Simple and inexpensive, smoke hoods can keep passengers alive during an in-flight fire. So why aren't they mandatory? Glen McGregor reports.

The Ottawa Citizen
Sunday, July 8, 2001
 

As Air Canada Flight 797 from Dallas began its emergency descent to Greater Cincinnati Airport, a horrific scene unfolded within the cabin: From somewhere at the back of the DC-9, thick black smoke began to fill the air. The passengers' eyes watered, their throats ached and their chests heaved as they struggled to breathe through the choking fumes.

Flight attendants handed out wet towels and scrambled to move the passengers toward the front of plane, away from the source of the smoke. By the time everyone was seated, the smoke hung in a black cloud from ceiling to below knee level.

"Everyone think good thoughts,'' one passenger said aloud as the aircraft dropped towards the ground.

In the cockpit, Capt. Donald Cameron, wearing goggles and an oxygen mask, pressed his face against the window to see through the smoke. He managed to land the plane safely, with three blown tires but no injuries. By the time it came to halt on the runway, however, the visibility inside the cabin was less than one foot.

Passengers scrambled frantically for the emergency exits. Blinded by the smoke, some felt their way to the exit rows by counting seat backs. Others dropped to their knees and crawled along the floor, searching for a dim light they could see through the dark.

Twenty-three escaped the inferno, but 18 passengers and three crew members were overcome by the fumes and never got out.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board's report blamed the 1983 Cincinnati accident on a fire in the washroom by an unknown source. The report precipitated several new safety innovations to reduce deaths in fires. Aircraft washrooms now have smoke detectors, fabrics inside airplanes are treated with non-flammable materials, and the aisles and exit rows are equipped with conspicuous floor lighting.

But 18 years later, the simple innovation that could have saved lives in the Cincinnati fire and other aircraft fires since then has not been mandated. There is still no requirement for airlines to supply the inexpensive smoke hoods that block toxic fumes and give passengers extra minutes to get out of a burning jet alive.

Next to the trauma of the initial impact, smoke inhalation remains the leading cause of death in aviation accidents. Yet regulatory agencies like the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and Transport Canada have decided the benefits of passenger smoke hoods are not worth the cost of equipping aircraft. In the antiseptic arithmetic of aviation safety, the estimated nine lives smoke hoods would save each year are not enough to force a regulatory change.

Two days before the 1983 Cincinnati accident, Bill Tucker began work as an investigator with the Aviation Safety Bureau, a forerunner of the Transportation Safety Board. The fatal fire was his first major case in a career that would eventually see him become the board's director-general of investigations and, today, the man responsible for the ongoing investigation into the 1998 crash of SwissAir Flight 111.

Mr. Tucker has little doubt that smoke hoods would have had an effect in Cincinnati.

``On that airplane, more people would have survived,'' he says. ``How many more, I don't know. But if you have a smoke hood, that's one way of giving people more time to exit in an airplane fire.''

Although Mr. Tucker is still uncertain whether smoke hoods should be mandated, he takes no chances when flying with his own family. They carry smoke hoods with them.

``When you look at the combination of its value in an aircraft and in a hotel room, I personally think it's worth the expenditure,'' he says.

Mr. Tucker is one of a small but growing number of air travellers who are not waiting for airlines to provide them with smoke hoods. They are buying self-contained units that can be easily stowed in carry-on luggages.

A typical smoke hood on the market, such as the Canadian-made Evac-U8, is a heat-resistant plastic bag that fits over the head and cinches around the neck. A filter worn in the mouth blocks out gases like hydrogen cyanide and converts carbon monoxide, the abundant and lethal byproduct of fire, into carbon dioxide. The hood folds into a plastic case the size of a pop can and costs $108.

More sophisticated models come with an oxygen supply, but currently cannot be taken on aircraft because of regulations prohibiting pressurized containers.

Mr. Tucker's employer, the Transportation Safety Board, conducted a study on evacuation of aircraft and in 1995 advised Transport Canada to re-evaluate research done on passenger smoke hoods. But Transport Canada rejected the recommendation and pointed to a controversial British report that concluded the ``modest'' number of lives saved each year would not warrant the cost.

Although the Air Canada fire at Cincinnati was among the most compelling cases for smoke hoods, it was the 1985 crash of a British Airtours flight in Manchester, England, that forced regulators to take a closer look at the issue.

During acceleration for take-off, the engine of a Boeing 737 exploded and ruptured a fuel tank in the wing. The pilots aborted takeoff and stopped the burning aircraft just off the runway.

As in Cincinnati two years earlier, the cabin filled with acrid black smoke and visibility was reduced to inches. Panicked passengers climbed over the bodies of those overcome by fumes to reach the exits. Of the 137 people aboard, 55 did not escape. Smoke inhalation was determined the cause of death in 46 of the fatalities. The other nine travellers burned to death.

After Manchester, the U.K.'s Civil Aviation Authority launched a study of passenger smoke hoods, conducted with the FAA and Transport Canada. The CAA analysed 74 previous accidents and more than 2,600 fatalities involving fire.

The report published in 1987, Smoke Hoods: Net Safety Benefit Analysis, allowed that hoods would extend the amount of time passengers had to escape until the point at which the fire became ``unsurvivable,'' when passengers would be incapacitated not by smoke, but by flames and heat.

But the CAA study found the statistical effectiveness of smoke hoods had been usurped by other safety measures instituted after the Cincinnati fire, such as washroom smoke detectors, fire retardant materials in the cabin and lighting on the floor to guide passengers to the exits.

Using these factors in their calculations, the CAA projected that smoke hoods would save 179 lives worldwide during a 20-year period -- about nine a year.

``This proportion is modest,'' the CAA concluded, and declined to recommend that hoods become mandatory on British flights. The FAA and Transport Canada concurred.

Since the Manchester accident, the aviation industry has insisted that the time passengers take to put on their hoods would slow down evacuation times that the FAA requires of new aircraft entering service. Under FAA regulations, half of the passengers must be able to get out with only half the exits open, within 90 seconds.

But some safety experts consider the 90-second rule unnecessarily arbitrary.

``It's not as if at 89 seconds you're safe and at 91 you're dead,'' says Bill Tucker. ``What they found in Manchester was that there were people who survived long after 90 seconds, but they had serious problems with smoke inhalation.''

The rule is based on the premise that exposure to toxic smoke for longer than 90 seconds would result in death. But in fact, passengers who are wearing hoods might be able to survive longer -- two or three minutes -- in a burning aircraft. In that case, the 10 or 15 seconds required to put a smoke hood on becomes negligible.

Even the theory that smoke hoods result in an overall delay in evacuation is based on flawed research, says Dr. James Vant, an industrial psychologist and former chairman of the Aviation Study Group at Oxford University's Linacre College.

In the aftermath of the Manchester accident, Mr. Vant used a simulated aircraft fire to study the effect of the hoods on evacuation time. In an aircraft cabin flooded with non-toxic smoke, volunteer passengers were timed putting on the hoods and getting out the exits.

``Smoke hoods had no affect on evacuation whatsoever,'' says Mr. Vant. ``You have only so many points where you can get out of the aircraft, and you are going to have to queue to get out anyway.''

This was tragically evident in a 1991 collision at Los Angeles International Airport, when a U.S. Air Boeing 737 ran into a smaller commuter aircraft, killing 34 people. On the larger jet, investigators found 11 bodies piled in the aisle near the wing exits and concluded the passengers had died of smoke inhalation waiting to get out.

Evacuation can actually be slowed by people not wearing smoke hoods for a simple reason, Mr. Vant says: ``If you are exposed to toxic fumes and gasses, you very quickly keel over and become unconscious and die. If you fall down in the exit, experience has shown that people will have to walk over you.''

Mr. Vant says smoke-hood opponents make a questionable assumption when calculating evacuation times, that passengers will wait until the aircraft comes to a complete stop to put on their hoods. If the plane is burning while still in the air -- as in Cincinnati -- passengers have ample time to put on the hoods while still seated.

Based largely on Mr. Vant's research, the Aviation Study Group at Oxford recommended to the CAA that smoke hoods be made mandatory on commercial flights. The recommendation was rejected, however, and to this day, the CAA does not require British airlines to provide smoke hoods.

Mr. Vant says he was frustrated by the unwillingness of bodies like the CAA and Transport Canada to heed his research, even though they participated in the tests. He blames their unwillingness to change the regulations on professional jealousy.

``They didn't want people from outside the institution (CAA) making statements about aviation safety,'' he said.

``People who run the airlines and the people who are regulators don't like the idea of smoke hoods. But those people have never had to do anything in an atmosphere of toxic fumes and gases, where you can't even keep your eyes open.''

But the CAA report did not end the debate. After conducting its own study of the Manchester crash, the British parliament's transport committee issued a report in 1991 calling on the CAA to mandate hoods immediately. The report noted that committee members were ``concerned by the CAA's apparent disinterest in them.''

The CAA rejected the report, saying panicked passengers would take too long to figure out how to put on the hoods and cause further loss of life by delaying the escape.

In the U.S., with the Los Angeles experience still fresh, consumer advocate Ralph Nader and former U.S. Department of Transportation inspector general Mary Schiavo publicly called on the FAA to revisit the smoke-hood issue.

But the big U.S. airlines countered with an effective lobbying campaign against smoke hoods with the Congress and the FAA, according to Paul Hudson, head of Mr. Nader's public-interest group, the Aviation Consumer Action Project.

Mr. Hudson says the cost of outfitting commercial jets with smoke hoods would be minor, compared to the regular upgrades to entertainment and telephone systems that airlines routinely make to lure business travellers. But it is the increased exposure to lawsuits that worries the airlines most.

``It's pretty much the same reaction they have to any safety issue,'' he says. ``No. 1 is the cost, No. 2 is the potential liability issues. Even if the cost is not an issue, the concern is that if you introduce something new you could be sued over that.''

And, Mr. Hudson contends, the airlines are reluctant to move on a safety initiative that might frighten passengers who had never given much thought to aircraft fires.

``Another reason smoke hoods are not used is that you would have to instruct people to use them,'' he says. ``Raising the possibility of fire is uncomfortable and would tend to make passengers worry.''

At the same time, however, the airlines happily outfit their fleets with inflatable life vests because the thought of landing on water isn't nearly as alarming, Mr. Hudson says.

He points to the pantomime air travellers must sit through at the start of every flight, in which a flight attendant puts on a vest and mimes inflating it orally.

``This gives the idea that the only emergency would be some kind of gentle water landing, where you would use your seat cushion like on a boat taking in water, instead of an airplane shattering like an egg as they do when they hit water.''

In fact, a crash at sea is not much more survivable than one on land. If a plane hits water at high speed, the life vests and ``personal flotation devices'' would likely join the millions of aircraft and body parts bobbing in the debris field. There is only one documented case in which passengers donned life vests and bailed out of a wide-bodied jet in water, and that was in 1970.

Even though there hasn't been another incident like it in 30 years, life vests are mandated without questioning their cost-risk benefit.

Today, Transport Canada regulations require that air crews have access to smoke hoods equipped with an oxygen supply, but there is no such requirement for travellers. Under this regulatory regime, crew wearing their own masks can safely land a burning aircraft full of dead passengers who have been overcome by toxic fumes.

The Cincinnati fire, however, shows the value of having a pilot equipped with something that will let him keep working, even if passengers are not protected in the same way. And, Transport Canada contends, the fire-prevention steps taken since Cincinnati have made smoke hoods a lower priority.

With the regulators apparently unwilling to move on smoke hoods, the airlines should take the initiative, says the TSB's Bill Tucker.

``Why not allow a carrier to go for a competitive advantage and choose to equip its passengers with them?'' he asks. ``Let the market determine it.''

He envisions a system where passengers boarding a plane could pay a deposit for a smoke hood that would be refunded when they get off. This would prevent pilferage of the hoods by people who want them in hotels or their homes.

Mr. Tucker admits this would run contrary to the conventional thinking in the airline industry that shuns any initiative that might discomfort passengers, but he says this is a mistake.

He points to a TSB recommendation that air crews make a visual inspection of the wings during certain types of icing conditions. The airline marketing people said the flying public would be terrified by the sight of a co-pilot pointing a flashlight out the window and inspecting the wings. But when the pilot uses the public address to tell the passengers what is happening, they almost always respond positively. On one occasion, Mr. Tucker says, passengers have actually applauded.

``I don't think passengers want to be left in the dark,'' he says. ``To assume that we're going to scare them off is a little bit insulting.''

But until the airlines offer smoke hoods, its up to passengers to spend the $100 to $200 and equip themselves -- at least until another aviation fire re-opens the debate.

``This will come again,'' Mr. Tucker says, ``next time there's a big one.''

Illustration: Black & White Photo: Chris Mikula, The Ottawa Citizen / A typical smoke hood on the market, such as the Canadian-made Evac-U8, above, is a heat-resistant plastic bag that fits over the head and cinches around the neck. It folds into a plastic case the size of a pop can, below, and sells for about $108. Black & White Photo: Chris Mikula, The Ottawa Citizen / A typical smoke hood on the market, such as the Canadian-made Evac-U8 is a heat-resistant plastic bag that fits over the head and cinches around the neck. It folds into a plastic case the size of a pop can, above, and sells for about $108.
 

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