ValuJet crash 10 years ago spurred key air safety changes

By CURT ANDERSON
Associated Press Writer

MIAMI (AP) -- In some ways, Sharon Jarvis Moss was one of the fortunate ones. The remains of her brother Dan, who played several musical instruments, were identified using fingerprints on organ sheet music she provided following the 1996 crash of ValuJet Flight 592 into the Everglades.

Other family members of the 105 passengers and five crew members never recovered anything, so complete was the DC-9's destruction when it plummeted nosefirst into water, thick muck and rock after a fierce onboard fire.

Yet many who will gather Thursday to mark the 10th anniversary of Florida's deadliest air crash take solace in knowing that their loved ones' deaths spurred changes in federal air safety rules and practices that probably prevented more deaths in the years to follow.

"There are ways we try to overcome evil with good, to make something positive out of our tragedy," said Moss, who lives in Gastonia, N.C., and recently had her brother's remains transferred there. "As a result of that crash, good things did happen."

The airliner went down 11 minutes after takeoff from Miami International Airport when a fire broke out in a cargo hold, filling the cabin with smoke and flames. At least one of 144 oxygen generators - bottle-shaped devices used to fuel airplane oxygen masks - in the hold ignited because safety caps were not in place, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

But ValuJet also was not permitted to carry such potentially hazardous cargo in the first place. The Federal Aviation Administration was faulted for inadequate oversight of ValuJet and its maintenance contractors.

"What I remember most about this accident is that it was unnecessary. This was completely preventable," said John Goglia, a former NTSB member who chaired hearings into the ValuJet crash.

Less than two weeks after the crash, the FAA banned oxygen generators in commercial flight cargo holds. The FAA then mandated fire detection and suppression systems for cargo areas, which resulted in retrofitting by March 2001 of more than 3,400 aircraft at a cost of $300 million.

George Griner of Bend Brook, Texas, who lost his son Mark in the crash, said the safety changes provided him with a measure of peace.

"I like to think that Mark was part of helping save a lot of people over a number of years," Griner said. "To me, that's a great contribution."

The FAA also increased its scrutiny of safety practices at startup airlines such as ValuJet, whose faulty maintenance program and lack of FAA oversight was cited as one factor in the crash. ValuJet's maintenance contractor at the time, SabreTech, was convicted in 1999 of state criminal charges of recklessly supplying the oxygen generators and went out of business.

That prosecution, the first of its kind in the nation, "served notice to the aviation industry that there would be penalties for such negligence," said Gail Dunham, president of the National Air Disaster Alliance/Foundation, an advocacy group for air passengers and crash victim families. "This decision was a landmark in promoting aviation safety."

ValuJet, at the time of the crash a growing no-frills airline, was grounded for three months after Flight 592 went down. After trying for months to restore the flying public's confidence, ValuJet merged in 1997 with AirTran, dropped the ValuJet name and began to recover.

AirTran Airways now operates 600 daily flights to 50 destinations, has a work force of 7,000 people and has one of the newest fleets of fuel-efficient Boeing 717 and 737 airliners. AirTran has posted a profit in each of the past seven years, recently topping $1 billion in total revenue.

"In the 10 years since this tragedy took place, the airline has completely reinvented itself," AirTran said in a statement. "We've changed everything except our commitment to safety, which will always be our top priority at AirTran Airways.

Aviation experts say the ValuJet crash - coupled with the fuel tank explosion over Long Island Sound that destroyed a TWA Boeing 747 on July 16, 1996, killing 230 people - brought a much-needed focus to chronic safety problems. Two federal commissions created to investigate those problems resulted in the setting of a national goal to reduce the fatal accident rate by 80 percent over a decade.

The aviation fatality rate is on track for a 73 percent reduction since those twin 1996 disasters, said Stuart Matthews, president and chief executive officer of the Flight Safety Foundation.

"From a commercial standpoint, aviation has never been safer," Matthews said.

In 1996, there were 342 fatalities aboard regularly scheduled commercial passenger aircraft involved in accidents, a rate of one passenger fatality for every 1.9 million who boarded planes, according to the NTSB. By 2005, the number of fatalities had dropped to 20, or one for every 42 million boarding passengers.

Many Valujet family members have sought to create something of their own to remember loved ones, from a basketball tournament in North Carolina that raised money to send poor kids to camp to a Methodist church in Venezuela built in honor of one victim.

The Rev. Warren Lathem, a United Methodist Church district superintendent in the Atlanta area, lost his son Ray in the Flight 592 crash. Ray Lathem had been visiting Venezuela along with three other church members to explore possible Methodist missionary work. Now, there are 25 Methodist churches and ministries there.

"In many ways, time stopped on May 11, 1996," Lathem said. "In other ways, we've had to go forward with our lives and stay focused and go through the healing process. We've tried to make some good things come out of it."

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On the Net:

National Transportation Safety Board: http://www.ntsb.gov

Federal Aviation Administration: http://www.faa.gov

National Air Disaster Alliance/Foundation: http://www.planesafe.org

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