- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Aviation Administration overlooked a
warning 10 years ago that a flammability test of aircraft thermal insulation
was not tough enough, the Washington Post reported Sunday.
-
- Following the Sept. 2 crash of Swissair
Flight 111, which killed 229 people, the FAA last month ordered the upgrade
of cabin insulation in thousands of airliners after tests showed many current
types would fail a new fire test.
-
- Airlines and plane makers are being urged
by the FAA to either take advantage of safer materials during manufacture
or to replace the insulation mats during scheduled maintenance, ahead of
mandatory rules it plans to issue.
-
- Although no burned insulation has been
recovered from the Swissair wreck off the coast of Canada, the FAA suspects
it may have played a role in spreading fire through the cockpit.
-
- The Washington Post reported that Duvon
McQuire, a young home-insulation specialist, sent a memorandum to a subcommittee
of the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM), whose standards
are accepted by the FAA, on March 9, 1988, calling a flammability test
for airline insulation "meaningless."
-
- The ASTM subcommittee ignored the warning,
and top FAA officials were unaware until this year that even some FAA technicians
were growing concerned that insulation could possibly help spread fires
inside an aircraft.
-
- The test that McQuire questioned involved
holding a piece of insulation vertically over a Bunsen burner for 12 seconds
and then watching how far the resulting flame travelled and how long it
took to extinguish itself. If the fire went out within 15 seconds and the
flame spread by less than eight inches, the material was approved for use
as aircraft insulation.
-
- The Washington Post said the insulation
episode has prompted FAA officials to examine how the agency evaluates
potential safety hazards, with a particular focus on ensuring that sensitive
safety issues are brought to the top.
-
- "I want to be more sure than I am
today that we have a process where people are comfortable enough to bring
things forward," it quoted FAA Administrator Jane Garvey as saying.
-
- Plans were under way for information-sharing
programs, including one in which a mass of information from aircraft flight
data recorders would be crunched through computers to look for patterns
that could spot problems before they occur.
-
- The flammability standard for aircraft
insulation set by the ASTM dates to 1975. The ASTM is a technical organization
that develops and publishes thousands of testing standards for industry,
on materials and products ranging from ceramics to wood.
-
- McGuire, who is now self-employed, served
on a subcommittee that evaluated the insulation flammability test and voted
against it because he felt nearly any material would pass it.
-
- But he told the Post that under a "gentleman's
agreement" with the subcommittee, he withdrew his negative vote in
exchange for a promise that the subcommittee would revisit the issue, something
that never happened.
-
- A series of fires aboard jetliners culminating
with the Swissair crash prompted the FAA last month to raise standards
for insulation. Instead of passing a fire-spread test, insulation will
have to pass a much tougher burn-through test.
|
