August Plane Crashes Take Deadly Toll

No less than five airline accidents occurred in the month of August, the most in three years. Two of the crashes killed all those on board. On Aug. 14, a Boeing 737, operated by charter airline Helios Airways, crashed outside of Athens killing all 115 passengers and six crewmembers.

A day later an MD 82 operated by another charter carrier, Colombia-based West Caribbean Airways, crashed in Venezuela while on a flight to the French island of Martinique, killing all 152 passengers and eight crewmembers.

On Aug. 2, an Air France Airbus A340 skidded off the rain-slicked runway at Toronto’s international airport and burst into flames. Remarkably the crew was able to get all the passengers off the plane in less than two minutes. There were some injuries, but no loss of life.

On Aug. 12, a Tuninter ATR flight crashed off the coast of Sicily. Thirteen of the 34 passengers were killed.

On Aug. 23, a Boeing 737-200, operated by Tans, a Peruvian national airline went down in a swamp shortly before landing at the city of Pucallpa, its destination city, some 305 miles (490 kms) northeast of Lima. The plane carried 92 passengers and a crew of eight. Miraculously more than 50 people survived the crash, but at least 40 were reported to have died. Investigators have pointed to a sudden violent storm in the area as the probable cause of the disaster.

Investigators of the Air France crash have also indicated it was probably due to extreme weather conditions. The plane touched down further on the runway than it should have and couldn’t stop in time.

The Greek and Venezuelan crashes raise more troubling problems involving charter airlines and safety inspections. Investigators have more or less concluded that the Helios plane lost cabin pressure, rendering the crew and passengers unconscious in a brief time. The plane, shadowed by two Greek air force jets, actually flew for more than an hour before crashing. The extreme cold-the plane was flying at more than 30,000 feet (over 10,000 meters)-and the lack of oxygen is thought to have killed a number of people on board, but investigators have concluded that many of them were still alive when the plane came down.

Preliminary analyses of the West Caribbean plane indicate that it may have lost power in both engines-an extremely rare occurrence. The pilot had diverted course for an emergency landing when the plane went down on a marshy hillside outside Maracaibo, Venezuela. The tragedy hit Martinique especially hard, as all of the passengers were from the island. French president Jacques Chirac attended a memorial service there on Aug. 24.

The two fatal accidents-both apparently caused by major equipment failures-have resulted in calls for increased flight safety inspection procedures, especially for charter airlines. French authorities in Martinique had examined the MD 82 twice since last spring, and each time had cleared it to fly. However, they were apparently not notified that the airline had fines of $48,000 levied against it by the Colombian authorities for safety violations. Reports in the French media have also raised questions about the plane’s airworthiness after being mothballed in the Arizona desert for several years.

Several French politicians have called for the European Union to establish a “blacklist” of airline operators that have had repeated safety violations. There’s a good deal of support in Canada for the proposal as well. If adopted, companies deemed deficient would be listed on the Internet. The proposal could also affect insurance coverage for suspect carriers.

Before the Peruvian crash, Aon issued a bulletin giving preliminary estimates for the loss of the four airliners at $170 million. The figure does not include personal injury claims. Aon noted: “August has now become the second most expensive month, in terms of losses, for the airline industry since January 2002,” but it also indicated that the “overall loss profile for 2005 is still within the average for the last three years, both in terms of incidents with a value of loss of over US$50 million and incidents with more than 50 fatalities.”

Topics Aviation