Terrified passengers fought to escape from a burning floatplane near Tofino a week ago. Two of them didn鈥檛 make it. As families grieve and the injured recover, Transport sa国际传媒 has to show Canadians it is doing something to help prevent fires after plane crashes.
The cause of the two deaths is not yet known, but it is clear that the plane caught fire after it crashed. Survivor John Young, who was in Victoria General Hospital, described scrambling to get out of his seat as the flames licked at his legs. After freeing himself and another passenger, he tried unsuccessfully to pull the pilot from the burning cockpit.
The Transportation Safety Board has repeatedly warned since 2006 about the need for changes to prevent post-crash fires, but Transport sa国际传媒 has not implemented the main recommendations.
In 2006, a board report on 13,806 small-plane accidents between 1976 and 2002 found that post-crash fires occurred in four per cent of the total accidents, but accounted for 22 per cent of the fatalities and 10 per cent of the serious injuries. A U.S. government study found that people died in 59 per cent of crashes that resulted in post-crash fires, compared to fatalities in 13.3 per cent of crashes without fire.
The board recommended that planes be required to have 鈥渒ill switches鈥� that would cut power from the batteries in the event of a crash. Cutting electricity would remove a likely ignition source. It repeated that recommendation after two pilots died when their plane crash-landed on a road near Vancouver International Airport. They could have survived if not for the fire.
In 2012, a sa国际传媒 Coroners Service review of four fatal plane crashes recommended that planes be required to have 鈥済ravity鈥� or similar switches that cut power when they sense the sudden deceleration caused by a crash. The switches don鈥檛 activate in turbulence or hard landings.
Transport sa国际传媒 says it backs the 鈥渋ntent鈥� of the safety board recommendations and wants to reduce post-crash fires, but the department and its counterparts in other countries are not as convinced of the value of kill switches. It says the switch is not an 鈥渁bsolute solution.鈥�
No one is suggesting it is an absolute solution. There is more than one way for volatile aircraft fuel to catch fire after a crash, but electrical ignition is an important one.
It鈥檚 not a simple question, because operators and manufacturers are concerned about the switches malfunctioning and cutting power while the plane is in flight. The coroners鈥� review panel, however, said such systems can be equipped with reset switches to restore power if necessary.
sa国际传媒 is unwilling to act on its own. Finding solutions that work on hundreds of different ages and types of planes flying in countries around the world requires time, work and negotiation. Other agencies, like the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, have backed away from the idea of kill switches and similar technologies.
They maintain that the fixes are not worth the expense for the number of fatalities they would prevent. Instead, they focus on preventing accidents by steps such as better training for pilots. Not surprisingly, the leading cause of plane crashes is pilot error, which accounts for 50 per cent of accidents, according to planecrashinfo.com.
There will always be crashes, with 12 per cent caused by weather and 22 per cent caused by mechanical failure. And while we might reduce the 50 per cent caused by pilot error, we will never eliminate it as long as human beings are at the controls.
While they work on prevention, authorities have to do what they can to make sure more people survive those inevitable crashes.
