Word: safes
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...peril. He has put the responsibility for his life into the hands of others-pilot, ground controllers, even weathermen-and his unease is understandable. When word of a crash hits the headlines, he inevitably asks himself the question he has asked so many times before: "Is flying really safe...
Reason for this reassuring ratio is that no other industry spends nearly so much time or money playing it safe. The planes themselves are built to such exacting standards that any big multiengined plane can easily climb away from the ground with one engine out, cruise on even less power, and land safely-as a Pan Am 707 did last year-with half a wing burned away. If private cars were serviced as intensely as commercial planes, each driver would need three full-time mechanics, and his auto would be fully inspected before every trip, however short. As for pilots...
...Price of Pressure For all that, hardly anyone in the aviation industry would deny that, safe as the air is, it can and should be safer. The industry has been aroused by the worst bunching of crashes in history: nine plane disasters, worldwide, since Jan. 1 have killed 597 passengers-almost as many as all last year. The fatality total is likely to grow because planes are becoming more capacious, skyways are getting more crowded, and the number of passengers-150 million this year-is expanding by 15% annually. Figuring that the number of passenger-miles will multiply 20-fold...
...perfection, though, the remarkable air-safety record might be better than it is. The obstacles are largely matters of economics. Safety costs time and money, pares the payload and performance of the plane, and ultimately has to be paid for by the passenger. Every modern plane is structurally safe according to rigid Government standards, but airlines have been known to put pressure on planemakers to work closer and closer to the lower levels of acceptability. Mechanics do not knowingly send unsound planes back to the flight line, but they have a limited number of planes to keep flying, and front...
...industry's desire is not merely to cut the losses in accidents but to improve an already sound record by cutting the accident rate. What the airlines want most is a modern, fail-safe, all-weather traffic-control system. As a first requirement, they need better airports. Of the 709 commercial-airline fields in the U.S., fewer than one half have instrument-landing systems. Worldwide, in 1963, 80% of landing accidents occurred where only 17% of the landings were made-at airports with marginal landing aids. In the developing countries, safety records are far less impressive than...