About 3 U.S. flights a day see smoke, fire event By Gary Stoller, USA TODAY Smoke or fire incidents occur on an average of at least three U.S. airline= =20 flights a day, according to a recently published estimate by a former=20 senior official in the Federal Aviation Administration. In-flight smoke and= =20 fires =97 mainly in inaccessible areas and compartments on airplanes =97= result=20 in more than 350 unscheduled landings annually, estimates L. Nick Lacey,=20 now an aviation industry consultant for the Morten Beyer & Agnew firm in=20 Arlington, Va. Lacey headed the FAA's flight standards office before he=20 left the agency in 2001. He and a colleague studied the adequacy of=20 smoke-elimination standards and procedures for EVASWorldwide, which sells=20 emergency equipment to help pilots see through smoke. More than one in=20 5,000 U.S. airline flights encounter smoke or fire, leading to at least one= =20 in 15,000 flights making an unscheduled landing, their report says. Some aviation safety experts say Lacey's estimates, which he calls=20 conservative, point out the need to develop plane fire codes and address=20 electrical problems. Earlier this year, the National Transportation Safety= =20 Board said air crews need more training to fight in-flight fires and called= =20 on the FAA to study the feasibility of redesigning planes so fires behind=20 interior panels would be easier to put out. "The airlines are exempt from=20 all state and local fire codes," says consumer safety advocate Paul Hudson,= =20 who is also a member of the FAA's rulemaking advisory committee. "We've=20 requested over and over to plug this deficiency. Commercial airliners are=20 the only major public spaces not required to have fire-detection and=20 suppression equipment wherever a fire could break out." In 1998, the FAA=20 issued a rule requiring fire-detection and fire-suppression equipment in=20 cargo compartments but not in other areas of a plane. The rule followed the= =20 deaths of 110 people aboard a smoke-filled ValuJet plane that crashed in=20 the Everglades in 1996. FAA spokesman Paul Takemoto says the FAA has conducted an extensive=20 assessment of wiring safety on airplanes. As a result, it has developed=20 plans to improve wiring maintenance and design and identify degraded=20 wiring, which can cause electrical fires aboard airplanes, he says. Lacey=20 says his study's calculations are based on a 2000 study done by Jim Shaw, a= =20 safety expert for the Air Line Pilots Association. Shaw's study found that= =20 airlines filed 1,089 reports of smoke or fire on airplanes from Jan. 1,=20 1999, to Nov. 2, 1999, with the FAA. More than half the incidents were=20 "high-temperature" events, such as sparking, arcing or burning, and 82%=20 were related to electrical systems or components, Shaw said. Flight crews=20 often did not know where the smoke or fire originated, he said. For years,= =20 the FAA has looked at ways to improve the safety of electrical wiring. A=20 short-circuit in wiring was the most likely cause of a fuel-tank explosion= =20 that killed all 230 people aboard a TWA jumbo jet in 1996, the NTSB says.=20 Wiring is also one of the suspects in the crash of a Swissair plane that=20 killed all 229 aboard near Nova Scotia in September 1998. That accident=20 remains under investigation by Canadian authorities. *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) : escape email mailto:ejames@escape.ca Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Site of the Week: http://www.hilofoodstores.com TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************