By Fred Chesbro for the Dayton Daily News

Other Voices, Monday, November 10, 2003

In an admirable move intended to help achieve safer skies, the National Transportation Safety Board recently announced plans for its first-ever air cargo safety forum.

Still in the development stages, the public forum will hopefully provide an opportunity for industry, government and union leadership to earnestly examine the safety-related challenges facing our nation's air cargo network.

But in light of competing interests and agendas, merely getting these three groups to the table for a constructive discussion could, by itself, prove a daunting challenge.

According to one media report, the air transport industry "fears" the prospects of this safety forum insofar as it may provide an opportunity for its critics to air "grievances."

Make no mistake, there are ample grievances. According to published aviation safety statistics, the fatal and/or hull loss accident rate for commercial air cargo is some four times worse than passenger carriers. Other research suggests the cargo sector has five times the number of accidents.

These are particularly troubling statistics given industry projections that world air cargo traffic is expected to triple during the next 20 years.

The NTSB deserves kudos for its public-interest initiative. Aviation safety advocates can be hopeful that the board's resolve represents a turning point and is an indication that substandard oversight, inadequate maintenance and unsafe operational practices will no longer be tolerated as the air cargo industry continues to expand.

The timing for an effective air cargo safety forum could not be better, coming on the heels of several fatal air cargo crashes. According to one report, the impetus for the forum was the February 2000 Emery Worldwide Airlines crash near Sacramento (Emery Flight 17).

Plowing into a vacant auto auction yard, that just two hours earlier was open for business and reportedly contained as many as 300 people, the large DC-8 cargo jet exploded on impact, creating a "runway of fire."

Although the toll on human life could have been much worse, it is an unspeakable tragedy that all crew members, including my brother-in-law, were killed.

Nearly four years later, the chairwoman of the NTSB has stated, "This is one of the saddest accidents that the NTSB has investigated because it truly was an accident that didn't have to happen." Indeed it should not have been allowed to happen. And in light of the vast amount of now-well-documented warnings that predicted an "inevitable" and fatal Emery crash, the fact that it was allowed to occur is a poignant indictment of a failed oversight system.

A review of events leading up to the Emery crash shows leadership of Emery's own pilots' group persistently pleading with regulators and industry leaders. They used language that reads like a Hollywood movie script and even brought their case to the national news media, in hopes of waking the sleeping bureaucrats--and in hopes of averting what finally came to pass.

If the Emery Flight 17 crash isn't impetus enough to convene a national, multiparty air cargo safety forum, nothing ever will be.

In May 2002, the NTSB conducted a public hearing as part of the Emery 17 crash investigation. This was the first public hearing in the history of the safety board dedicated to an air cargo subject. Although much was learned, it was disappointing that scant attention was paid to the lack of FAA oversight as a causal factor.

Then in August 2003, when the board conducted the "Sunshine" meeting on Emery 17 and released its accident "probable cause finding," even the Airline Pilots Association was struck by how little attention was given to the issues of inadequate oversight.

Even the former NTSB investigator-in-charge of the Emery 17 investigation said in a later interview that, "One key area was lack of FAA oversight of Emery as an operation--that was never addressed or brought into the board's final determination. ..."

Whether the NTSB's reluctance to focus on FAA oversight represents a newly formed pact of non-aggression between the NTSB and the FAA, or whether the safety board simply thought it more of a priority to focus on other, more technical aspects of the accident is uncertain.

What is certain is: If the NTSB's pending air cargo safety forum is to amount to anything more than eyewash, the issues of industry and FAA oversight of air cargo carriers and their subcontractors must be front-and-center.

Fred Chesbro is a professional pilot. His brother-in-law, Kevin Stables, was the captain of Emery Flight 17. Write Chesbro at Fred.Chesbro@att.net.

NOV 03 Chesbro Op-Ed re Emery and FAA Oversight (http://www.daytondailynews.com/opinion/content/epaper/editions/today/opinion_f3ea1d79c413001a00d5.html)