Flying is generally considered to be the safest form of travel, and North Americans enjoy the highest standards of safety and the lowest incidence of fatal accidents in the world, at 1.9 fatal accidents per 10 million flights, according to the European Aviation Safety Agency's report on aviation safety for 2008. European member countries of EASA had 3.6 accidents per 10 million. By contrast, non-EASA Europe had 25.6, and Africa (the entire continent) scored a rather frightening 48.1 per 10 million flights.    

Commercial aviation is highly regulated at every level, from aircraft manufacture to flight crew training. Here is what the European Aviation Safety Agency says about its role in keeping flyers safe:

"The work of the European Aviation Safety Agency centres on ensuring the highest levels of civil aviation safety, through certification of aviation products, approval of organisations to provide aviation services, development and implementation of a standardised European regulatory framework. We further engender a culture of safety through our work in the fields of accident investigation, Safety Analysis and our research programme."

This is all very reassuring and very similar to what you would find at the US Federal Aviation Administration or Transport Canada. Canada and the United States signed a Bilateral Aviation Safety Agreement in 2000 "to facilitate acceptance by each country of airworthiness approvals along with environmental testing and approval of civil aeronautical products . . . and monitoring of maintenance facilities . . . maintenance personnel, and airmen of the other party."

The language is clear. Each party must "provide access on an unconditional basis to approved maintenance organisations (AMOs) and Aircraft Maintenance Engineers (AMEs) . . . performing maintenance on a Canadian or United States aeronautical product . . . With this notification each authority may conduct independent inspections. Also, each authority may review the other authority's surveillance records and other pertinent information . . ."

So, with all the lofty language about the "highest levels of safety" and international cooperation, one would imagine that safety was the last thing to worry about when one walks up the ramp to board an airplane.

Unfortunately, there's a pretty wide gap between the official language and the reality of on-the-ground maintenance and inspection work in many cases, though it must be said that (so far) accidents have been few. And yet, they happen.

Most airline accidents causing fatalities are attributed to "pilot error" (around 50 percent). "Human error" is held responsible for about 8 percent of such accidents, and this includes improper maintenance. "Pilot error" is, however, a little misleading since it includes pilot reactions to problems that might be beyond their control, such as a maintenance-related fire in the cockpit. But accidents due to maintenance error are often quite straightforward.

Here is some of the aviation accident report pertaining to United Airlines flight 232, which crashed on July 19, 1989 in Sioux City, IA, killing 111 and injuring 172.

"United Airline Flt 232 was cruising at FL370 when there was a catastrophic failure of the #2 (tail mounted) engine. This was due to separation, fragmentation & forceful discharge of the stage 1 fan rotor assembly parts from the #2 engine (uncontained failure) which led to loss of the 3 hydraulic systems that powered the flight controls. The flight crew experienced severe difficulties controlling the aircraft, which subsequently crashed during an emergency landing at Sioux City. An investigation revealed evidence concerning limitations in inspection & quality control procedures used during engine overhaul, which resulted in failure to detect a fatigue crack, originating from a previously undetected metallurgical defect in a critical area of the state 1 fan disk."

The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident as follows:

"The inadequate consideration given to human factors limitations in the inspection and quality control procedures used by United Airlines' engine overhaul facility which resulted in the failure to detect a fatigue crack . . . The subsequent disintegration of the disk resulted in the liberation of debris in a pattern of distribution and with energy levels that exceeded the level of protection provided by the design features of the hydraulic systems that operated the DC-10's flight controls."

The detached, analytical language is oddly reassuring, telling us that they understand what happened and will try not to let it happen again.

Unless, of course, "human factors limitations" enters the picture again.

At Boeing they have studied this phenomenon, human error and found that it is the main contributor (70 percent) to aviation accidents, affecting flight operations, maintenance and air traffic control. Failure to follow procedures "is not uncommon in incidents and accidents related to both flight operations and maintenance procedures," says a Boeing report on the issue, and they are troubled that "the industry lacks insight into why such accidents occur."

"Despite rapid gains in technology, humans are ultimately responsible for ensuring the success and safety of the aviation industry . . . Because technology continues to evolve faster than the ability to predict how humans will interact with it, the industry can no longer depend as much on experience and intuition to guide decisions related to human performance. Instead, a sound scientific basis is necessary for assessing human performance implications in design, training, and procedures, just as developing a new wing requires sound aerodynamic engineering."

But this Boeing study seems rather removed from reality, inhabiting a best of all possible worlds where workers are diligent and no one wants to make a mistake. It doesn't seem that anyone actually gets his or her hands dirty here. In the real world, in the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) uses perhaps the best weapon it has to mitigate "human factors": it levies fines against airlines that violate maintenance and repair regulations. According to USA Today, the FAA fined 25 US airlines almost $30 million for maintenance violations over the last six years. The worst violation was by Southwest Airlines, which failed to do mandatory checks on its aircraft fuselages for fatigue cracking, while flying thousands of flights over two years. The FAA found that six planes had fatigue cracks and fined the company $7.5 million.

Other airlines were fined for such infractions as failing to do required engine inspections and failing to comply with directives regarding in-flight safety.  

Still, with an average of over 10 million flights flown each year in the US, and the best safety record in the world, should we worry that 70% of aircraft maintenance is contracted out to third parties who may or may not be qualified to do the work and who may ignore FAA directives and warnings because of financial constraints? Are we putting ourselves in danger getting on a plane that was worked on by mechanics who might not even have the right tools or parts to do the work, assuming they know how to do it? Would you trust a guy with a pickup truck and a toolbox full of hardware store tools to service a plane you were about to fly on?

Not a problem, according to the FAA, who maintain the official position that all is well. There hasn't been a fatal accident in the US attributable to maintenance failure since 2000, when an Alaska Airlines jet lost control because threads in a screw assembly in the tail failed. The plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean, killing all 88 on board. It was found that failed part had not been properly lubricated.

But when you consider that the average age of the aircraft belonging to the top seven US airlines is more than fifteen years, and US fleets are among the oldest in the world, a person could be forgiven for worrying about their airworthiness. That sterling safety record, those high standards of maintenance and operation are all very well, but if the planes are just too old and decrepit, and the maintenance personnel haven't kept up with technological change, well . . .

Luckily, not all accidents are fatal. And "luck" could be the operative word. In September 2007 an American Airlines flight took off from Lambert-St Louis International Airport and its left engine caught fire during the departure climb. When the plane turned back to make an emergency landing, its nose landing gear failed to deploy on the first landing attempt, but the plane landed safely on a second attempt. The 143 passengers were not injured, though the plane was damaged.

The US National Transportation Safety Board blamed maintenance workers for the incident, saying that they had repeatedly failed to correct a problem in the plane's left engine, failed to maintain properly a metal air filter that broke apart and contributed to the engine fire, and failed to follow proper maintenance procedures. Furthermore, American Airlines failed to catch the maintenance workers' mistakes.

Obviously, things could have turned out much worse, and American Airlines could have had another tick in the "fatal accidents" column of the spreadsheet.

Are we on the verge of a rash of catastrophic accidents caused by airlines shirking their responsibilities and using inadequately trained foreign maintenance crews to service their fleets? Some would say so, claiming that foreign maintenance personnel are mostly unqualified. The FAA doesn't have the manpower or the budget to inspect every maintenance facility it approves, leaving passengers vulnerable to poorly serviced aircraft, not to mention security breaches.

For the moment, however, your chances of being in a fatal airplane accident are still one in about eighteen million. And you might take comfort in knowing that from the 1950s to the present, causes of fatal accidents involving aircraft have scarcely changed. The percentages of crashes due to pilot error, other human error, weather, mechanical problems or sabotage have remained remarkably consistent. And most accidents (25%) occur during landing.  

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