Transport 2000 Canada Hotline

11 December 2000

Summary

This is the Transport 2000 Canada Hotline for 11th December 2000, written by Mike Murphy.

1 - Canadian Pacific announces intent to sell CP Rail

The Financial Post reports CEO David O'Brien has announced his intention to sell off many of CP's major assets, including CP Rail, CP Ships and CP Hotels. The deconstruction of CP began in the 1980s when previous CEO William Stinson sold CP Air to the PWA Corporation, which later turned into Canadian Airlines, before it was absorbed earlier this year by Air Canada. CP and CN have struck an alliance to share cost on the companies' money-losing tracks in Eastern Canada.

2 - Air Canada winds shuts down 180 day program early

Claiming it has already achieved in less than five months what it set to accomplish in six, Air Canada CEO Robert Milton has terminated the program to improve service, saying all goals have been met ahead of schedule. The carrier, which now controls about 80% of the national market, was beseiged with consumer complaints earlier this year, forcing Milton to announce a six month month program to improve customer satisfaction. Major problems were lengthy delays on telephone and in line, lost luggage, and snippy service. Claiming three quarters of all passengers are now checked in within 5 minutes, Milton says service has improved 80% since July and August. Two thirds of all flights depart on time, he says.

3 - BC Group Protests Highway Carnage

A new lobby group is planning a publicity campaign to shock the public and shame politicians into twinning the section fo the Trans-Canada highway near Revelstoke. It was the scene of a bus-truck accident which killed six people on Nov 27. The group says it will bombard politicians with grisly postcards of another serious car crash. It also says it will erect billboards that welcome motorists to "The Killing Zone."

4 - Obese may be given extra seats on aircraft

A confidential report, presumably obtained under Access to Information, recommends the Canadian Transportation Agency allow obese airline passengers to obtain a second seat for no charge. According to the report, such passengers are disabled and require airlines to accommodate their special needs. The airline industry says this would cost at least $25 million annually. Currently, passengers who are too large to fit into a normal 43 cm wide (17 inch) seat must purchase an additional seat of upgrade to executive class. The airlines normally sell the second seat in such instances at a 50% discount. The report began when a Calgary woman complained that she was unfairly forced to buy a second seat on a return trip to Ottawa. The report acknowledges that some people may be tempted to ask for the extra seat just for the extra room.

5 - Canada's airport safety is the best in the world: more firefighters do not make it safer

Charges that firefighting standards are too low are wrong, says a group representing the country's airlines. Cliff Mackay, president of the Air Transport Association of Canada, said his organization is concerned about allegations made by the International Association of Fire Fighters and the Union of Canadian Transport Employees that an airliner fire at a Canadian airport would spell catastrophe because there are not enough firefighters to rescue passengers from a burning plane. "There is no data that shows that increases in firefighters at airports will, in fact, result in fewer deaths," said Mackay. "The data just doesn't exist."

Union spokesman Mike Wing said changes to minimum staffing levels for airport fire trucks suggested to Transport Canada have been vigourously opposed by both the Air Transport Association of Canada and the Canadian Airport Council - two Ottawa-based lobby groups - because of the cost involved. The union said more firefighters are needed if people are to be safely rescued from a burning plane. "There is a tombstone mentality that is driving this and it will continue until there is a major catastrophe," Wing said. But Mackay said hiring additional firefighters is neither needed nor cost effective. "It's just not a good investment from a safety point of view," said Mackay. He said standards at airports are effective and are being met across the country. ATAC has repeated declined a briefing offered by APSG that supports the Fire-Fighters claim.

6 - Travellers need more protection, Air Passenger Safety Group says

The APSG welcomed the Transportation Safety Board's interim recommendations concerning the investigation into the 2 September 1998 crash of SwissAir Flight 111 released 5 December.

While praising the Board for the thoroughness of these interim recommendations, and those previously released, the air transportation watchdog remains concerned that key upstream issues related to the Swissair tragedy have not yet been addressed. "The current interim recommendations focus on detecting and fighting an in-flight fire. These recommendations shed much needed light on this hitherto poorly lit corner of aviation safety. Today's recommendations will certainly help in some fire scenarios. However, they are relatively narrow in focus and may be of little or no help when an aircraft is mid-ocean or on a Trans-polar flight, where the nearest diversionary airport may be up to four hours away. We must also address even more fundamental matters such as the lack of standards for wire and the fact that passenger aircraft are flying with types of wire that has been banned by the US Navy and Army since the early 1980s and has been removed from some aircraft on the Canadian military inventory as long ago as the late-1980s. And while the Safety Board would have been criticized for commenting on the inadequate standards for firefighting on the ground, the APSG believes that fire in the air and on the ground must both be addressed. Had SwissAir Flight 111 landed at Halifax, the inadequacies of Canadian standards for Emergency Response Services would likely have been tragically apparent."

For this reason, APSG repeats recommendations made 12 August 1999 concerning the need for wire standards and adds the following recommendations that were announced at the International Aviation Safety Association's Symposium in New York on 18 November 2000:

Transport Canada needs a Wire Safety Policy (WSP)

7 - Letter to Editor of Halifax Herald

Should be ashamed

Dear Editor:

The Swissair probe has to be the biggest whitewash job in the history of aviation crash investigations. After spending millions of Canadian taxpayers' dollars, the Transportation Safety Board has the gall to recommend more smoke and fire detectors, when anyone with an iota of experience in the avionics industry will tell you that the cause of the fire in Swissair Flight 111 was Kapton wiring!

At the very least, a mandatory directive must be issued stipulating that all airlines flying aircraft with Kapton wiring must order that if a circuit trips, it is not to be reset. Furthermore, the use of Kapton wiring in new aircraft should be banned immediately and an order issued to systematically replace all Kapton wiring in aircraft, beginning with cockpit wiring. I know this will be terribly expensive, but human lives are at stake. The older this wiring gets, the greater the danger of flashover and subsequent catastrophic failure of the affected wire bundle.

This is not a new problem. When I was the project manager for the Sea King rewire program at IMP, starting in 1983, I knew of this problem with Kapton wiring, courtesy of the United States navy, which had encountered it in their Orion anti-submarine aircraft.

Why are we continuing to cover up what is a real flight-safety hazard? We should be ashamed of ourselves!

Eric G. Edgar, CD, MMM,
captain (retired), Waverley

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