US unveils new rule on airplane fuel tanks
ASHBURN, Va. (AP) - July 16, 2008
The new safety requirement, announced by Transportation
Secretary Mary Peters, applies to new passenger and cargo planes
that have center fuel tanks like TWA 800, a Boeing 747, which
exploded over the Atlantic Ocean off Long Island on July 17, 1996,
after takeoff from New York's Kennedy Airport.
The rule also requires airlines to retrofit 2,730 existing
Airbus and Boeing passenger planes built since 1991 with center
wing fuel tanks with the changes over the next nine years. The
retrofit schedule is based on the normal aircraft maintenance
schedule.
Manufacturers have two years in which to comply with the rule,
although Boeing is already making some new planes with the changes.
"We believe this will save lives," said National
Transportation Safety Board Chairman Mark Rosenker, who joined
Peters at a news conference at the safety board's training facility
here, where TWA Flight 800's fuselage has been partially
reconstructed from pieces retrieved from the ocean. "This is the
big one for us as it relates to important solutions for fuel tank
safety."
The change brings to a close a long and troubled chapter in
federal aviation safety. The National Transportation Safety Board
identified the cause of the explosion - the ignition of oxygen in a
partially empty fuel tank that had been sitting for hours in the
sun before takeoff - not long after the accident. But the FBI
initially thought the explosion was the result of a bomb and it was
unclear for a time which agency - the FBI or the NTSB - was in
charge of the investigation.
The Federal Aviation Administration proposed a rule to prevent
future explosions in 2005, but the aviation industry balked, saying
the cost was too high.
The final rule requires aircraft manufacturers and passenger
airlines to install devices that replace oxygen, which is highly
explosive, with inert nitrogen in fuel tanks as they empty.
"The airlines will, of course, comply with the rule," said
Victoria Day, a spokeswoman for the Air Transport Association of
America.
Matt Ziemkiewicz of Rutherford, N.J, whose sister was a flight
attendant aboard TWA Flight 800, said he was "disappointed this
didn't happen sooner ... We knew this was a preventable accident
before Flight 800."
However, Ziemkiewicz, who has led victims' families in seeking
safety changes, said he was satisfied the new rule is "reasonable
and realistic."
The cost of installing the new technology would range from
$92,000 to $311,000 per aircraft, depending upon its size, Peters
said. She said the cost could be as little as one-tenth of 1
percent of the cost of a new aircraft.
FAA Acting Administrator Robert Sturgell estimated the cost to
industry overall at about $1 billion.
Initial estimates a decade ago put the potential cost of
protecting fuel tanks from explosion as high as $36 billion.
"I recognize that this is a challenging time for commercial
aviation," Peters said. "But there is no doubt that another crash
like TWA 800 would pose a far greater challenge."
The rule doesn't require that existing cargo planes be
retrofitted because of the cost, said John Hickey, FAA director of
aircraft certification.
"We think the overall risk (for cargo planes) in a general way
is a little bit less. Of course the cost is very significant to the
rule and the benefits - it's a bit challenging to quantify the
benefits aside from the obvious benefit of the value of the
pilots," Hickey said.
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, which
represents FAA aircraft certification engineers, released a
statement saying it was disappointed that the new rule applies only
to center fuel tanks and not to wing fuel tanks. The controllers
association and NTSB had recommended that the safety changes apply
to all fuel tanks.
"The FAA missed an opportunity to greatly enhance airplane
safety without significant additional cost," the statement said.