Swissair Probe Urges Fire Training

Airlines and industry regulators should do a better job of training and equipping crews to detect and fight fires aboard planes, investigators of the 1998 Swissair crash near Canada said Monday.

Canada's Transportation Safety Board issued its recommendations intended to prevent in-flight fires like the one blamed for downing Swissair Flight 111 off the coast of Nova Scotia, killing all 229 people aboard.

Along with the recommendations, the safety board announced it was completing the reconstruction phase of the investigation in which two million pieces, some as small as a dollar coin, have been collected to partially rebuild the MD-11 jetliner.

The investigation now shifts from the Shearwater military base near Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the reconstruction occurred, to the safety board laboratory in Ottawa, the capital.

Flight 111 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean en route from New York to Geneva on Sept. 2, 1998. Pilots reported smoke in the cockpit about 53 minutes into the trip, and the electrical systems began failing about 15 minutes later.

The investigation, one of the longest and costliest in the history of Canada's Transportation Safety Board, has determined that a fire in the ceiling at the front of the plane caused the crash. It found evidence of heat damage consistent with a fire in the ceiling near the bulkhead that separates the cockpit flight deck from the passenger cabin.

The board expects to release in April or May its final report on the crash.

The investigation has zeroed in on electrical wiring used in the aircraft, in particular a wiring insulation known as aromatic polymide tape, or Kapton. The insulation on wires from the forward area of the jet were found to be charred or burnt.

Their recommendations issued Monday at Shearwater included a call for airline regulators and airplane makers to review firefighting capabilities and improve training, and for designating potential fire zones aboard aircraft to improve chances of detecting and snuffing out a fire.

"It seems strange to us that in order to ensure public safety, in a time of rapid technological advances, we rely so much on the human sense organs to detect smoke or fire," board chairman Benoit Bouchard said.

He noted that inaccessible areas such as the ceiling, often full of wiring and insulation, "contain neither detectors nor firefighting equipment."

The industry also should adopt a practice in which planes try to land immediately when any indication of smoke is detected and the source cannot be identified, the board said.

About 20 minutes elapsed from when the crew detected an unusual odor until Flight 111 crashed. It took only 11 minutes for the fire to begin adversely affecting aircraft systems, the board said.

None of the panel's recommendations were expected to require the grounding of any planes in service around the world. They now go to airline ndustry regulators in Canada, the United States and Europe, and could be added to regulations governing the industry.

In Zurich, the airline stressed in a statement that "the implementation of these recommendations has already begun" and said it was pushing forward safety efforts "without consideration to cost."

Swissair said it changed its philosophy last year regarding the cockpit procedure in case of smoke and "now calls on pilots to land as soon as possible if smoke from an unknown source is detected." The modifications have been included in new training guidelines.

"Additional fire detection and suppression systems will be developed together with the manufacturer and submitted for regulatory approval," Swissair said.

Earlier in the investigation, which has cost more than $34 million, the safety board issued other recommendations and advisories.

One interim recommendation noted safety deficiencies in the plane's insulation materials, which have been suspected of spreading fire.

Swissair's statement noted it replaced Mylar insulation blankets in sensitive parts of the aircraft with fire-resistant blankets in June 1999. Its MD-11s will be completely outfitted with the new insulation by 2002, it said.

Other interim safety notices by the Canadian investigators called for increasing recording capacity and emergency power for flight recorders.

The Federal Aviation Administration in the United States responded by requiring removal of the insulation materials from all U.S.-registered MD-11 aircraft within four years.

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