U.S. Airlines Mark Milestone in Safety

WASHINGTON — Two years after the ValuJet and TWA 800 crashes raised questions about safety, U.S. airlines closed out 1998 with a little-noticed milestone: None of their 615 million passengers died in an accident.

It appears to be the first year since the dawn of commercial aviation for such an achievement.

There have been at least two other years when no one died in the crash of a U.S. jetliner, most recently 1993. But since the National Transportation Safety Board began compiling statistics in 1967, such zeros have always been offset by deaths in smaller, generally propeller-driven commuter airplanes.

In 1998, no passenger died in an accident involving a scheduled U.S. commercial airplane anywhere in the world. That silent achievement stands in contrast to the public outcry after the TWA and ValuJet crashes in 1996 killed a combined total of 340. The same year, a United Express commuter accident in Quincy, Ill., killed all 12 aboard.

Government, aviation safety and airline officials were heartened by the latest news, but they were also quick to say that even in years when there are passenger deaths, the nation’s aviation system remains the safest in the world.

“When there is an accident, it’s just by the grace of God whether there are a lot of people killed or not,” said Stuart Matthews, president of the Flight Safety Foundation, an industry trade group. “The truth is, these are very random things.”

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Les Dorr said 1998’s zero-fatality count “was the result of the things that we and our industry partners have been doing every day to make sure that flying remains the safest form of transportation.”

In April, the FAA, the airlines and the aerospace industry announced a goal to cut the aviation accident rate by 80% by 2010.

Among the things they are targeting are crashes caused when pilots become disoriented and fly perfectly workable planes into terrain around an airport.

Without that safety commitment, experts say, a coming boom in worldwide aviation could result in an airplane crash each week.