MSNBC Tries to Tackle the Flight Safety Issue, All at Once

NBC had the right idea, setting up a "What have we learned?" page that addresses a number of concerns prospective airline fliers might have.

T he premise: have a look at a famous accident, dissect it, and demonstrate what was learned.

Many famous crashes are featured: Pan Am 103, TWA Flight 800, ValuJet 592, USAir 427... The path to the problem is presented in fairly dumbed-down terms (this is a general-audience piece, remember?), but the "Lesson Learned" is presented in a generally reasonable way.

It's a gruesome trip down memory lane, as the horrors of one bad crash after another are tossed back at us; but the final impression left is one of, "Thank goodness they've fixed it so that won't ever happen again!" No doubt, the airlines will like it.

Our only serious gripe is NBC's evident tendency to use writers whose aviation background is obviously lacking, and therefore to exaggerate or mischaracterize certain aspects of some of the accidents. For instance, when a pair of F-16s nearly clobbered a Nation's Air 727 off New Jersey in 1997, mention of the airliner's TCAS was made, showing no understanding of the system -- or of the consequences of the system's not working: "The approach of the F-16s triggered the 727's T-CAS (Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System), which advised the passenger plane's crew to dive, climb and dive again to avoid a collision. After doing so, two flight attendants and a passenger were thrown to the cabin floor and were slightly injured. Though the T-CAS alarms were meant to increase safety and prevent collisions in mid-air, in this case, they created grave risk." NBC's writers missed the obvious: a lot worse could have happened.

Anyway, it's an interesting read, for the most part, and probably does more good than harm.

FMI: www.msnbc.com/onair/nbc/nightlynews/aviation/accidents.asp