WASHINGTON – A former U.S. Department of Transportation official says a missing Malaysian Airlines plane was transporting lithium rechargeable batteries, which can trigger fires and explosions if improperly shipped.
Federal Aviation Administration tests have found that bulk shipments of these batteries are susceptible to fire and explosions that could destroy a plane. The study found that defective, damaged, overcharged or incorrectly packed batteries can cause violent fires. Those fires can trigger chain reaction among other batteries, which are frequently shipped by the pallet-load on passenger planes.
The missing plane has yet to be found and it is not known what may have brought down the plane as it traveled from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
“The FAA has to act or it will not change,” says Mary Schiavo, former inspector general for the Department of Transportation.
“Unfortunately, that’s they way the FAA works. They call it their cost benefit analysis and they have to weigh the number of lives that will be lost against the cost of the regulation,” Schiavo says
The Associated Press reports that the FAA is barred by law from approving safety standards that are tougher from those set by the U.N. International Civil Aviation Organization, which sets aviation standards adopted by countries around the world.
Currently the shipper determines whether the batteries have been packed properly. But there needs to be more oversight, she says.
“Foreign carriers, carriers that aren’t even subject to the United States federal aviation regulations, as was the case in Malaysia 370, literally can put, you know, almost unlimited numbers on there. There are supposed to be limits. But as we found on Malaysia 370 there were an awful lot of lithium batteries in that cargo hold.”
Passengers also don’t have the right to know what cargo is traveling below them when they board a plane, Schiavo says.
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