WashingtonWire - 2000-07-10

By Barbara Cook / July 09, 2000

WashingtonWire

By Barbara Cook

FAA To Require Airlines To Share Safety Data 

The Federal Aviation Administration has proposed a rule requiring airlines to share composite safety data with the agency if they choose to have a Flight Operational Quality Assurance program. FOQA is designed to pinpoint the root causes of potential safety issues by using state-of-the-art flight data recorder technology to collect and analyze data on routine flights. Airlines collect this data about everyday safety trends in their operations and now would be required to share the data with FAA. The agency then would use the data to more effectively target resources to correct potential safety problems. Participation in FOQA is voluntary and programs must be cleared by FAA. The agency said it would not use FOQA data for enforcement purposes, except in egregious cases. 

Congressmen Boost Airport Defibrillators

Several members of Congress still are interested in requiring airports to have automatic cardiac defibrillators on-hand, despite a recent decision by the Federal Aviation Administration that it would not propose such a regulation. FAA said it surveyed U.S. airports and found that the majority of medium to large airports have "already taken the necessary steps to provide for the medical capability to address cardiac events at their individual facilities."

In late 1997, Congress passed the Aviation Medical Assistant Act, which directed FAA to consider whether defibrillators should be mandatory on airlines and at airports. Since that time, most commercial air carriers have installed the equipment on their aircraft, with the exception of United, Continental and Southwest, which are in the process of doing so. FAA surveyed 130 airports with more than 100,000 annual enplanements and found that 108 already have defibrillators. An additional 11 have an off-airport medical response rate of less than six minutes.

Amtrak Revs Up For Acela Again

Amtrak has resumed testing the Acela Express high-speed train on the Northeast Corridor following a temporary suspension of operations due to problems found with cracked or missing bolts on the locomotive undercarriage. Engineers have installed longer bolts in the affected parts, a fix proposed by manufacturer Bombardier/ALSTOM and approved by the Federal Railroad Administration, which gave the go-ahead for testing to resume. Amtrak now hopes the train will go into service in August, just a month behind schedule, but it has not announced a schedule.

Midwest High-Speed Rail Develops

The U.S. Department of Transportation has awarded a $34 million contract to a team led by Lockheed Martin Corp. to develop and deploy a Positive Train Control system on a 120-mile segment of the Chicago-St. Louis high-speed rail passenger corridor. The department awarded another $6.5 million grant to the Illinois Department of Transportation as part of the federal government's contribution toward the program. Approximately half of the funding for the project comes from the federal government. The contract was handled through the North American Joint Positive Train Control Program, a partnership between the Federal Railroad Administration, Illinois DOT and the Association of American Railroads. PTC systems use intelligent transportation technologies, including onboard computers, digital radio links, differential global positioning systems, computer route databases and wayside computer control systems to ensure train safety.

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