FAA Ban Responds To Crash
The Federal Aviation Administration Wednesday banned any future installation of a type of in-flight entertainment system on all Boeing MD-11 airplanes registered in the United States. CBS News Correspondent Bob Orr reports such a system was aboard a Swissair plane that crashed last year off Nova Scotia and remains a possible suspect in the crash.
Investigators have found some of the now-banned system's wires among badly burned wires in the Swissair wreckage. But Canadian investigators still don't know if the entertainment system's wires caused an electrical short and fire, or were simply consumed by a fire that started somewhere else on the plane.
The FAA order is a pre-emptive action, since only 15 of the MD-11s in the world have the system and Swissair owns them all. The agency said it was issuing the order in case Swissair sold any of the aircraft to a U.S. carrier.
The order highlights lingering questions about the safety of systems installed after an aircraft leaves the assembly plant, as well as the oversight of companies that design and install such equipment.
The Canadian government is investigating the Sept. 2, 1998 accident that killed all 229 aboard. The MD-11 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean 16 minutes after the pilots reported smoke in the cockpit. Since then, investigators have focused on wiring in the cockpit roof and potentially flammable coating on the airplane's insulation.
In October 1998, Swissair announced that as a precautionary measure, it was disconnecting the in-flight entertainment systems in its 15 remaining MD-11s, as well as three Boeing 747s that also used them.
Last month, the airline also revealed that it had filed a "precautionary" complaint against the system's suppliers because its right to do so would have expired one year after the crash.
Legal papers were filed in Switzerland against the supplier, Interactive Flight Technologies Inc. of Phoenix, the company that certified it, Santa Barbara Aerospace of California, and the company that installed it. Swissair was the only buyer of Interactive Flight's systems.
The FAA took its action after concluding the Interactive Flight system's electrical power switching is incompatible with the MD-11's design concept since it limits the crew's ability to respond to a smoke or fume emergency.
During such emergencies, the crew is supposed to shut down nonessential electrical service in different parts of the plane to isolate the source of smoke or flames.
The only way to remove power to the Interactive Flight system is to pull a circuit breaker in the cockpit, a task that would occur far down the emergency checklist. A delay in shutting off power could have fatal consequences.
The Swissair system was installed under the authority of Switzerland's Federal Office for Civil Aviation. The work was based on an FAA certificate issued to Santa Barbara Aerospace, which had been a designated aircraft altration station; it surrendered its certificate July 1.
FAA spokesman Les Dorr said the new order's "impact on the air traveling public is nil." He denied that it indicated investigators believe the entertainment system may have caused the accident.
"You can't make that judgment at all," said Dorr. "The Canadians have not made a cause of the crash. The Canadians have not even said this system was implicated. What we did was go out [after the crash] and look at the plane and its systems and we found a situation like this that needed to be addressed."