Recently a friend asked me what airlines were thesafest to fly. I get asked that question all the time. I find the question challenging in part because of the chasm between risk and perceived risk.
For example, most air travelers willadmit to some anticipation about the safety of their flight, but few worry muchabout the taxi in which they speeding to the airport.Travelers are also treated to end-of-the-year news reportsabout the world's most dangerous airlines based on fatalities.That's a false relationship as I've reported before.
Sometimes, however, it is obvious what airlines to avoid. Iwas reminded of that today when I read the latest in the ongoing saga ofAmerica's low cost carrier Allegiant. According to William Levesque in theTampa Bay Times, a group of investors in the airline are calling for Allegiant to create a special safety committee after emergency landings andmaintenance problems that have plagued the airline.
Let's be clear, emergency landings are not the problem, theyare a symptom. One does not want airlines to put pressure on pilots to avoidthem. That seems to have happened in the case of Capt. Jason Kinzer, who wasfired by Allegiant after an emergency landing at St. Pete Clearwater InternationalAirport in June 2015.
Kinzer had smoke in the cabin and a report from the airportfire department of smoke from the engine that did not dissipate in the cabineven after the engine was shut down. He opted to evacuate the 141 people on boardthe MD-80 via the door slides and in the process two people were injured.
According to an interview and copy of the termination letterCapt. Kinzer gave to ABC News, Allegiant found the evacuation unwarranted and saidthat he failed to preserve the company assets.
Emergency evacuations can be expensive. The public relationshit is equally costly.
One month later, the crew on Allegiant Flight 426 declared afuel emergency while trying to land at Fargo's Hector International Airportafter flying from its home airport in Las Vegas. The Fargo runway wastemporarily closed for a Blue Angel air show rehearsal, something Allegiant andevery other operator had been informed of for months.
In his story, Levesque reported it as the "strangest in astring of emergency landings" but it got even more bizarre when news broke thatthe pilots in command of the flight were Allegiant's vice president ofoperations and its director of flight safety.
An unidentified Allegiant pilot told the Las Vegas Review's,Richard Velotta, that one of the two management pilots had been an advocate forflights "operating with minimal fuel reserves."
I'm no advocate of pilot bashing. Surely many things playeda role in Flight 426 from its fuel load to its delay on departure to the lackof knowledge of the temporary flight restriction by the pilots or the dispatchoffice.
Last summer, while all this news was breaking, I received acall from a mechanic who had observed an engine replacement on an Allegiantairplane that had been stranded at a remote airport after the engine failed ontakeoff. The replacement was tagged as inspected, and was ostensibly ready tobe put on the MD-80 but when he saw it, my contact was flabbergasted by itscondition.
"It looked as if it had been sitting in a field," he said. Whenmechanics began the work, major parts were missing. "Everything about thatengine change was just sketchy," my source told me. "I completely appreciatethat different companies do things different ways and level of quality is notalways going to be synchronous, but it was a shit show."
But the markers for disaster are not to be found inaccidents so much as in incidents and in the way an airline handles them. Arepilots second-guessed? Are safety margins squeezed? Is getting by consideredgood enough?
When the answers to those questions are yes, my friend, buy a ticket onother airline.