ARTICLE:     Ottawa Citizen (1999-08-13) on page A17

Plain, unvarnished truth about air safety

   We know we take too much for granted. Take electricity. Take
   clean drinking water. Now take aviation safety. Nobody pays much
   attention to it until there is an accident, and then it's too late.
   Who, but the white-knuckle crowd and the first-time flyers, listens
   as flight attendants give safety briefings? Ignorance is indeed
   bliss. However, does it offer us any protection against the inherent
   risk in air travel? Not knowing what risks you are taking puts you
   on a faster track for disaster.

   Let's check this out. When you pull down a sun visor on a new car,
   you see a bright yellow warning label: ``Airbag Warning. Death or
   Serious injury can occur ....'' There are warning signs on minivan
   seats, on the seatbelts themselves and even on the floor mats of
   some cars. Warning messages leap off almost every page of the
   Owner's Manual. ``If your seatbelt is not flat across your body,
   severe injury could occur ....'' Does this stop people from flocking
   to showrooms and buying new cars? Evidently not. Detroit automakers
   report their profits in billions of dollars. Quarterly.

   This clearly profitable candour from the car manufacturers, whether
   motivated by concern for consumer safety or merely the desire to
   avoid or mitigate huge liability settlements, is sobering,
   educational and refreshing. And this is from the industry that 34
   years ago fought Ralph Nader, tooth and nail, when he wrote Unsafe
   at Any Speed. Now we see Ford boasting about the Windstar's
   five-star safety rating five years in a row. Other manufacturers
   offer other safety devices. It used to be that only Volvo talked
   about safety. Today, safety helps sell cars.

   Now board an airplane. What do you see? No warning labels or
   shoulder straps here. Some airlines space the seats so closely, on
   long haul flights, that any passenger over 5'10'' would have to
   stand - and many do - all the way across the Atlantic. An
   emergency evacuation in the required 90 seconds would be very
   difficult. In fact, most evacuations take more than 90 seconds,
   according to a study done by the Transportation Safety Board of
   Canada.

   Most people don't read the safety cards or pay attention to the
   briefings. They should. To their credit, at least Canadian Airlines
   has tried to inject some humour into its safety cards. Next time you
   fly on Canada's plucky but financially unlucky airline, look for the
   magician in the top hat, heading out the emergency exit.

   Nevertheless, aside from the emergency cards and the drill on
   seatbelts, chair backs and tray tables, there isn't much safety
   information. The in-flight magazine is full of puff pieces and route
   maps. Web sites? Forget it. Airports are the same. When are we going
   to get some candid, hard-hitting articles about aviation safety and
   what the industry is doing about it? There are no shortage of
   topics: Dangerous goods, excess carry-on baggage, aging aircraft,
   concerns about wiring and aircraft rescue and firefighting, bird
   strikes (especially this time of year) and air rage. And there are
   other safety topics.

   For the last decade, if not two, we have been exposed to successful
   companies that are obsessed with quality, customer satisfaction and
   feedback. If airlines and airports are genuinely concerned about
   passenger safety, and we trust they are, let's see them take a few
   lessons from these industries. Tell us about aviation risks, and let
   us respond to that information. Be candid about safety. Most of us
   won't run for the exits; in Canada, we often don't have much of an
   alternative to flying.

   Most of us will actually have more faith in you if you can break
   the long-standing taboo on talking publicly. The regulator,
   Transport Canada, should not be far behind. In fact, the government
   ought to be leading the charge of opening a safety dialogue with the
   public.

   Several years ago, the Boeing Corporation completed a study, now
   widely acknowledged inside the air transportation world, that
   predicts, on the basis of a stable accident rate and a steady
   increase in air travel, that by the year 2015 we will see the loss
   of one jet airliner per week somewhere in the world. CNN is going to
   have a ball. The airlines and regulators are worried. Air travellers
   should be too.

   This is not a time to hide behind glib assurances. It is time to
   initiate an informed, mature dialogue between those who provide a
   service that is perfectly capable of killing you, and those who
   simply trust that it won't.

   This dialogue needs reason and passion. Most important, it needs
   the public to take part. Walter Lippman defined ``public interest,''
   the very oxygen of a healthy democracy, as being what people would
   choose ``if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted
   disinterestedly and benevolently.'' Let that dialogue begin.

   Earlier this year, a small organization, the Air Passenger Safety
   Group (APSG), was created to encourage passengers to become more
   informed, more assertive and responsible when it comes to aviation
   safety. The APSG has now planned the first-ever symposium on air
   passenger safety, taking place in Ottawa on Thursday, Aug. 19. Two
   key issues are being discussed: aircraft wiring, suspected in the
   crash of TWA 800 and SwissAir 111, and the very difficult policy
   issue of airport rescue and firefighting. Participants will be
   polled and the results sent to the Minister of Transport. The
   concerns of air passengers must be heard. The lessons of history are
   clear. We take public safety for granted at our peril.

 Michael Murphy is chairman of the APSG and a director of Transport 2000.
More information is available at http://www.transport2000.ca/APSG. or from
Michael Murphy at (613) 829-0602 or
APSG vice-chairman James T. Lyon, QC at (613) 730-1504.