These things take time--lots of time.If you think the Coast Guard followed a too-little and too-slow policy in responding to the safety needs of those ferry passengers, consider the Federal Aviation Administration's response to the danger of another fuel tank explosion like the one that brought down TWA's Flight 800. That accident happened in 1996. Nine years later, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, reports Matthew Wald in The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times, "complained to the Federal Aviation Administration Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), component of the U.S. Department of Transportation that sets standards for the air-worthiness of all civilian aircraft, inspects and licenses them, and regulates civilian and military air traffic through its air traffic control that it had slowed to a crawl To search the Internet for hosts, Web pages or blogs. See crawler. on changes needed to prevent a similar accident." In 1996, "the safety board called for pumping the tanks full of inert gas inert gas or noble gas, any of the elements in Group 18 of the periodic table. In order of increasing atomic number they are: helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, and radon. so they could not explode (1) To break down an assembly into its component pieces. Contrast with implode. (2) To decompress data back to its original form. " In 2004, "the FAA said it was close to proposing" such a rule but it has yet to do so. Before Flight 800 left New York, its departure had been delayed more than an hour. Heat from the planes' air-conditioning unit, located next to the fuel tank, caused the temperature in the tank to become dangerously high, making it more likely to explode. So, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended that, while on the ground, planes be cooled by ground-based, rather than on-board On board usually means to be traveling on some vehicle. For example, Baby On Board. Compare with overboard. Metaphorically, the term on-board is often used to refer to some piece of technology that is integrated in a moving vehicle, for example: The airlines now have an excuse for not adopting the inert gas solution. Doing so would cost $200,000 a plane, which many cash-strapped airlines cannot afford at this time. There have however been periods of airline prosperity since 1986, when they could have afforded the fix if the FAA had only required it. And the ground based air-conditioning unit is not costly. Actually, Southwest is using it because it costs less than the on-board version. |
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