All flight decompression events not reported
— -- Ten minutes after takeoff from Hartford, Conn., on a Delta Connection flight Sept. 9 to Detroit, Steven Smeltzer's ears popped, and flight attendants yelled at everyone in the Bombardier CRJ700 jet to put on an oxygen mask.
The business traveler from Traverse City, Mich., says he nervously held an oxygen mask to his face until the plane descended below 10,000 feet, and the flight crew said it was safe to remove it. Smeltzer says he doesn't know what happened to a passenger in the lavatory, where there was no emergency oxygen. Atlantic Southeast Airlines spokesman Jarek Beem says the plane had an air-conditioning problem and made an emergency landing in Albany, N.Y. No passengers required medical care.
Concerned about a terrorist using a chemical oxygen generator as a weapon, the Federal Aviation Administration this year ordered all airlines this year to remove emergency oxygen from aircraft lavatories. The National Transportation Safety Board cited such generators, which produce oxygen instantaneously, as the probable cause of a 1996 ValuJet Airlines crash that killed 110 in the Florida Everglades. The NTSB said they were being shipped in the cargo hold and probably self-ignited.
Consumer advocates say the order to remove chemical oxygen generators from lavatories may be a smart security decision but is a move that endangers the safety of passengers in another way. "Removing the oxygen from aircraft lavatories and not informing passengers puts the flying public at grave risk," says Kate Hanni, executive director of the consumer-advocacy group FlyersRights.org.
Hanni says the FAA should loudly spread the word to consumers and require airlines to inform passengers during pre-flight safety announcements that no emergency oxygen is inside bathrooms. "At 33,000 feet, a common altitude for commercial jets, you have between 30 and 60 seconds of useful consciousness to reach your seat and get your mask on," she says. "You may not have enough time to do that if you are in a bathroom."
In written responses to USA TODAY questions, the FAA says consumers were informed about the agency's actions in the Federal Register on March 8 and in a statement posted in the news section of the FAA website.
Unusual events
Rapid decompression events on commercial aircraft "are extremely rare," the FAA says. An FAA advisory committee researching high-altitude flights found there were 2,800 "instances" in a 40-year period in which supplemental oxygen was needed on commercial and general aviation flights. That's an average of 70 per year.
The advisory committee said that the majority of instances were caused by malfunctions of the cabin pressurization system, and no lives were lost due to lack of oxygen. There have been fatalities, however, after in-flight aircraft decompressions, including a case in 2005, when a Helios Airways Boeing 737 lost pressurization and crashed near Grammatiko, Greece. All 121 people aboard the plane were killed.
Investigators said the crash was caused by incapacitation of the flight crew due to hypoxia, which occurs when there is insufficient oxygen in the blood and body tissue. It can cause loss of consciousness and death.
A military jet caught up with the airliner before it crashed and saw a pilot slumped over the controls, and dangling passenger oxygen masks.
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