SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/287311_crash03.html
Passenger fatalities are first for new 737s
Latest planes have good safety records
Tuesday, October 3, 2006
By JAMES WALLACE
P-I AEROSPACE REPORTERBrazilian investigators said Monday that a newly delivered Boeing 737-800 that crashed into the Amazon jungle killing all 155 people onboard collided with a corporate jet in midair.
This was the first crash of one of the next generation Boeing 737 jets in which passengers died.
Four other Boeing and Airbus planes that entered airline service in the 1990s -- the 777, 717, A330 and A340 -- have never had fatal accidents.
That absence of fatalities in the past decade underscores the advances that have been made in the most recent large commercial jetliners developed by The Boeing Co. and Airbus, aviation safety experts said.
The first of Boeing's next generation 737 family of jets entered airline service in 1997. Rather than an all-new design, these next generation planes are based on the older 737s, but with extensive improvements and new systems. More than 2,000 next generation 737s are in operation with airlines around the world. The 737-800 entered airline service in the spring of 1998.
Boeing's 777, the company's last all-new jetliner, entered service in 1995. Nearly 600 have been delivered to airlines around the world. The A340 and the A330 have been flying passengers since 1993. More than 700 are in operation.
"There is a reliability in these planes and systems -- all that we have learned over time," said John Nance, aviation author and ABC News aviation safety consultant. He is a former 737 captain.
The 737-800 that crashed Friday in the heart of the Amazon jungle was delivered to the Brazilian airline GOL last month. GOL, a discount airline that has modeled itself after Southwest Airlines in the United States, is one of the fastest-growing airlines in Latin America. Like Southwest, it operates 737s.
The 737-800 apparently collided at cruise altitude with a Legacy business jet that was headed to the United States. The executive jet, which is manufactured by Embraer, was carrying seven passengers and crew, including Joe Sharkey, a journalist for The New York Times. The plane managed to land despite damage to one of its wings.
The National Transportation Safety Board is sending investigators to Brazil to assist in the investigation.
Boeing said it is sending two experts.
Until this crash, the only fatal accident involving a next-generation 737 occurred in December when a Southwest 737-700 was unable to stop after landing in a snowstorm at Chicago's Midway Airport.
The plane went through a fence at the end of the runway and hit at least two cars, killing a 6-year-old boy in one.
The next generation 737s, which are assembled at Boeing's Renton factory, are delivered to airlines with the latest cockpit safety systems, including one that alerts the pilots if other planes are getting too close.
"Obviously this is something investigators will be looking closely at," John Purvis, a former Boeing accident investigator, said when asked why the traffic alert and collision avoidance system would not have alerted the 737 pilots that they were about to collide with the business jet.
Purvis, who now has an aviation consulting business, said there are several reasons why the newest planes developed by Boeing and Airbus have nearly unblemished safety records.
They have newer and better systems on them, he said. But they also go to customers in the West who can afford them and have the money for better maintenance and crew training, he said.
"This does not mean that older planes are unsafe," Purvis said, noting that until the recent crash of a commuter jet in Kentucky, there had not been a fatal commercial jetliner crash in the United States in five years.
That crash last month killed two of the three crew members on board and all 47 passengers. The plane took off from the wrong runway, which was too short.
"That five-year dry spell proves that older planes do well," Purvis said. "It was a phenomenal record."
Nance, the former 737 pilot, said older commercial jets are retrofitted with the newest safety features, such as a system that warns pilots if they are getting too close to the ground.
But one of the most important factors for the improved aviation safety record, he said, is better communication between pilots in the cockpit.
"The pilot culture has changed," Nance said. Co-pilots are now taught to speak up if they believe there might be a problem.
" why the traffic alert and collision avoidance system would not have alerted the 737 pilots that they were about to collide with the business jet."
I'm not sure, but I believe the collision avoidance system uses derived information and not direct data such as radar. Anyone here familiar with the system in use?
Another post somewhere had the same altitude assigned to the two planes by two none-communicating traffic controllers.