The Hindu Business Line : Study finds flying is 22 times safer than travelling by car

FOR those who are mortally afraid of flying, the US National Safety Council's endorsement of this mode of transportation as one of the safest should help boost the spirits. Flying is 22 times safer than travelling in a car, according to a study by the Council.

In India, given the high incidence of fatal road accidents, statistics can work out decidedly in favour of flying (by the order of 50 per cent or more), according to Mr N. Jayachandran, Chairman, Aerospace Engineering Division Board, Institution of Engineers (India) (IEI). He was making a presentation to a gathering at the Institution of Engineers Hall here.

No wonder, the world's commercial jet airliners carried approximately 1.09 billion people on 18 million flights in the year 2000, suffering only 20 fatal accidents.

But air accidents do happen. Can we hope to have power over the causative factors and reduce crashes?

The answer is yes, says Mr Jayachandran. Aircraft accident investigations help pinpoint reasons for the crash, which in turn helps to prevent their recurrence. One of the main safety requirements in modern aircraft is a flight data and cockpit voice recorder.

Together, they are commonly known as the `black box' even though it is actually a bright orange box. It is called the `black box' due to the secret nature of its contents. The information inside can be very personal and should not get into the wrong hands. For this reason, the information inside is encoded.

The reason for this colour is obvious. It needs to be conspicuous so that it will be easy to find in any terrain. It has to stand out against the colour of the ocean, mountains, trees or deserts in order for easier location in the event of a crash. It is normal now for black boxes to have tracing equipment in them.

Under US law, no part of a cockpit voice recording is available to the public. The `Flight Safety Board' has specialists who listen to these recordings just for the ambient noise. With their trained ears, they can recognise every click and bang that should occur and any that should not. This can be very useful when compared with the other data if the crash investigators cannot find enough evidence with the flight data alone.

In order for a black box recorder to be of any use at all, the memory unit will need to withstand the impact caused by several tonnes of aeroplane free falling thousands of feet into unknown terrain.

Therefore, it is quite clear that the `box' must be well engineered to protect what is inside from impact shock, penetration and crushing as well as fire and possibly deep sea submersion.

The flight recorders are located right at the back of a plane, usually in the tail. This is so because area receives the least damage in a crash.

The data retrieved from the flight data recorder enables investigators to generate a computer animated video reconstruction of the flight, giving them a second by second look at the aircraft up until the time the recorder stopped working.

The conclusion on the exact cause of the crash is rechecked with available data got from the wreckage, and also eyewitness accounts, if any.

Once the cause of the crash is known, this is immediately communicated to the manufacturer, as also operators of this particular type of aircraft.

If it is a technical problem, the manufacturer is immediately alerted to make necessary changes in design and selection of material. If it is a pilot error, special flight simulator training programmes are imparted to the pilots to cope up with such an emergency.

A crash and grounding of Boeings

WHEN a Boeing 747 of China Airlines crashed in Taiwan on December 29, 1991, it did not make for much news in the papers, since this was only a freighter carrying cargo with a crew of five.

The accident investigators quickly discovered that the third engine of the fateful aircraft was not in the debris. So where was it? They searched the sea nearby and eventually found the engine, but not on the pylon that attaches it to the wing.

When manufacturer Boeing realised that this was a design problem, they immediately grounded all the existing fleet of 747s — 948 in all — and changed the design of the engine attachment. The engine attachment modification had to be done in all these machines. This was done in 40 days at a cost of $1 million each.

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