Regulatory Actions Have Been Taken and Additional Advancements Are Under Way to Improve Cabin Occupants’ Safety and Health

Over the past several decades, FAA has taken a number of regulatory  actions designed to improve the safety and health of airline passengers and  flight attendants by (1) minimizing injuries from the impact of a crash, (2)  preventing fire or mitigating its effects, (3) improving the chances and  speed of evacuation, or (4) improving the safety and health of cabin  occupants. Specifically,  we identified 18 completed regulatory actions that FAA has taken since  1984. U.S. commercial airliners are required  to carry these enhanced emergency medical kits by 2004. For  example, some airlines have elected to use inflatable lap seat belts and exit  doors over the wings that swing out instead of requiring manual removal,  and others are using photo-luminescent floor lighting in lieu of or in  combination with traditional electrical lighting. The remaining 14 advancements are in various stages of research,  engineering, and development in the United States, Canada, or Europe. Several Factors Have Slowed the Implementation of Cabin Occupant Safety and Health Advancements

Several factors have slowed the implementation of airliner cabin occupant  safety and health advancements in the United States. When advancements  are available for commercial use but not yet implemented or installed, their  use may be slowed by the time it takes (1) for FAA to complete the rule- making process, which may be required for an advancement to be  approved for use but may take many years; (2) for U.S. and foreign aviation  authorities to resolve differences between their respective cabin occupant  safety and health requirements; and (3) for the airlines to adopt or install  advancements after FAA has approved their use, including the time  required to schedule an advancement’s installation to coincide with major  maintenance cycles and thereby minimize the costs associated with taking  an airplane out of service. As a result, FAA may not be identifying and funding the  most critical or cost-effective research projects. However, FAA’s  processes for setting research priorities and selecting projects for further  research are hampered by data limitations. In particular, FAA lacks certain  autopsy and survivor information from aircraft crashes that could help it  identify and target research to the most important causes of death and  injury in an airliner crash. This information would help the researchers analyze factors that might  have an impact on survival. To identify key advancements that are available or are being developed by  FAA and others to address safety and health issues faced by passengers and  flight attendants in large commercial airliner cabins, we consulted experts  (1) to help ensure that we had included the advancements holding the most  promise for improving safety and health; and (2) to help us structure an  evaluation of selected advancements (i.e., confirm that we had included the  critical benefits and drawbacks of the potential advancements) and  develop a descriptive analysis for them, where appropriate, including their  benefits, costs, technology readiness levels, and regulatory status. The Transportation Safety Board (TSB) of Canada is similar to NTSB in the  United States. fires. emergency. Status

Multisenor detectors are not currently available because additional  research is needed.
Why GAO Did This Study

Airline travel is one of the safest modes of public transportation in the United States. Furthermore, there are survivors in the majority of airliner crashes, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). Additionally, more passengers might have survived if they had been better protected from the impact of the crash, smoke, or fire or better able to evacuate the airliner. As requested, GAO addressed (1) the regulatory actions that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has taken and the technological and operational improvements, called advancements, that are available or are being developed to address common safety and health issues in large commercial airliner cabins and (2) the barriers, if any, that the United States faces in implementing such advancements.

What GAO Found

FAA has taken a number of regulatory actions over the past several decades to address safety and health issues faced by passengers and flight attendants in large commercial airliner cabins. GAO identified 18 completed actions, including those that require safer seats, cushions with better fire-blocking properties, better floor emergency lighting, and emergency medical kits. GAO also identified 28 advancements that show potential to further improve cabin safety and health. These advancements vary in their readiness for deployment. Fourteen are mature, currently available, and used in some airliners. Among these are inflatable lap seat belts, exit doors over the wings that swing out on hinges instead of requiring manual removal, and photoluminescent floor lighting. The other 14 advancements are in various stages of research, engineering, and development in the United States, Canada, or Europe. Several factors have slowed the implementation of airliner cabin safety and health advancements. For example, when advancements are ready for commercial use, factors that may hinder their implementation include the time it takes for (1) FAA to complete the rule-making process, (2) U.S. and foreign aviation authorities to resolve differences between their respective requirements, and (3) the airlines to adopt or install advancements after FAA has approved their use. When advancements are not ready for commercial use because they require further research, FAA's processes for setting research priorities and selecting research projects may not ensure that the limited federal funding for cabin safety and health research is allocated to the most critical and cost-effective projects. In particular, FAA does not obtain autopsy and survivor information from NTSB after it investigates a crash. This information could help FAA identify and target research to the primary causes of death and injury. In addition, FAA does not typically perform detailed analyses of the costs and effectiveness of potential cabin occupant safety and health advancements, which could help it identify and target research to the most cost-effective projects.