A bad week in the air

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THE airline industry has endured a harrowing week. Last Wednesday, an accident at Madrid airport resulted in the death of 154 people. Sixty-five passengers died on Sunday when a Boeing 737 operated by Itek Air crashed after taking off from Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan. On Monday an Air Dolomiti plane at Munich airport caught fire (pictured), requiring some passengers to jump down to safety. And that evening a Ryanair flight from Bristol to Barcelona made an emergency landing at Limoges airport in France after it suffered a loss of cabin pressure. Sixteen passengers were hospitalised.

It’s standard procedure at such times to tell would-be flyers—especially those in the safer skies of North America and Europe—not to be alarmed, and to trot out statistics showing how safe flying is compared with, say, driving. But I would rather focus on one aspect of the way airlines manage mid-air crises, which was highlighted during the Ryanair incident.

A British explorer, Pen Hadow, was on the flight. He explained the passengers' experience of the depressurisation to the BBC, with cold air rushing into the cabin and oxygen masks dropping down from the ceiling. He said that when passengers put the masks on, they did not supply oxygen, a claim refuted by Michael O’Leary, the boss of Ryanair, who says they were working.

Malfunctioning oxygen masks would clearly be a big problem for which Ryanair would deserve serious censure. So we must take Mr O’Leary at his word until more details emerge. But Mr Hadow also commented on the lack of information given to passengers. No announcements of any sort were made until the plane had descended to 8,000 feet, which “added to people’s extreme fear”. Mr O’Leary confirmed the pilot's silence, saying safety regulations require crew members to put on their own masks immediately after a depressurisation—and this stops them from making announcements. It was only once the plane was at 8,000 feet that the pilot was able to remove his mask and tell passengers what was happening.

This does not say much for aircraft technology. Communication at such a time is a basic requirement to keep passengers from panicking. Is it beyond the wit of scientists (asks this non-scientist) to devise an oxygen mask for the captain of a plane that would allow him to speak over the intercom?

(Photo credit: Reuters)