Panel to Push FAA for Better Safety in Burning Aircraft

WASHINGTON —  A House panel promised Thursday to stay on the back of the Federal Aviation Administration to force quick implementation of new safety regulations intended to give air travelers more time to exit burning aircraft.

After hearing moving testimony by two survivors and the father of a man killed in the February crash at Los Angeles International Airport, an angry Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Greenbrae) demanded regulatory action to improve access to emergency exits and install fire-retardant materials in older aircraft.

“I’d be more than embarrassed,” Boxer told the witnesses. “I’d be sickened, if I were the FAA and had to listen to your testimony. I want you to know that this subcommittee is going to look over the shoulder of the FAA. We are not going away.”

Boxer, chairman of the transportation subcommittee of the House Government Operations Committee, called the hearing as part of the panel’s review of safety issues raised by a recent spate of aviation accidents.

In particular, congressional concern has been heightened by two runway mishaps--the Feb. 1 incident in Los Angeles in which a USAir jetliner landed on top of a commuter plane, and the Dec. 3 sideswiping of two Northwest Airlines jets at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

Most of the deaths in both accidents were caused by smoke inhalation, not the impact of the collisions, prompting safety officials and lawmakers to question whether federal officials are moving quickly enough to make planes as fire-safe as possible.

“Our government is teetering on the brink of criminal negligence” because it fails to require that planes contain the safest materials, said Rep. Major R. Owens (D-N.Y.), a member of the subcommittee.

“Given the low priority which the FAA has apparently assigned to these issues over the last several years, it would seem that it has become the responsibility of this committee to grant the public the safety level it deserves by using our jurisdiction to get results from the FAA,” Owens said.

Anthony Broderick, the FAA’s associate administrator for regulation and certification, acknowledged that the agency has “taken longer than we should have” to make domestic airplane interiors as fire-safe as possible. He said that the FAA would have in place within 18 months new rules compelling carriers to provide additional space around emergency exits.

But Broderick insisted that it would be “extraordinarily expensive” for airlines to equip their entire fleets with state-of-the-art, flame-resistant interiors. He said government analyses indicate that it would cost as much as $4.7 billion over 20 years, reflecting both renovation expenses and lost revenues, to retrofit all planes in active service.

In response to a series of withering questions from Boxer, Broderick said: “It’s possible that six years from today, some planes would be flying without the most modern materials.”

Boxer interrupted Broderick at that point, declaring that the FAA’s position is “irresponsible, wrong and not going far enough to protect the public.”

In testimony that quieted the hearing room and visibly moved some subcommittee members, Alex Richman, a Canadian professor of psychiatry, community health and epidemiology, choked up as he told the panel how his son David had died aboard USAir flight 1493 in the Los Angeles crash.

“Ten weeks ago . . . David said goodby to a 17-month-old daughter and pregnant wife,” Richman said. “A few hours later, he was dead. His body was pinned between seats in Rows 9 and 10. The exit aisle was Row 10. . . . My son died one row from the exit.”

David Koch, an engineer and surviving passenger on the flight, said that he was contemplating his death “almost as if I was out of my own body looking back at myself as another person going through this extraordinary experience” before crawling back in the dark, acrid smoke to find an open door to flee the plane.

Koch suggested that the government require planes to install additional window exits.