Flying backward, flying safer

Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell

Medford airport manager Bern Case would prefer we all sit this way on passenger planes - backward. Case says studies have proved it to be far safer because seats would cushion passengers from the impact of a crash - many seats on military planes are backward. Case has waged a battle of words with airlines, Boeing and the federal government, but he's gotten nowhere. They either ignore the issue or say it would cost too much to make the change. The seats in this Air King corporate jet are arranged more for conversational convenience than safety.

It's simple, the Medford airport chief says. Airplane seats that face the tail save lives. So why isn't anyone listening?

By J.T. BUSHNELL

Bern Case felt his conscience bite when 156 people were killed in the crash of Northwest Flight 255 in 1987.

He was working at Tri-City International Airport at Saginaw, Mich., at the time. The plane flew from his airport to Detroit without problems.

When it took off from Detroit for Phoenix, Ariz., it couldn't stay airborne. It wavered and fell, slamming into the embankment of a freeway overpass.

Only a little girl survived.

Case's conscience told him half the passengers could have lived. And it told him to get to work.

Case, now the director of Rogue Valley International-Medford Airport, has an idea he's certain would save lives.

He sees examples of it everywhere. He sees it in military aircraft, in splash-down space capsules, in infant car seats.

Case wants the seats of commercial airlines to face backward.

He has pushed the idea but has run into brick walls in every direction - airlines, Boeing, the Federal Aviation Administration, NASA.

"This is a serious enough issue to merit some attention, but it's been ignored and ignored, and it's costing lives," Case says. "Not all crashes are survivable, but in survivable crashes, aft-facing seats will save lives."

The concept is simple, Case says. An airplane crash propels the body toward the front of the plane. In forward-facing seats, that means the passenger is propelled into a two-inch lap belt. This causes the body to jack-knife - the torso and limbs fly forward while the hips stay back.

In seats facing aft, or rearward, the passenger is propelled into the back of the seat, and the force is spread over the entire body. The seat would support the head, torso, hips and limbs and significantly reduce the potential for injury.

The same theory is accountable for rearward-facing infant car seats and the seats in splash-down space capsules.

"If we could put a bunch of mirrors on a car and drive backwards," Case says, "it would be safer."

Case came across the concept for the first time in the mid-1980s while flying military standby as a U.S. Coast Guard reservist. He noticed the passenger seats in a C-141 faced the rear of the aircraft. He later noticed the same alignment in the C-5, C-130 and other military aircraft.

The military was quick to point out that the configuration is safer.

But the concept had been around long before Case discovered it. The London Times reported that the United Kingdom's Royal Air Force adopted aft-facing seats as early as 1945 because they allowed passengers to withstand higher impacts. The Times also reported that a 1958 U.S. Air Force study concluded that forward-facing passengers were seven times more likely to suffer injuries than aft-facing passengers.

In a 1988 report about improved seat safety standards, the FAA "concurs that aft-facing seats could be designed to provide greater support (than forward-facing seats) for the upper torso during crash load conditions."

The Japanese Civil Aviation Bureau researched the safety of aft-facing seats exhaustively for five years and published the results in 1994. The report concludes that aft-facing seats provide "the most effective crash impact alleviation."

"If the seats and floor are designed properly, yeah, aft-facing is safer," said John Petrakis, a program manager in the Aircraft Certification Service, a division of the FAA. "It's been around for a long time."

So why, Case is asking, do seats on commercial airplanes still face forward?

Case learned of these studies after requesting information from 20 governmental organizations and 22 companies in 1997. He received more than 40 responses in 1998 and 1999 from a number of organizations, including five major airlines, Boeing, NASA and the FAA.

A number of the responses, however, indicated that no information on the topic was available, including the responses from all five airlines.

"It's absurd," Case says. "It's amazing to me that there's been numerous studies and that people can say it's never been studied."

There may be a difference, Case hints, in what they know and what they say they know.

Petrakis says people in the business know that aft-facing seats are safer.

"Everybody knows," he says. "People who care know. Everybody responsible for cabin safety knows (aft-facing) is a better way to travel."

Despite Case's efforts to raise the issue, most airlines still say they don't know anything about the issue.

Mark E. Abels, vice president of corporate communications at TWA, responded to Case's two-page letter personally in 1998, but now claims he has never heard that aft-facing seats might be safer.

"It's a question that's never been raised," he says.

Debby McElroy, president of Regional Airline Association, which represents most U.S. regional airlines, says the issue has never come up. Jack Evans, a spokesman for Alaska Airlines, says the same. Case sent letters to both the association and the airline.

Even Southwest Airlines, one of the only airlines to offer passenger seats facing backward, says it is not aware of any safety benefits associated with aft-facing seats.

In fact, Southwest is removing all aft-facing seats and replacing them with forward-facing seats, says Kristin Nelson, a spokeswoman for the airline.

Nelson says the FAA recently changed certification for aft-facing seats, requiring increased strength in the seatbacks and floor supports. Southwest determined the change would add about 600 pounds to each airplane, making them less fuel-efficient.

"This is strictly cost-saving," Nelson says, maintaining that the airline does not know rearward-facing seats to be safer.

Mary Jean Olson, engineering communication manager for Boeing, which installs seats according to the preferences of the airlines, said she does not believe aft-facing seats to be safer than those facing forward.

"Will there ever be a demand for aft-facing seats? No."

Case also received a number of responses that flatly rejected the idea. Most reasoning revolved around expense, passengers preferring to face forward and the possibility of debris striking aft-facing passengers in a crash.

Many responses, including those from the International Civil Aviation Organization and the Air Transport Association, say passengers prefer to face forward when flying. They further state that aft-facing seats may cause passengers discomfort or air sickness.

But Case points out that many corporate jets - the ones with interiors that looks more like a living room than an airplane - use aft-facing seats. He also says he has flown facing backward and that it took only a few minutes to adjust. After that, he felt no discomfort.

A study funded by Weber Aircraft Inc. found that the psychological aversion to facing rearward has been overcome in the military, the largest user of aft-facing seats.

The Japanese Civil Aviation Bureau found in its research that "about 73 percent of evaluators of the aft-facing seat expressed its comfort level as acceptable."

Another concern is that overhead bins may open as a plane crashes, turning travel items into projectiles in the cabin. John W. Purvis, chief engineer for air safety investigation at Boeing in 1998, said this would actually be more dangerous than facing forward.

Case counters by saying overhead bins could be strengthened. But he does not believe debris would pose as serious a threat as facing forward.

"Give me a shot at a flying handbag in the face, but let me be alive when it hits me," he says.

Petrakis agrees with Case.

"Projectiles are common, but don't seem to be that prevalent," he says. "Besides, if you face forward, they'll just hit you in the back of the head instead of the face."

To Case, these issues are peripheral. The underlying explanation, he suspects, is cost.

Petrakis says he's right.

Aft-facing seats require stronger - and consequently heavier - seatbacks and floor attachments. As Southwest discovered through a cost analysis, the increase in weight would not only hurt fuel efficiency but also would force airlines to reduce the number of seats on their planes.

That expense is a major reason the FAA has not seriously considered forcing the industry toward aft-facing seats, Petrakis says.

"Cost-effectiveness is something you can't get away from," he says. "The bottom line is that there is an administrative process that government agencies are stuck with. If there are a lot of negative comments, we would be hard-pressed to issue a rule."

That means the FAA must determine how much a change would cost the industry and weigh it against human life.

For the purpose of comparison, the FAA considers a human life to be worth $2.2 million.

Petrakis says plane crashes are too rare to make the benefit - saving lives - cost-effective.

Case knows change doesn't come easily.

"We live in an era when friction is avoided," Case says. "Any change is going to take a pound of flesh. The bureaucrats say, 'I don't want to put my career on the line for this.' If the airlines don't want it, do you think some bureaucrat is going to push it?

"I'm not an engineer, but darn it, there are engineers who believe in this. Nobody's pushing."

He remembers the resistance seat belts encountered when first introduced in cars, and he remembers the slow increase in acceptance. He sees aft-facing seats in the same light. Generations to come, he reasons, may not understand why seats ever faced forward.

He's not saying every plane should be gutted immediately. He thinks grandfathering in aft-facing seats would be more appropriate, like when the FAA required phases of noise reduction in the 1970s.

He'd like to see a project under way by the end of his career, which he says is about 10 years away. Until then, he will continue trying to draw attention to the issue.

"I could probably be called a zealot on this," he says. "And I may fail. There are a lot of people who won't push. I push.

"And I don't want to give the impression that air travel isn't safe. You're as safe in an aircraft as you are sitting in a church. But there is an occasional crash. And I want my conscience clear when it could be survivable and no one survives."

Reach reporter J.T. Bushnell at 776-4468

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