MISSOURI COMMENTARY: CHEAP AIR FARES, OR AIRLINE SAFETY?

The ValuJet tragedy raises an old question. What is our top priority in commercial aviation: cheap fares or passenger safety?

From 1938 to 1978, it was safety first and price second. Since then, it's been reversed. In that era a federal regulatory agency called the Civil Aeronautics Board regulated both routes and air fares. The CAB believed that an industry characterized by steep barriers to entry and high quality control costs could provide safe service only under close governmental regulation. Ticket prices were set by the CAB so as to insure an adequate profit margin on any given route -- even to a less than proficient carrier. Competitive fares were out of the question. Price wars simply did not exist.

President Jimmy Carter, Sen. Ted Kennedy and Sen. Barry Goldwater joined forces in the late 1970s to deregulate the airlines. President Carter believed that the tight CAB regulations had a stifling effect on air service. Senator Kennedy wanted the cheaper fares for Joe Six Pack that he was confident would come from ending federal oversight. Senator Goldwater wanted to deregulate anything he could get his hands on.

Every airline in the country except United (the most efficient) opposed deregulation, preferring guaranteed profits under government control to the economic risks of competition.

At the time of the debate on airline deregulation, the argument was made that the race to the cheapest fares would force airlines to cut costs and that one cost certain to be cut was maintenance. But the enticement of lower prices overwhelmed the safety concerns -- concerns that proved to be correct when in the years from 1978 to 1984, airlines slashed their maintenance costs by 30 percent.

With the enactment of airline deregulation, the Department of Transportation (DOT) and its component, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), became the guarantors of low cost, safe air service. Airlines no longer would be required to fly with a huge margin of safety as in the past. Henceforth, strike the word "huge."

The DOT has positioned itself as the cheerleader for the airline industry just as the Department of Agriculture is the cheerleader for the American farmer and the Department of Labor is the cheerleader for the American worker. But when there is disturbing news, as with the crash of the ValuJet plane in the Everglades, the cheerleader finds it impossible to state that anything has gone wrong with the airline safety system in the United States. As advocates for the industry, the DOT and FAA feel constrained to say that "all is well" even when all is not well.

In the ValuJet tragedy, Secretary of Transportation Federico Pena rushed to the site to pronounce ValuJet safety than safe. He knew that some low-cost airlines, like Southwest, go to great lengths to maintain a superb safety record. He also well knew that ValuJet's safety/accident record was the second worst in the nation. He knew there were investigations within his agency that cast serious doubt on ValuJet's safety record. But a cheerleader can't deliver bad news. The longer Pena extolled the safety of ValuJet, the sillier he sounded.

There is an irresistible romance to owning an airline. It's akin to owning a professional sports team. For the ValuJets of the world, the way to start a low-cost airline today is to buy or lease a bunch of old planes and then contract out everything else including maintenance. When something goes wrong, the carrier can claim it was someone else' fault.

The FFA regularly publishes information on baggage handling, ranking airlines according to how expeditiously luggage are returned to its owner. Same for information on the "on-time arrival" performance of aircraft.

Secretary Pena ought to let facts and statistics, good or bad, speak for themselves. The nation's airline cheerleader should disseminate the truth. If it is important for the public to know how efficiently the baggage compartment is unloaded, why isn't it important for the public to know about the safety of the bodies in the passenger section?

Why not similar regular public reports on accident records? Why shouldn't the public know that if they fly ValuJet, they are flying the airline with the second worst accident record in the nation?

~Tom Eagleton of St. Louis is a former U.S. senator from Missouri.