A Safety Lesson Unlearned

The discovery that seven oxygen canisters were transported in the cargo hold of a Continental Airlines jet from Houston to Los Angeles is disturbing on many fronts. The canisters had been capped, which greatly reduced the chance of a fire, but they should not have been in the hold at all.

The containers are standard emergency equipment on passenger jets. They hold the oxygen that sustains passengers in any sudden decompression, and thus they are vital to safety. But we need only look back one year to see the danger they pose when improperly transported as cargo. Misidentified and poorly packaged oxygen canisters were blamed for the cargo area fire that brought down ValuJet Flight 592 last May, killing all 110 people aboard as the smoke-filled plane dived into the Florida Everglades.

After the accident, the Transportation Department issued an immediate and highly publicized ban on shipping the canisters in the cargo holds of passenger jets.

The issue is still front and center in the aviation industry. ValuJet is defending itself in a closely watched wrongful death lawsuit by blaming one of its outside contractors, Sabretech, which has filed its own negligence lawsuit against ValuJet.

On Capitol Hill, a congressional subcommittee last week heard testimony on affordable, effective ways to extinguish flames in cargo holds. Meanwhile, the major airlines announced that they will begin immediately to install cargo area fire extinguishers rather than wait for a federal rule requiring them. That kind of attention is what makes the recent Continental Airlines discovery scary. Just who in the aviation business can claim ignorance of the ban or the dangers involved?

Continental promptly reported its discovery to the Federal Aviation Administration. The box of undeclared cargo had been inside a larger container shipped by an aircraft repair firm. An FAA spokesman said the agency “is taking this very seriously” and that civil and criminal penalties could result.

The nation’s air carriers need to police their shippers. Clearly the common-sense ban that followed the ValuJet crash isn’t enough.