffic control havoc in a. Result delay and frazzled is. Aircraft movement s have Beer. As Nobut bottlenecks Are not Only in or. Major terminals an outdated and Tow with passengers especially to vacation periods. This month transportation ministers agreed to further Steps including an expansion of standardized traffic on Lrol training courses at a european Center in Luxembourg. But Industry officials say that countries Are still Stoving too slowly behind All this there Are huge National interests Galibert said. We Are not opposed to harmonization responded / Yves Lambert director of France s air traffic services roughly the equivalent of America s Federal aviation administration. But he added before creating one common air traffic control among say France Britain and Germany you must go through Many intermediate officials admit that they were caught off guard by the average 8 percent annual growth in tie number of Intra i european flights in the last three years. At the beginning of the decade Many predicted that the More. Of economical jumbo jets would be increasingly used to putting a Sharp Brake on the growth in flights. Jar but with the economic recovery and with falling fuel costs just the opposite happened. Europe has seen growth in Short haul service and the frequency of flights using smaller instead of bigger aircraft. The trend has been caused in particular by moves to meet the needs of higher paying business travellers. ? " one consequence of faster than expected growth v. Is the current shortage of air traffic controllers. Many countries Are now training More but the process takes. Several years. Officials Are also looking at ending or modifying the v civil service status that controllers have in Many v countries the aim is to make civil aviation less vulnerable to slowdowns and work stoppages and to. Be free to change work schedules and pay Scales to respond More quickly to changes in demand. F we re looking for new institutional structures to be Able to react More flexibly said Wolfgang Philipp " director of operations at eur control which seat is safest by demise Gellene los Angeles times moments after a United airlines dc-10 crashed at Sioux cily Iowa on july 19. Passengers sealed in its Iron coach Section ran to safely. More than 100 others Many in the first class and Tail sections perished. Yet aviation safely experts said in interviews since the crash that it would be wrong to conclude that the mid Section is the safest part of an Airliner. Although the Wing and Tail sections generally offer More Security than other parts of an Airliner they added survival in a crash ultimately has More to do with the nature of the Accident than the location of a passenger s Seal. Daniel t. Smith an airline safety advocate who has studied data from countless airline accidents said survival in a crash depends on which part of the plane hits the ground first How the aircraft Breaks apart and whether it catches fire. You Tell me what kind of Accident you Are going to have and i la Tell you where to sit said Smith director of government and Industry affairs for the International airline passengers association in Dallas a number of aviation experts said a combination of remarkable circumstances apparently helped save the lives of 185 of the 296 passengers aboard United flight 232. Flying virtually out of control due to loss of its Hydraulic system the dc-10 hit the runway Wing first and car wheeled. The aircraft s nose and Tail look the Force of the crash. The front portion of the mid Section spared much of the Impact As the plane tumbled was less heavily damaged. The aircraft broke apart near Row 9 and Row 19, allowing passengers to dash out of the openings in the fuselage. The wings containing the air crafts fuel tanks broke off in the crash keeping the fire a Small but critical distance from the mid Section. The Ilia he Crew was spared experts said because the dc-10 s nose broke away from the first class Section behind it where Many passengers died the passengers had been told by the flight Crow thai a crash Landing was possible so their seat belts were fastened and their Heads were buried Between their Knees in the crash position placing them in the Best possible situation to survive that kind of Landing said Richard h. Wood a professor of aviation safely at University of Southern California. A change in any of those conditions for example if the aircraft had landed nose first undoubtedly would have altered the outcome experts say. Every crash is a unique event. There is no logic in trying to predict which Section will remain and which will collapse said John j. Nance a former Braniff airways Pilot who wrote the bestseller Blind Trust How deregulation has jeopardized airline safely. Nance pointed out for example that Only the passengers seated in the Tail Section survived when a Delta air lines Lockheed l-1011-100 tristan crashed while attempting to land at Dallas it. Worth International Airport during a thunderstorm in August 1985. The aircraft unexpectedly hit the ground North of the runway smashed a car and two water towers broke apart and burned. Thirty of the 165 passengers aboard lived. Nance and other safety exports said most passengers select their Seal locations for convenience rather than safely. When he flies. Nance chooses an aisle Seal but no to make a Quick emergency exit. Instead he said an aisle seat makes it easier for him to grab his carry on baggage and leave the plane Wilhour having to climb Over some linebacker to gel out " similarly Smith of the passengers association likes to sit in an aisle scat near the front exit not because he would be the first out in an emergency but because he because he likes the extra leg room. Sara Dornacker a spokeswoman for United airlines said Many passengers request seats near the Wing because they think thai location provides a smoother ride through turbulence. While passengers tend nol to request particular seats for safety reasons she said thai since the Sioux City crash about 400 United customers have asked nol to be booked on dc-10s. Passengers who wish to avoid a dc-10 can do so she said but they will sometimes have to make an additional connecting flight before reaching their destination. Dornacker said United believes that it is impossible to say that one Seal location in an Airliner is safer than another. While safely experts agree that the outcome of a crash is unpredictable some of them say that the Wing and Tail sections offer advantages Over Oiher parts of a plane. Wayne Williams a safety advocate with National transportation safely association and a former Eastern airlines executive says the rear of the air plane is the safest unless of course the plane crashes on ils Lail As a generalization i think it s True said Williams also a former air Force Accident investigator. I be been flying since the 1940s, and i be seen an awful lol of Lails intact and nol much us s Wood said the rear is theoretically Saler because when a plane crashes everything inside it is thrown Forward. A passenger in the Tail Section is less Likely to be crushed by seats and flying suitcases. Also in theory the front Section of the plane usually absorbs most of the Impact one reason Why the might data recorder is normally located in the rear Wood said but As might be expected the Tail Section has us own drawbacks. Some types of aircraft such As the relatively Small Boeing b-727-100, Don t have Tail exits the emergency exit closest to passengers in the rear Section of a b-727-100 is Over the Wing. Also aircraft manufacturers Are putting fuel tanks in the tails of some new Long Range airliners such As the Mcdonnell Douglas md-11 and a version of the Boeing b-747-400. The rear fuel tanks help reduce drag and make the planes More efficient but one expert thinks the change also raises the possibility of fire in the rear Section if the plane crashes. Today when you re sitting in the rear you re sitting farthest from where the fuel is stored Williams said. The aircraft designers Are taking away that Christopher Witkowski director of the consumer aviation action project a Washington advocacy group prefers the Wing Section. Because that Section is reinforced to hold the wings he believes it is sturdier than other sections. Also he said emergency exits Are normally located near the wings have one big disadvantage safety advocates acknowledge highly volatile Jet fuel is stored inside them. The stars and stripes Page 15
