ACTE Prez: Safer Skies Proposal Needs To Go Further
<B> ACTE Prez: Safer Skies Proposal Needs To Go Further</B>
<I>Washington</I> - The Association of Corporate Travel Executives last week officially and publicly applauded the Safer Skies Proposal announced by Vice President Al Gore and the Federal Aviation Administration. But at the same time, it cautioned that the proposal does not go far enough in guaranteeing the safety of the traveling public.
The two crucial points of the Safer Skies Proposal call for more rigorous inspections of jet engines, including their titanium fan blades, and the installation of ground-proximity detectors in cockpits--both issues worthy of review by federal authorities, ACTE president Earl Foster said in an official press release sent out by the association last week.
Nonetheless, Foster noted, with the number of domestic air passengers expected to increase from 600 million per year to over a billion by 2010, "FAA is going to have to do a lot more than implement spot proposals."
Regarding the call for inspections, Foster said that "like millions of traveling Americans, I was under the impression that FAA engine inspections were as rigorous and as standardized as possible," and urged the agency to "automatically adjust its inspection procedures to match the complexity and design of newer aircraft engines" and to "determine the safest direction and mandate that the aviation industry follow."
On the subject of ground proximity indicators, which are used to show how close an airplane is to the ground and prevent crashes, ACTE noted that the "flight into terrain" accidents the indicators are designed to prevent accounted for 25 percent of all commercial airline accidents in the last nine years.
Therefore, "it is the responsibility of government to recommend the acquisition of, and the nation's carriers to avail themselves of, any device that will help guarantee the safety of the passengers," Foster said, chiding that not using the latest technology "would be like not choosing to carry a cockpit radio 50 years ago."
Finally, Foster called for a more reasonable and logical approach to updating air traffic control resources, airport improvements and more standardized training for support personnel.
"Every official government aviation story begins with the quote that air travel in the United States is the safest in the world. It did not get that way by coincidence. And it will not stay that way unless dramatic steps are taken now," he said.