by Richard J. Newman; David Fischer; Andrea R. Wright; Peter Cary
"Once you're up there, you're theirs," says Bill Lairmore, describing the sense of resignation that comes with boarding a plane and trusting an unknown flight crew to get you where you're going. The Los Angeles-based sales engineer -- a veteran frequent flier -- doesn't feel entirely helpless, however. Last week, for instance, when booking a trip from Dayton, Ohio, to Chicago, he made a choice that he thinks increased his chances for an uneventful flight: He decided to fly a twin-jet Boeing 737 instead of an ATR-42 -- a smaller, 46-passenger version of the American Eagle turboprop that crashed in Roselawn, Ind., last Monday, killing all 64 passengers and four crew members aboard. The jet flight cost Lairmore about $100 extra -- but in the aftermath of the American Eagle catastrophe, he says, that's a fair price for an added measure of airborne safety assurance.
Virtually all travelers prefer the smooth hum of a jet flying at high altitude to the rattle of a turboprop bumping through the clouds. And the fate of Flight 4184 -- which crashed in a muddy soybean field en route from Indianapolis to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport -- undoubtedly will help steer many travelers away from nonjets altogether. The plane -- a modern, European-built Super ATR-72 that began service in March -- rolled over and plummeted from 9,000 feet, after holding around O'Hare for more than half an hour in windy, icy rain. Aerial photos of the crash site showed a trail of confettilike debris; the largest visible remnant of the plane was a 6-by-8-foot chunk of the tail. Not a single body was left intact. The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered pilots of the ATR-72 and the smaller ATR-42 not to use the autopilot during icy conditions, a combination that may have contributed to the crash.
Whether the accident was related to the plane's size or type may not be known for weeks. But the queasy feeling that hits some people flying turboprops and older piston-engine propeller aircraft isn't entirely unwarranted. Over the past five years, regional airlines like American Eagle -- which fly mostly turboprops with up to 75 seats -- have averaged 5.1 accidents per million departures. Commuter carriers, defined for federal purposes as those flying planes with 30 seats or fewer, have averaged 6.6 accidents. Big carriers, which fly planes with more than 30 seats -- most of them jets -- have averaged just 2.9 accidents per million departures.
No real choices. Yet travelers chilled by last week's crash nonetheless will often have no alternative to smaller commuter planes -- except a car, which statistically is about 20 times more dangerous. Since the airline industry was deregulated in 1978, about 250 U.S. cities once served by big carriers flying mostly jets now have only regional service, and most of that is on props, according to Morten Beyer, an aviation consultant based in Tysons Corner, Va. The service is generally provided by regional or commuter networks like American Eagle, Delta Connection, Northwest Airlink and the "express" airlines that link up with most of the other major carriers. Commuter aircraft are also being used more for 100-to-300-mile flights between medium-sized and large cities because they're often cheaper to operate. Between 1980 and 1993, the number of passengers flying on regional airlines -- carriers shuttling from small- and medium-sized communities to hub airports, using mostly turboprop aircraft -- increased by 256 percent. During the same period, the number of passengers on big carriers grew by 81 percent.
It's easy for passengers to conclude that the big airlines own and operate their smaller affiliates -- the names are echoed, as with United Airlines and United Express or USAir and USAir Express, and the paint schemes are the same. But most networks, in fact, are a patchwork of small, independent carriers that simply have partnership deals with the big airlines -- although airline reservations agents almost never point that out (and don't have to do so). The big carriers and their small partners "code- share," meaning that the big airline can use its own codes, or flight numbers, to book passengers on the smaller airline. Passengers who book USAir Flight 4126 from Cleveland to Pittsburgh, for example, fly on a 19-passenger Jetstream 31 turboprop operated by Jetstream International Airlines, doing business as USAir Express. Ten separate short-haul airlines operate flights within the USAir Express network. USAir owns three of them, including Jetstream; the others are independent. United Express flights are flown by six different airlines, all of them independent. American Eagle is the exception to this pattern of independence. All four airlines that make up the American Eagle network are owned by AMR Corp., American Airlines' parent.
Expecting to walk down a ramp onto a big plane and instead facing a turboprop across the tarmac is a common traveler's gripe. Passengers sometimes even have to leave luggage behind to keep the plane under the weight limit. Last month, Paul Stephen Dempsey, head of the transportation law department at the University of Denver, urged the Department of Transportation to require airline tickets and advertisements to name the airline providing service -- not just the name of the network -- and the aircraft type. In some cases that would let passengers choose between jets and turboprops. Of the 24 scheduled flights between Indianapolis and Chicago, for example, only six are on turboprops.
When passengers book directly with the airlines, however, agents often withhold the type of aircraft to keep passengers from booking elsewhere, says Harold Shenton, vice president of Avmark Inc., a consulting firm in Arlington, Va. Chris Chiames, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association of America, the big carriers' trade group, asserts that agents routinely disclose commuter connections and supply the aircraft type when asked. Private travel agents may not always know because commuter flights are listed under the big carriers' numbers. Four-digit flight numbers are often a clue.
The arm's length relationship between many regional airlines and their big partners suggests a double standard for safety that exists in fact. Every airline that operates planes with more than 30 seats has to abide by safety standards enforced by the Federal Aviation Administration. But the major carriers often exceed those standards, says Shenton. He notes, for example, that their pilots rarely fly the maximum limit of 100 hours per month. Some smaller carriers subject to the same standards, on the other hand, operate at the edge of the rules. They have more grueling schedules and less experienced pilots. According to some reports, they occasionally put off maintenance for as long as the law allows. And some say their hiring practices emphasize economics over safety.
Pay-your-way piloting. More than a dozen regional airlines, for instance, require would-be pilots to pay for their own training, which can cost up to about $9,000 (table, right). "That means Little Lord Fauntleroy can get a job as a pilot, while more skilled candidates may not have $9,000 for training," says Randy Babbitt, president of the 42,000-member Air Line Pilots Association, which represents pilots from most major carriers. The majors pay almost all the training costs of their own pilots -- but they farm out some of their commuter flights to regional airlines that don't. Of the 30 regional airlines that constitute the big carriers' commuter networks, at least 10 require pilots to pay for their own training. William Keil, a spokesman for the Regional Airline Association, the smaller carriers' trade group, defends the practice by likening pilots paying for their own training to people paying to go to college before they get a job and says it doesn't compromise safety.
Some pilots charge that short-haul airlines assign pilots to flights when they're unrested or fatigued. The ALPA's Babbitt says that most regional airlines
