Word: crashes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...also took a fatal plane crash for the FAA to heed years of evidence showing that the distance between planes landing at an airport should be increased. For years, the National Transportation Safety Board [the independent agency that investigates plane accidents] told the FAA to increase the distance between jets. The board studied 51 accidents caused by wake turbulence from 1983 to 1993. Twenty-seven people had been killed, and 40 planes had been damaged or destroyed. In those years, the NTSB repeatedly asked the FAA to set new rules, but the FAA refused. It would be three years more...
...century, aircraft accidents will increase dramatically. The officials [who were making the case for increased FAA funding] said matter-of-factly that if demand for flights increases at present rates and if growth of discount airlines keeps up at the current pace, we can expect a major crash every week or so after the turn of the century...
...reason for the disaster, either. [It was later found that the fire was apparently caused by dangerous oxygen generators loaded into the cargo bay without being carefully handled according to regulations.] But the tragedy would expose what the FAA had long known: ValuJet was primed for a major crash; its maintenance was slipshod; it had an accident rate 14 times as poor as those of its peers; its managers were out of their league; and the FAA's own inspectors had wanted ValuJet shut down months before the Everglades disaster...
After the crash, government officials began appearing on television to reassure the public that discount airlines were safe to fly. Top officials at the Department of Transportation shifted quickly into crisis-management mode. Secretary Federico Pena drew on his own experience flying ValuJet to reassure the public on national television: "I have flown ValuJet. ValuJet is a safe airline, as is our entire aviation system." Pena insisted that "if ValuJet was unsafe, we would have grounded...
...because one of them, Southwest, had a nearly perfect safety record. Good grades for Southwest brought up the average for everybody. In contrast, ValuJet was singled out for its accident rate, 14 times as poor as that of the major carriers. So what was Pena talking about? The ValuJet crash thrust before the public the fact that an inferior airline was allowed to continue flying because of economic pressure...