Tag Archives: Transportation risk

Sharp Increase in Air Crash Deaths in 2018

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The Aviation Safety Network (ASN) released its 2018 accident statistics, marking a notable uptick in fatalities from 2017.

ASN recorded a total of 15 fatal commercial airliner accidents (12 passenger and three cargo flights), resulting in 556 fatalities.

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 This is in stark contrast to 2017, which was the safest year in aviation history with 10 accidents and 44 lives lost.

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The worst civilian accident of the year involved a Lion Air Boeing 737 Max that crashed into the Java Sea on Oct. 29, 2018, which caused the deaths of 189 people. Lion Air recently ended its search for the cockpit voice recorder but Indonesian officials said the search could resume next week.
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ASN cited “loss of control” accidents as the top safety concern, as most are not survivable and caused at least 10 of the worst 25 accidents of the past five years.

Given the estimated worldwide air traffic of about 37.8 million flights, the accident rate is 1 in 2,520,000 flights. Despite the sharp increase in accidents, 2018 remains the third-safest year on record regarding the number of fatal accidents.

“If the accident rate had remained the same as ten years ago, there would have been 39 fatal accidents last year,” ASN CEO Harro Ranter said. “At the accident rate of the year 2000, there would have been even 64 fatal accidents. This shows the enormous progress in terms of safety in the past two decades.”

Other deadly accidents last year include the crash of another 737 in Cuba with 112 passengers and the crash of a turboprop ATR 72 in Iran’s Zagros mountains that killed all 66 people onboard.

Military flights are excluded from these findings.

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An April 11 accident involving an Algerian Air Force IL-76 transport plane that killed 257 is not included. When including military transport aircraft, the total number fatalities would be 917 in 25 fatal accidents.

Delta Places Age and Time Limits for Support Animal Travel

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Travelers might flock to, or flee Delta Airlines, depending on how they feel about emotional support and service animals. The company announced two risk management provisions as changes to its service and support animal policy with regard to the ages of the animals as well as flight durations:

  • Effective Dec. 18, 2018: Service and support animals under four months of age are not allowed on any flight due to rabies vaccination requirements. Additionally, emotional support animals are no longer allowed to be booked on flights longer than eight hours.  If you purchased your ticket prior to Dec. 18 and have requested to travel with an emotional support animal, it will be OK to travel as originally ticketed.
  • Effective Feb. 1, 2019:  For customers originating travel on or after Feb. 1, 2019, Emotional support animals will not be accepted on flights longer than eight hours after regardless of booking date.

These announcements follow the July notice that the airline would only allow one emotional support animal per customer and that it would no longer allow pit bulls.

The Los Angeles Times reported that passengers who had asked to bring a support animal on a long flight and bought their ticket before Dec. 18 will be allowed to fly with the animal until Feb. 1.

Delta’s policy says passengers who want to travel with support or service animals must comply with the U.

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S. Department of Agriculture rule that pets be at least 8 weeks old and fully weaned before they can fly. Whether other airlines and transportation companies follow Delta’s policy pattern remains to be seen.

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Service v. Support

In April, Risk Management magazine discussed the risks associated with assistance animals on flights and in businesses. While most people are more sympathetic to the need for a seeing-eye dog, the concept of emotional support animals, by contrast, is still relatively new and possibly dangerous.

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“This can cast reasonable doubt on claims about the need for an assistance animal, particularly with the ‘alternative’ animals like pigs, rabbits and ducks that have drawn notable media attention,” Risk Management reported.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) defines service animals as “any dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including a physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual, or other mental disability.”

Furthermore, “the work performed by a service animal must be directly related to the individual’s disability, such as guide or Seeing Eye dogs…”

Psychiatric service animals are not the same as emotional support or comfort animals, which are not considered service animals under the ADA. Delta also hosts a resource page that explains the difference between trained service animals and emotional support or psychiatric service animals:

On Delta flights, service and support animals are expected to be seated in the floor space below a passenger’s seat or seated in a passenger’s lap. Service and support animals and their associated items travel for free. The size of the animal must not exceed the “footprint” of the passenger’s seat.

LIRR Misses Critical Juncture for Positive Train Control

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Last week, the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) confirmed interruptions in its ability to fully install positive train control (PTC) across its system by the end of the year. Newsday reported that the LIRR system, which is a unit of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) network, failed 16 out of 52 factory tests performed in early March using a computerized simulation of the new technology.

Although its PTC contractor continues to investigate the cause of the failures, MTA officials said they believe it stems from the complexity and density of the LIRR, which is the busiest commuter railroad in the country averaging more than 311,000 daily riders.

PTC is designed to eliminate human error by using four components: GPS satellite data, onboard locomotive equipment, the dispatching office and wayside interface units. The system communicates with the train’s onboard computer, allowing it to audibly warn the engineer and display its safe braking distance based on its speed, length, width and weight, as well as the grade and curvature of the track, according to railroad operator Metrolink.

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If the engineer does not respond to the warning, the onboard computer will activate the brakes and safely stop the train.

An approved PTC System must protect against:

  • Passing a stop signal.
  • Train-to-train collision.
  • Overspeed on curves and other civil restrictions.
  • Unauthorized incursions by a train into a work zone.

The installation began in January as part of a $1 billion safety upgrade, although it had been on the LIRR’s strategic plans for years. So far, substandard testing results are not instilling much confidence that PTC will be complete by the federal deadline of Dec. 31, 2018. If that deadline is missed agencies without properly-installed PTC may face fines of up to $25,000 per day, as enforced by the U.S. Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008.

MTA Board member Neal Zuckerman told Newsday he is less concerned about meeting a federal deadline than he is about “having a system that works for riders.”

“It is better to have this right than fast,” Zuckerman said. “A nonfunctioning system is not worthwhile. It’s a waste of money and time and ultimately will not serve the needs of the riders.”

The LIRR is not the only major transit system to be missing the mark. Risk Management Monitor reported on Amtrak’s struggle to meet the deadline in February and that by the end of 2017, only 8% of NJ Transit’s locomotives and none of its tracks were updated with PTC.

Efforts to upgrade train technology has been a nationwide priority. There have been a number of accidents in recent years. The most recent was a major derailment occurring on Dec. 18, 2017 when an Amtrak train derailed near Tacoma, Washington, killing three passengers and injuring about 100. That crash was the result of excessive speed in a steep curve, which experts suggested could have been prevented with PTC’s automatic braking technology. Amtrak Train No. 501, on its inaugural run, was traveling 80 miles per hour in an area limited to 30 miles per hour when it derailed on an overpass, sending the train’s 12 coaches and one of its two engines careening onto the highway below.

As previously reported in Risk Management, a similar derailment in Philadelphia in May 2015 that killed eight, was also blamed on excessive speed and could have been avoided if PTC had been in place.

After Congress passed the PTC Enforcement and Implementation Act of 2015 it also authorized the FAST Act, which allocated $199 million in PTC grant funding and specifically prioritized PTC installation projects for Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing funding. The Association of American Railroads estimates that freight railroads will spend $10.6 billion implementing PTC, with additional hundreds of millions each year to maintain.

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 The American Public Transportation Association has estimated that the commuter and passenger railroads will need to spend nearly $3.6 billion on PTC.

When Nature’s Wrath Alters Your Business Travel Plans

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The recent devastation of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria pulverized Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico, displacing hundreds of thousands of residents and racking up billions of dollars in property loss. These massive storms, as well as others, also wreaked havoc on corporate travel, crippling a good portion of the business economy by preventing companies from getting employees to their destinations.

FlightAware’s cancellation tracker reached the 3,000 mark the Sunday that Hurricane Irma hit Florida as airports closed throughout the state.

But travel issues didn’t ease once the airports reopened, because there was still the issue of missing aircraft. According to reports, JetBlue didn’t have a single plane in the state of Florida and most other airlines cleared out their aircraft from vulnerable airports ahead of the storm. So, flights couldn’t resume until airlines flew aircraft back into the state. This meant that a large number of business travelers, in one of the most convention-friendly states in the U.S., were either stranded or unable to land.

This leaves us with the question: How do you keep stormzillas like these from throwing an oversize wrench into even the most carefully orchestrated travel management plans?

The simple answer: You can’t. But there are ways to minimize the collateral damage that the next big storm brings when planning business travel.

Travel Management Companies can help, as they monitor global weather conditions daily, so as to respond quickly when major disruptions to travel occur. These companies also receive automatic flight updates, enabling them to immediately rebook individuals onto different flights. Due to the fickle nature of hurricanes, which can force additional flights to also get cancelled, companies must investigate ground transportation options as well.

Here are four sanity-saving tips that might come in handy while traveling during hurricane season:

    1. Book flights wisely:

Choose an early morning flight. That way if your flight gets cancelled you have the entire rest of the day to find an alternative flight. And if possible, pick an airline with tons of flight options—the more the merrier when you positively have to get to a game-changing meeting.

  1. Must-Have Phone Apps:

Any app on your phone or tablet that displays a 7-Day Forecast (such as The Weather Channel) is a godsend and helpful when planning business trips. Don’t wait until a storm hits to start making alternate plans. Stay ahead of the weather system game and make your contingency plans as far ahead as possible.

  1. The domino effect:

Always remember that even though your flight lifts off in Chicago (where you are unlikely to get hit with a hurricane), chances are the weather is going to be much different when you land in Miami (where the possibility always looms). Be aware of the weather in all cities on your itinerary. Some airlines will even address customer service issues on their social media pages.

JetBlue and Delta are among those that used Twitter to help passengers during Hurricane Irma.

  1. Allow for extra time:

For business travelers trying to get somewhere in unpredictable weather, one of the best suggestions is to simply give yourself plenty of time to get where you are going. While it might cost a little more to book a flight the day before or put an extra night for a hotel room on your AMEX card, but weighed against the option of missing a meeting with a client, it is an investment well worth taking. And if you do find yourself stranded in an airport, turn it into your temporary office.

Inclement weather will always threaten business travel. But by being pro-active in how you handle the situation, you’ll find yourself handling all the adversity thrown your way, no matter which way the wind blows.