Air Safety: Under a Cloud

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When Dawn O'Day, a New York homemaker, saw a TV report last week on commuter- airline safety, she got worried -- and then she got on the phone. Her daughter Misty, a junior at Elon College in North Carolina, was due to fly one leg of her trip back from school last Tuesday on a small commuter-airline turboprop. O'Day canceled those reservations and arranged for Misty to take a limousine from Greensboro to Raleigh and then catch a jet home. Says O'Day: "I told my husband, 'I don't want her on that plane.' " It was a nearly miraculous choice. American Eagle Flight 3379, the plane Misty had been booked , on, crashed last week in Morrisville, North Carolina, on its way from Greensboro to Raleigh, killing 15 of the 20 passengers aboard.

Airline safety is coming under increased scrutiny in the midst of the holiday travel season, the most awkward time for a crisis of confidence in air travel. A recent string of airline crashes and mishaps has compelled passengers, federal regulators and aviation experts to take a suddenly more skeptical look at an industry that had steadily been improving its safety record over the years. Statistically, air travel remains more than 100 times as safe as travel by car. But so far this year, more than 250 people have been killed in air crashes within the U.S.

A conspicuous number of crashes have involved commuter airlines, including the October wreck of an American Eagle ATR-72 in Indiana that killed all 68 people on board. One reason for the increased number of commuter crashes is simply growth in traffic. Regional airlines that tend to operate smaller, prop-driven planes carried 50 million passengers in 1993, up from 15 million in 1980.

After the crash of the American Eagle ATR-72, the Federal Aviation Administration barred ATR model planes from flying in icy weather. That forced the carrier to move other planes more suitable to cold conditions to northern cities. But late last week, American Eagle canceled all its flights at Chicago's busy O'Hare International Airport after a pilots' union complained that the replacement fleet's crews had not adequately been trained to fly during cold weather.

In one of the most severe setbacks for the commuter-airline industry, the International Airline Passengers Association warned members about flying in planes with 30 seats or fewer. Some airline experts said the association, which also sells insurance to passengers, was overreacting. Says Aaron Gellman, director of the Transportation Center at Northwestern University: "It's not against their financial interests to make people worried."