By Andy Pasztor
Jan. 10, 2011
Federal air-safety investigators on Tuesday are slated to issue the first formal government nonbinding recommendations for installing air bags to save lives in private-plane accidents.
The National Transportation Safety Board’s groundbreaking study, according to people familiar with the details, is expected to outline the benefits of air bags in reducing fatalities and injuries when small aircraft crash.
After assessing the performance of air bags in roughly two dozen such accidents over three years, they said, the safety board has agreed to call for more widespread use of air-bag technology on private planes. These planes typically carry less than half a dozen people, but some models can carry several more.
Board members also appear ready to push for faster adoption of air bags on business aircraft, although that poses greater industry and operator hurdles.
The study “looks favorably upon air bags” and staffers “are going to advocate for their use,” according to Joseph Kolly, head of the board’s office of research and engineering. Based on the study, the five-member board is poised to issue wide-ranging recommendations covering both newly manufactured and older models, according to people familiar with the matter.
The safety board, which makes nonbinding recommendations, isn’t expected to call for federal mandates for stepped-up air-bag deployment. Instead the board wants voluntary compliance. Only the Federal Aviation Administration has authority to mandate safety improvements.
With approximately 1,600 general aviation accidents claiming roughly 500 lives each year across the U.S., experts believe many more crashes would be survivable with the help of air-bag technology.
In an interview Monday, Mr. Kolly said air-bags provide “an opportunity to drive those [fatality] numbers down,” adding that the safety board is in a good position “to make judgments about the technology” and its future applications. The majority of new general aviation models, including Cessna and Cirrus aircraft, already feature air bags that typically deploy from shoulder harnesses. In addition, the devices can be purchased as optional factory-installed equipment on many other models. The cost is around $2,000 total for installation on the two front seats.
But in light of the huge existing fleet of older planes, overall less than 5% of the roughly 200,000 currently registered U.S. private aircraft have air bags. And those all stem from voluntary efforts by manufacturers and other groups.
To accelerate installation of the devices—which have been embraced at a faster rate by airlines as a result of federal mandates—the board and other safety experts are now stepping up efforts emphasizing the importance of retrofitting private planes. Retrofits are more expensive, and so far private pilots generally have been slow to purchase the upgrades for older aircraft.
Historically, safety-board members have been leery of the cost of calling for sweeping federal mandates affecting general aviation.
Closely held AmSafe industries Inc., the primary supplier of air bags for general aviation, business jets and airliners, has sold about 19,000 air-bag devices for general aviation. Bill Hagan, the Phoenix-based company’s president, said the uptake over just a few years “is a testament to the lifesaving benefit this technology offers” for pilots and passengers alike.
Drawing parallels to the steady progression of safety enhancements in the automotive industry, Mr. Hagan said in an interview that buying a private plane in some ways is comparable to choosing a car. “You wouldn’t buy one if it didn’t have air bags,” he said, and soon private pilots and airline passengers “will expect the same.”
According to AmSafe’s own studies of more than 200 general aviation accidents in which air bags deployed, the equipment is credited with directly saving at least 18 lives. In May, a 35-year old female pilot on her third solo flight encountered a violent wind shift while landing in Arizona, snared a wingtip and the badly-damaged, single-engine Piper Cherokee skidded for 2,000 feet. According to AmSafe, the pilot “walked away with nothing more than a scratch on her knee.”
In an earlier accident cited by the AmSafe, a flight instructor and two others aboard a Cirrus aircraft attempted an emergency landing in Florida after a serous throttle malfunction. The plane impacted trees and ended upside down in a swampy area one-quarter mile short of the runway, but the company says everyone walked away from the crash scene.
On airliners, air bags are used to protect passengers seated near bulkheads, or in premium seats that turn into beds or partly face sideways. Federal safety regulations mandate extra crash protection for occupants of such seats, otherwise airlines would have to reduce the total number of first-class or business-class seats in the cabins of many of their long-range jets.
When it comes to general aviation, however, the safety board wants pilots and government regulators to be more aggressive in employing safety harnesses and air bags.
In recent years, manufacturers have paid increasing attention to the crashworthiness of small, private planes, including designing stronger seats, more durable shoulder restraints and more rigid fuselages.
Yet in many accidents involving older propeller aircraft, investigators have found that the lack of shoulder harnesses—or failures by pilots and passengers to adjust them correctly—contributed significantly to deaths and serious injuries. The impending safety study addresses those issues as well.
Recently, the FAA has joined the campaign for greater voluntary reliance on advanced restraints or air bags. One FAA study of 647 general aviation accidents in Alaska between 2004 and 2009, for instance, determined that extra safety equipment would have turned about 75% of the fatal crashes into survivable accidents.
Specifically, the study found that “inflatable restraints” likely would have prevented 38 of 133 fatalities by reducing the impact with hard surfaces.