SAFETY REGULATIONS

Rules less stringent for cargo industry

BY RONNIE GREENE

rgreene@MiamiHerald.com

WASHINGTON -- Cargo pilots fly more hours with less rest than their colleagues navigating passenger airplanes. Many take to the air without the black box devices that help solve airplane crashes, a gaping safety loophole.

Aviation experts say the stark differences are among the reasons smaller cargo planes continue to crash while passenger flight boasts its safest period ever.

Small cargo companies fly under "Part 135'' of Federal Aviation Administration regulations, rules that also govern air taxi and emergency medical operators. Passenger and large cargo planes fly under rules for Part 121 carriers.

More than 90 percent of fatal U.S. cargo crashes since 2000 involve the under-the-radar Part 135 operators, whose crash rate is well above the Part 121 carriers.

Agency officials say nine of every 10 members of the traveling public are carried on passenger jets.

"You have to prioritize," said David E. Cann, manager of the FAA's Flight Standards Aircraft Maintenance Division. "We have to prioritize risk."

"[Part] 121 is the highest standard we hold our air carriers to," said Thomas Toula, Manager of the FAA's Flight Standards Air Transportation Division. "That is not to imply that 135 is unsafe. We've never said -- and to this day don't believe -- 135 is unsafe."

Beyond the differing safety rules, experts interviewed by The Miami Herald, including government regulators and cargo pilots, say the FAA's inspection process for Part 135 operators is not nearly as intensive as for Part 121.

The inspection programs are "a whole different world," said Tom Haueter, deputy director of the National Transportation Safety Board's Office of Aviation Safety. ''You're not getting the level of surveillance you get on 121."

Cargo operators have inspection and maintenance programs that can have hourly or calendar inspection intervals, depending on the size and manufacturer of the aircraft, the FAA said. But the quality of those inspections, and the FAA oversight, differ company to company.

For large 121 carriers, the FAA assigns full-time principal air safety inspectors for maintenance, avionics and flight operations, along with assistants, said former FAA inspector Bart Crotty.

By contrast, he said, Part 135 carriers are overseen by an inspector juggling a half-dozen or more carriers.

"The 121 guys, the principal is almost joined at the hip with them," said Crotty, now a civil aviation consultant. "For 135 guys, they may be there, they may not. It's the old 'out of sight, out of mind.' ''

In a statement, the FAA said most 135 carriers "are not comparable in scope to Part 121 air carriers, sometimes consisting of only one or two aircraft and a like number of pilots. It would be impractical to devote a single inspector's workload to a single Part 135 carrier in many instances because the operator is simply too small to justify that workload."

In 2004, safety advocates eyed an avenue for change: an Air Cargo Safety Forum in Virginia.

"The regulatory differences between cargo and passenger operators contribute to increased risk in the cargo industry, and likely to the higher cargo airline accident rates," wrote the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents larger cargo operators.

The group's proposal to set a standard level of safety never made it through the first step -- a study process -- even though federal aviation officials were at the table.

"There was obviously a reluctance on the part of the cargo carriers to do anything, for obvious reasons. They saw it was going to cost them money," said captain Terry McVenes, executive air safety chairman for the pilots group. ''Their feeling was there was nothing wrong with it anyway, so why would we do anything? But I would say the statistics show there were some issues."

He adds: "We always want to be sensitive to cost. But cost at what price?"

The Cargo Airline Association, a Washington group including FedEx Express, UPS and DHL Express, did not respond to five Miami Herald interview requests since November.

"Those planning sessions were less than friendly," McVenes said. "They just did not want to be there at the table."