A Need to Get "Tough as Hell"

Statistically, a passenger on a scheduled airline flight in the U.S. has a 99.99992% chance of landing safe and sound. Indeed, Lloyd's of London calculates that a person is 24 times more likely to be killed in a car than in an airliner. Nevertheless, 461 people have died in eight U.S. air crashes so far this year, the worst record of fatalities since 1960. All too often the cause has been a simple mechanical fault or, more disturbing yet, an elementary error committed by a flight crew. As a result, questions are being raised with increasing frequency and urgency about the performance of the Government's bureau charged with the primary responsibility of protecting the flying public: the Federal Aviation Administration.

The man on the spot at the FAA is Administrator Alexander P. Butterfield, 48, a former Air Force colonel and F-111 pilot who joined President Richard Nixon's staff as an aide in 1969. In July 1973, Butterfield gave Watergate an entirely new dimension by disclosing the existence of the presidential tapes to members of Senator Sam Ervin's committee and the world. By that time, Butterfield had been head of the FAA for four months, a job he got as a reward for his efficient service in the White House (he was never brushed by Watergate), and was already struggling with the organizational problems that are partially to blame for the agency's lagging response to the need to exercise closer control over flight safety.

When it was set up in 1958, the FAA was an independent office with the power to act on its own. But in 1967 the agency was incorporated into the newly created Department of Transportation, which is geared more toward the problems of trains and automobiles than of airplanes. Butterfield has had trouble getting approval of a reorganization plan for his sizable operation--55,000 people and a budget of $1.5 billion--and he has even had problems filling key jobs. "I'm still frustrated over the inability to put the people I want where I want them," Butterfield told TIME Correspondent Jerry Hannifin. "We're very institutionalized, and we need clear and fresh thinking. The cliques are fantastic. So much could be done, but you need a free hand. I thought as an agency head you'd have clout. But you don't, and that was surprising to me."

The most serious charge against Butterfield is that the FAA has been slow to respond to the recommendations of the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent agency that has the responsibility in the federal hierarchy of promoting safety in all modes of transportation. The NTSB has also taken over the job of investigating aircraft accidents from the Civil Aeronautics Board.

Taped Voice. By law, the NTSB cannot order the FAA to take action, but it can prod hard. On Oct. 8, NTSB Chairman John H. Reed sent Butterfield an official letter about the "unprofessional conduct" demonstrated by a few U.S. flight crews. To document his concern, Reed cited a number of horrifying incidents resulting from sloppy flying in recent years--a DC-9 striking the water and then bouncing safely into the air while nearing Martha's Vineyard; airliners running into trees, cottages and a sea wall while approaching airports; a DC-9 hitting the runway so hard in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., that it broke in two.

On Sept. 27, 1973, in another case mentioned by Reed, the pilot of a Texas International Convair got lost at night over Arkansas when he failed to rely on his instruments. "Man, I wish I knew where we were so we'd have some idea of the general terrain around this place," the copilot complained. Finally, he figured out where they were and said, "The minimum en-route altitude here is 44 hun . . ." his taped voice was cut off as the plane crashed into a mountain at 2,000 ft., killing all eleven aboard.

Reed also noted the crash on Sept. 11, 1974 at Charlotte, N.C., when a pilot and his crew flew a DC-9 into the ground during a landing approach, killing 69 people. Instead of calling out the decreasing altitude readings as required by FAA regulations, the cockpit-recorded tape revealed a terrifyingly casual conversation during the most dangerous phase of the flight. The pilots discussed racial integration, Nixon's pardon, Japanese cars and the threat of the Arabs buying up everything in sight.

"I'd say that 99% of the pilots are absolutely disciplined and conscientious guys," says one professional safety investigator. "But that 1% have been killing people and themselves." Acutely conscious of their images, pilots often object strongly to any suggestion of pilot error, and they are particularly sensitive to the public release of tapes that starkly reveal cockpit mistakes. Their complaints are heard. The Airline Pilots Association (ALPA) is one of the wealthiest and toughest lobbying unions in the U.S.

Long before Reed wrote his letter, Butterfield had been promising to enforce FAA flight rules for crew members more strictly ("We're going to pull some licenses," he said last summer), and to tighten up pilot training.

Check Pilots. Last April, after a series of four Pan Am accidents overseas, the FAA began an intensive investigation of the airline's pilot proficiency and training. With the full cooperation of the company, FAA pilots are riding in the cockpit on regular runs. In addition, FAA "check pilots" are busy, virtually round the clock, monitoring the performance of the flight crews on other airlines. The FAA is also talking with the companies and ALPA to work out ways of improving pilot training.

Butterfield has yet to act on an NTSB recommendation stemming from the Pan Am crash in Pago Pago on Jan. 31, 1974 that killed 97 people. The board discovered that the pilot had just returned to duty fortnight earlier, after a layoff of nearly 4 1/2 months. Although he had passed the required requalifying test, he had not made an instrument landing for months when he flew his Pan Am 707 into the sea off the island. The NTSB urged the FAA to make more rigorous the tests that a pilot must pass after having been away from flying for a lengthy period of time. Under the current procedure, which is being reviewed by Butterfield, a pilot need only make three landings and takeoffs to be re-qualified to fly a particular aircraft.

Airline companies and airplane manufacturers are as concerned about safety as anyone, not only for humanitarian reasons, but for simple business ones. On the other hand, they are at times understandably reluctant to adopt expensive changes in procedure and equipment until their utility has been demonstrated and their performance thoroughly tested. That sometimes leaves a gray area where honest and well-meaning experts may differ, and the FAA has been accused of a tendency to differ too much or too long on the side of the airlines and manufacturers to the detriment of safety. "I don't think we've done this purposely," Butterfield says frankly, "but we have favored management. We've given too much. We've got to be reasonable, but not to the point of not living up to our important obligations to the public."

In rebuttal, an airline industry spokesman replies: "We don't have the FAA in the palm of our hands, not by a long shot. From where we sit, the FAA hasn't listened too well to what we say. No matter what people might imagine about an FAA-industry relationship, they must realize that we would be insane to compromise safety to save money."

One example of lagging action by the FAA was its failure to insist that McDonnell Douglas improve at once the fastening of the outside door on the cargo compartment of the jumbo DC-10 after one had blown out in flight. Instead, the FAA reached a "gentleman's agreement" with the company allowing it to modify the door on its own, instead of under FAA supervision, and on its own schedule. Somehow a DC-10 slipped through the process unmodified and was bought by the Turkish Air Lines. On March 3, 1974, a door blew off as the unmodified aircraft approached Paris, causing a severe decompression that forced the plane out of control. The crash killed 346 people, the largest single plane toll in aviation history. Only then did the FAA issue an order requiring the flight crew of every DC-10 to inspect the luggage door before taking off.

Pull Up. The crash of a TWA Boeing 727 outside Washington, D.C., on Dec. 1, killing 92, again put the FAA in a bad light. The plane might have been saved if it had carried a ground proximity warning system, which the NTSB and the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce had long been urging the FAA to make mandatory on all U.S. airliners. But the FAA had gone along with the airline industry, which had resisted the innovation for years on the grounds that it was both unnecessary and expensive.

Last week Butterfield announced plans to order all airlines to have in use by Dec. 1, 1975 a ground warning system that was already being bought by Pan Am. The $10,000 device, made by the Sunstrand Corp., tells a pilot that he is getting dangerously close to land by flashing a red light, sounding a whooping alarm and playing a recording that cries: "Pull up! Pull up!"

In addition, Butterfield last week took steps to require the airlines to adopt in 1975 a device that sounds an audible warning when the leading-edge flaps on a Boeing 747 do not deploy fully--the apparent cause of a Lufthansa accident in Nairobi, Kenya, on Nov. 21 that killed 59 people. Again, Butterfield is open to criticism for not having acted sooner. There had been enough cases of flaps not extending on 747s well before Nairobi to cause British Airways to install such a warning device in 1972, even though none of the failures had at that point caused a crash.

A conscientious and energetic man, Butterfield is respected by his peers on the NTSB and by the pilots themselves for his attempts to crank some new life into the sluggish and unwieldly bureaucracy he inherited. "If we can get tough, tough as hell," he says, "and not favor any segment of the aviation community, we are going to gain the respect we deserve." On that point, Butterfield clearly has the firm support of a constituency of nearly half a million Americans --the number that fasten their seat belts daily in U.S. airliners.

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