Government Regulations Saved Lives in One Crash; Lack of Them Killed Dozens in the Other.

On Tuesday night, Chris Hayes asked why we don't apply the same pressure on government to make fertilizer plants and freight trains carrying explosive petroleum products more safe.

Silly Chris. Rich people fly on planes. Rich people don't work in fertilizer plants or live in the path of runaway freight trains.

Igor Volsky at Think Progress:

As the nation breathes a sigh of relief for the many passengers of Asiana Airlines passengers on Flight 214 who escaped uninjured after their Boeing 777 crashed in San Francisco, aircraft safety experts are attributing the relatively small number of fatalities to government regulations adopted in the aftermath of past accidents.

In the past decade, the Federal Aviation Administration — the office responsible for overseeing all aspects of civil aviation — has instituted a series of aircraft safety standards that undoubtedly saved lives on Saturday, Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, told ThinkProgress on Tuesday morning, pointing to new mandates for everything from seating to enhanced training of flight attendants. American regulations lead the world and are typically adopted by airlines in Europe and Japan, with only minor adjustments.

For instance, in 1988 airplanes began installing so-called 16 G passenger seats that stay in place “when subjected to stresses up to 16 times the force of gravity” after regulators discovered “that passengers might survive a crash were they not crushed to death when the seats tore loose from the floor.” Despite initial opposition from the airline industry, final regulations were implemented in June of 2009 and Goelz believes that the stronger chairs prevented passengers from being thrown throughout the cabin as the rear of the Flight 2014 slammed down on the ground, allowing individuals to evacuate in time.

“It’s hard for me to imagine that if the old 9 G standard would have been part of that airplane those seats would have behaved as well as they did,” Todd Curtis, an air safety analyst added.

A series of evolutionary changes to fire code requirements also protected passengers on the flight. FAA implemented reduced flammability and nontoxic gas emissions of interior components after an Air Canada accident in 1983 caused a fire in which the overwhelming majority of passengers died from toxic gas and smoke. It also instituted an enhanced burn-through rate standard to guarantee that the skin of the airplane and insulation resist fire for up to four minutes, allowing passengers more time to escape. Regulations require that airlines and flight attendants be able to evacuate a full passenger load with only half of the exits operating in under 90 seconds.

But Goelz now fears that sequestration and the GOP’s zeal for applying greater cost benefit analysis to all safety regulations could prevent regulators from instituting such safety standards in the future. The regulations outlined above would “have a tough time meeting the kind of cost benefit analysis that these guys want,” Goelz said, noting House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster’s (R-PA) push for more burdensome economic analysis. Curtis disagreed with this characterization, arguing that the industry itself had incentives to unilaterally implement additional safety requirements.

Lawmakers gave the FAA relief from the first round of sequestration, “but the idea that they’re going to have another round of it is pretty ominous,” Goelz added, “safety investigators are going to ber laid off or pushed back.”

As for the Canadian catastrophe, Zoe Carpenter writes:

A debate about the relative merits of transporting crude oil by pipeline or by rail reignited over the weekend, after a runaway freight train carrying seventy-two cars of oil exploded and leveled Lac-Mégantic, Quebec.

The disaster exposed a significant lack of regulation governing the shipment of crude oil via rail, and raised questions about the continued use of old tanker cars known to be unsafe.

Unions Winning Votes on the Ground

Unions aren't dying; they're getting murdered. This is how.

American Airlines lobbied for a law change to fight unionization. Under the old law, if 35% of workers signed a union card, then a vote had to be held to determine if the workers wanted to form a collective bargaining unit. American Airlines got that raised to 50% of workers. Communications Workers of America claims they got the 35% of America Airlines’ passenger service employees signed up before the law was changed and that the law wasn’t retroactive anyway. Stay tuned.

I think the passenger service reps are the only employees at American who are not yet represented. Wouldn't more content counter staff makes life more pleasant for all of us?

Meanwhile ...

”Registered nurses at Research Medical Center [of Kansas City] have voted in favor of union representation [260-92].”

Both via Firedoglake.

Fighting the Man - and Winning

Everyone who's surprised that the "liberty" baggers aren't marching in the streets against our creeping police state, stand on your head.

Spread this one far and wide.

Via Digby, who comments:

Just read this story of Orwellian airport hell and then think about how many of our basic notions of freedom we've given up in the name of "Homeland Security" in the past few years. Then think about the fact that we are spending billions of dollars in this so-called era of austerity on bullshit like this, with layer upon layer of supervisors and officers and supervisory officers basically performing security theater for no good reason.

These routine insults, humiliations and suspensions of human dignity are training us to submit to the police state. I noticed this morning that in all the blathering about tax cuts and deficits, not one person brought up Homeland Security. That bloated budget is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger and if you build it they will use it. And the results of that are obvious.

More here.

As for the TSA moron babbling about the rights you sacrifice by buying an airline ticket: I actually have read the fine print on my airline ticket and there is nothing there about submitting to sexual assault.

I hope the blogger above sues the TSA, the airport, airport security, the San Diego police department and every employee involved in the incident individually.

No Coincidence

Two regional jet crashes, 2-1/2 years apart, both killing all passengers. Both the worst catastrophe in the history of the respective airports. The first early on a brilliant summer day in the heart of Bluegrass horse country. The second late on an icy winter night in the crowded suburbs of the industrial north.

Both brought down by pilot error.

The Herald-Leader, two weeks ago:

Pilot negligence was a "substantial factor" in the crash of Comair Flight 5191 in Lexington in August 2006, U.S. District Senior Judge Karl Forester has ruled. (cached article here.)

And this week from the Buffalo News, a detailed special report:

On Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009 at 10:20 p.m., Continental flight 3407, en route from Newark, N.J., spun from the sky and crashed into a home as it made its approach to Buffalo Niagara International Airport. All 49 people on board the plane were killed, as was one man in the house in Clarence Center. It was the worst aviation accident in Western New York history.

The months-long investigation by Tom Precious and Jerry Zremski of the Buffalo News finds that poor piloting on regional airlines is the completely predictable consequence of deliberate policies on the part of airlines to cut costs.

Click here for links to the stories below.

Part One: Who's flying your airplane?

You are sitting in a 50-seat propeller plane heading home to Buffalo, and out the window you see ice on the wings. Ten rows in front of you, someone else also may be encountering mid-air icing for the first time: Your co-pilot.

Part Two: The pilot system error

When pilot Marvin Renslow flipped on the autopilot less than four minutes after Continental Connection Flight 3407 left Newark airport on a wintry night last February, he said something thousands of pilots around the world repeat every day: "Autopilot's engaged."

Part Three: Top Guns give way to insta-pilots

Paul Onorato’s pilot training occurred up in the skies, where he learned how to recover from dangerous stalls and handle high G-force pressures while pulling out of a spin or righting a plane that suddenly flipped on its side and then upsidedown. He learned with no passengers in sight.

Part Four: Building a better pilot

WASHINGTON — The federal rules governing pilot training are, in the words of one expert, “written in blood” — and the Federal Aviation Administration agrees.

Regional airlines enjoy profits while majors post losses

Could regional airlines afford better pilot training?

Good training can develop useful stick-and-rudder skills

To experience airmanship skills, fly with a veteran pilot in an aerobatic plane doing maneuvers the typical airline pilot never experiences—from dives and high G-force moves to a white-knuckle touch-and-go along a tree-lined runway appropriately named Strip-in-the-Woods.

What airline is it, really?

If you ever have arrived at the airport and been surprised to find yourself flying a regional puddle-jumper rather than a jet, you should know there's an easy way to find out for sure who is flying your plane.

Graphic: Pilot Error 2004-08

Graphic: Crashes and near misses: A closer look at regional airline mishaps

Graphic: Pilot error: Regional vs. major airlines

Graphic: Fatal airmanship: Five fatal crashes in which pilots were blamed

Graphic: The vanishing military-trained pilot

Graphic: Diminishing pilot requirements

Obama Finds Populism at Last

Forget health care reform or even a real jobs bill. This is what will get President Obama re-elected:

The federal government will impose stiff penalties starting this spring on airlines that keep passengers waiting too long on the tarmac without feeding them or letting them off the plane — a remedy that will relieve many travelers but mean longer delays for a few.

JetBlue passengers waited for hours to leave Kennedy Airport for Cancun on Feb. 14, 2007.

Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary, called the action on Monday “President Obama's Passenger Bill of Rights.”

The Obama administration took the strict new approach in response to several highly publicized events in recent years, and in the face of likely Congressional action if airline regulators did not respond to the consumer outcry that ensued.

It acted on the eve of the busy Christmas travel season, and just as airlines struggled to recover from extensive weather-related disruptions to air travel to and from the Northeast over the weekend.

Under the rule, airlines that do not provide food and water after two hours or a chance to disembark after three hours will face penalties of $27,500 a passenger, the secretary of transportation announced on Monday.

Read the whole thing.

People hate airlines. More than they hate Wall Street, more than they hate insurance companies. This is a winner.

We're All Naked for the Airport Security Perverts

As you plan your summer travel, think twice - or ten times - about getting on a plane.

Because the new "metal detectors" you step through are actually displaying your naked body to TSA employees. Down to the last groin-area pore. Without your knowledge, much less permission.

The naked body scanners are taking over.

When we first checked in on them two years ago, the scanners, which see through clothing, were being deployed at a single airport. A few months later, they were upgraded to millimeter-wave technology, which delivered similar images with even less radiation—"10,000 times less than a cell phone transmission," according to the Transportation Security Administration. At the time, TSA assured us that the scanners would be used only as a "voluntary alternative" to "a more invasive physical pat-down during secondary screening." Only a few passengers, the ones selected for extra scrutiny, would face the scanners. The rest of us could walk through the metal detectors and board our planes.

Surprise! Two months ago, TSA revised its position. It began testing millimeter-wave scans "in the place of the walk-through metal detector at six airports." At these airports, everyone—not just people selected for secondary screening –would face the see-through machines. Anyone who objected would "undergo metal detector screening and a pat-down." You might even get the "enhanced pat-down," which includes "sensitive areas of the body that are often used by professional testers and terrorists," such as "the breast and groin areas of females and the groin area of males." Show us your body, or we'll feel you up.

Now the plan is going nationwide. Joe Sharkey of the New York Times reports that TSA "plans to replace the walk-through metal detectors at airport checkpoints with whole-body imaging machines—the kind that provide an image of the naked body." All passengers will "go through the whole-body imager instead of the walk-through metal detector," according to TSA's chief technology officer, and the machines will begin operating soon after orders are placed this summer.

Read the whole thing.

Don't waste time writing to your congress critter. Take advantage of the crummy economy and hit the people who are financially vulnerable here: the airlines.

I'm emailing every airline that flies out of airports within 100 miles of my house and telling them all the same thing:

Until they force TSA to stop treating the airline's customers like drug mules smuggling cocaine in our rectums, we're not flying.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....