Lyn Romano Pledges Her Compensation to IASA

Swissair widow pledges
settlement to air safety The Murphy Philosophy: Smile . . . tomorrow will be worse.

Last updated: Tuesday 23 February 1999
WORLD NEWS

STEPHEN THORNE

GOLDENS BRIDGE, N.Y. (CP) - A woman whose husband was killed in last fall’s Swissair crash off Nova Scotia says she’ll donate any settlement from her lawsuit to advance aviation safety.

Lyn Romano says she wants to prevent more accidents like the one that killed her husband Ray, an account executive and father of three who died when Swissair Flight 111 plummetted into the Atlantic near Peggy’s Cove.

"They’re going to try to pay me off for my husband’s life," Romano said Monday during the first-ever meeting of an international aviation safety group she formed.

"It’s blood money; I can’t touch it.

"The beauty is that with what they give me I get to go after them and everybody else to do what they should have done in the first place."

The small group of aviation experts and safety advocates hope to alter the course of commercial aviation and the practices of its top regulator, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.

But changing policies and practices established over 80 years won’t be easy, say participants in Monday’s session, held at Romano’s rural home about 50 minutes north of Manhattan.

Romano, who is scheduled to meet crash investigators in Halifax Tuesday, is suing Swissair, its maintenance company SR Technics and Boeing for a total $175 million on a variety of counts, including negligence, breach of warranty and punitive damages.

The determined woman, who was always terrified of flying and begged her husband not to take the Sept. 2 flight to Geneva, says she’ll pressure the industry until she’s satisfied safety is ahead of profits.

It is a daunting task.

"We’re up against a very deep-rooted problem that goes back probably decades," said John King of Tewksbury, Mass., an FAA-licensed mechanic and safety advocate. "There are others who have tried to blow the whistle on these safety issues and have been very unsuccessful."

The problem?

The system just doesn’t work, say group members, including Edward Block, a Pennsylvania-based consultant and member of several FAA wiring committees.

It’s an incestuous industry where overseers do not represent the best interests of the people who pay their salaries, said Block.

"The interests of the flying public have no representation. Everybody’s represented except the passengers."

Added King: "It’s almost like a club. In the industry, everybody knows everybody. You can move from the regulator to the regulated and nobody seems interested in anything that costs money."

The as-yet unnamed group met all day, exchanging stories, strategies, ideas and advice. Topics ranged from post-crash procedures to the FAA’s need for an office of wire and cable technology.

One participant even ignited a piece of Kapton-insulated wire, similar to wiring in the plane, to demonstrate its flammability.

"The industry is out there making choices and we have to live or die with those choices," said Block. "They’re based more on personality and politics than technical merit."

Block has campaigned for stricter controls on wiring selection since he was a military wiring specialist in the 1970s. He likened control of aircraft electronics to a food-and-drug regulator turning a blind eye to new drugs.

Other concerns raised at Monday’s meeting:

- Ineffectiveness of FAA testing procedures and safety orders to airlines.

- The need for a third man in the cockpit. Pilots say two is enough until something goes wrong, then they can easily be overwhelmed by events.

- The need for better smoke-protection systems. Pilots can be blinded and overcome by toxic chemicals with existing oxygen masks. Swissair was to buy a new system in 1993 but thought it was too expensive.

- Cockpit checklists consume valuable time during emergencies, can cause engine flame-outs and ignore the dangers of repowering damaged wires.

On Friday, the FAA announced that because of a $250-million budget shortfall it would not hire more inspectors specializing in aircraft wiring.

For Romano, it’s just more of the same.

"My husband’s not here because the FAA didn’t do their job, Swissair didn’t do their job, a whole bunch of people didn’t do their jobs," she said.

"And they’re still make-believing they’re doing their jobs."

Safety first, Flight 111 widow vows
Lyn Romano examines a piece of Kapton insulated wire from the Florida Everglades Value Jet crash during the startup meeting of her aviation safety group Monday at her home.
By Stephen Thorne / The Canadian Press Goldens Bridge, N.Y. - The widow of a Swissair crash victim has formed an international aviation safety group - with a little help from a ring on her finger. Lyn Romano's husband Ray died in seat 9F when Flight 111 went down off Nova Scotia last Sept. 2. She's vowed to pressure airlines and regulators until she's satisfied they've put safety ahead of profits. Romano, 44, has rounded up experts and crash families from all over the world. Today, they meet for the first time at her home. "If the Federal Aviation Authority was doing what I thought my tax dollars were paying them to do, that plane would not have crashed," says Romano, who phoned authorities every day for seven weeks looking for her husband's wedding band. It was engraved with the words Love Lyn and their wedding date, 10-3-81. Officials told her they'd never find the tiny ring among the carnage 70 metres below the ocean surface off Peggys Cove. But one day she got a call. The ring had surfaced, still on Ray's hand, buried in a tangle of wires and wreckage heaved on the deck of the U.S. navy salvage ship Grapple. "I put that ring on my husband's hand and even that . . . plane crash with all of the horror and all of the body parts ... couldn't take that ring off." It took a lot of persuasion to get the ring back. Some authorities, including Nova Scotia's chief medical examiner, wanted to keep it because it was technically still part of the investigation. Now, on her darkest days, when the pain and the frustration seem too much to bear, Romano looks at the gold ring she wears next to her own wedding band and resolves to carry on. She doesn't blame pilot Urs Zimmermann, whom some have criticized for delaying an emergency landing at Halifax after detecting cockpit smoke. "That guy didn't want to go down that night, I don't care what any voice recorder says." But she does blame the industry, which has known for years about problems with some wiring insulations, the dangers inherent to some cockpit checklist procedures and the inadequacy of its own safety standards. "It's politics and it's money. That's what it comes down to. How many people have to go before these people open their goddamn eyes? Romano was always terrified of flying. Her husband of nearly 18 years loved aircraft. As a partner in KPMG Peat Marwick, he flew all the time. She often begged him not to go. On Sept. 2, it was no different. At 11 o'clock that night, she turned on the television to watch the 11 o'clock news. "I'm watching this and I saw Swissair but it didn't even dawn on me. Then I thought: 'Hold on ... Swissair.' " Like she always did, she had her husband's travel itinerary in her pocketbook with his flight number, his seat number, his departure and arrival times, and his hotel phone. It was a while before she dared open it. "I was kneeling in front of the TV in my bedroom and I was reading it," she recalled, her voice wavering. "Everything they were saying was matching this itinerary." It was more than an hour before shock set in and she started to shake. She began dialing 800 numbers posted on the TV screen. Finally she got through and read the itinerary to a faceless person at the other end. She was told the information could not be released. The more they talked, the more frustrated she became. Then the clincher: "Do you have family nearby?" She didn't receive confirmation her husband was on the plane until 4:30 a.m., and it was nearly 8 a.m. before it was confirmed he was dead. "They know who's on those planes - they have the boarding passes," Romano says now. "These things have to be changed. "This is just pure torture what they did. Because all they're doing is running around their offices saying: 'What do we do now?' " All 229 aboard Swissair Flight 111 were killed. The three Romano children were now fatherless. Three weeks later, Lyn Romano landed at Shearwater, a Nova Scotia military base, where investigators and pathology teams had set up camp. She was taken inside a trailer where she walked past row upon row of personal effects - baby shoes, stuffed toys, luggage. Finally she confronted the carry-on bag she had packed, like she always did, for her husband. "I packed him a journal of accountancy, a car magazine because he was in the process of restoring a 1968 GTO convertible - he loved cars - and a Forbes. It was all there. "The bag was shredded but the magazines, his business cards, his passport, a yellow legal pad with his handwriting that I could read, that was all there." As she watched the shredded pieces of the huge MD-11 jet arrive outside - none bigger than a table top, many smaller than a breadbox - she came to understand. Her resolve began to harden. "It wasn't supposed to happen this way," she said. "He was supposed to have a heart attack. All the men in his family died before the age of 55. "That I could have accepted." Weeks later, she brought her husband's remains home on a private jet, packed in dry ice. He was buried Jan. 11 - symbolically, 1-11-99. "When I buried my husband, I said: 'Ray, I'm going to get them all.' I didn't leave prayers. Nobody else can die this way. Nobody else."

BURNING PASSION

On 2nd September last year, New York mother-of-three Lyn Romano was devastated when she lost her husband in the Swissair MD11 air crash.

Unable at first to accept that such a thing could have happened to her, she eventually succumbed to the truth. But how and why had her husband died?

Initial reports suggested an on-board fire and as Lyn probed deeper, with a determination that may well cost the worlds airlines in excess of $25 billion, her devastation turned to anger.

Lyn wanted to know more about that fire. Polite enquiries proved fruitless- neither investigators nor authorities could - or would - help. So she branched out on her own, using the greatest research base in the world , the Internet. On the website of a newspaper based close to the crash area she found a report that wiring called Kapton was thought to have caused the fatal fire. Surfing the net for references to Kapton has brought her a vast array of reports and concerns. It has also put her in touch with experts and interested parties who will attest to a sorry tale of inaction and cover-up.

Among other things she has found: -

That the dangers of Kapton were known about as long ago as 1977 and increase with age as the Kapton gets ever more brittle That the FAA themselves wrote internal reports on these dangers in 1985 and 1993 - but took no action That all US Navy aircraft were stripped of Kapton because they were losing so many jets due to Kapton fires That Boeing instructed their wiring engineers to tell nobody of the devastating tests carried out in the late 1980's That British air accident investigators, in a secret internal memo, questioned why Kapton was ever allowed in an aircraft That Kapton wiring is suspected of causing the last 3 air disasters in North America, with the loss of over 600 lives That the MD11 is the 3rd aircraft lost by Swissair due to Kapton To Lyn her husband simply shouldn't have died and she's determined that nobody else should suffer as she has. She is lobbying to see Kapton wiring replaced in all commercial aircraft. This would quite simply be the biggest modification in aviation history, affecting 7000 of the worlds 12000 aircraft. And, at $3 million plus per aircraft, it would also be the most expensive. The decision rests with the FAA. Already the Agency has recommended its replacement but it would take a mandatory order to make the airlines spend the money. The FAA have promised a decision on that in two months and with the evidence amassed by this passionate, feisty, totally committed, half Italian New York mother, I wouldn't bet against it.

HOW SAFE?

The aviation industry has always
said commercial aircraft are the
safest way to travel.

But Alex Richman of Halifax,
publisher of Aviation Quantitative Reports on Safety, says airlines base that on distance travelled.

Aircraft travel billions of
kilometres annually, far more than vehicles. A more accurate
measure, Richman says, is
departures. On that count, the
aviation industry does not look so good.

Some facts:

- 72.4 per cent of air crashes
occur on takeoff or landing, or
within about six per cent of flying time.

- Takeoff and ascent to altitude
constitutes two per cent of flight
time.

- Descent and landing constitutes
four per cent of flight time.

- 14 per cent of accidents occur
on takeoff; 9.7 per cent on
ascent.

- 22.9 per cent of crashes occur
on descent; 21.7 per cent on landing.

Saturday, March 6, 1999

Safety group formed

OTTAWA - A worldwide air safety group founded by a
woman whose husband was killed on Swissair Flight 111 was
named and registered on her birthday this week.

Papers forming the International Aviation Safety Association, or
IASA, were submitted to the secretary of state in Delaware on
Thursday, the 45th birthday of Lyn Romano, whose husband
Ray died last Sept. 2 off Nova Scotia.

"I couldn't celebrate my birthday this year," Romano said from
her home in Goldens Bridge, N.Y. "There was no reason to
celebrate my birth.

"What I could celebrate is the legal birth of this organization. Its
establishment gives me hope that not only my husband's death
but those of so many others will come to have a purpose."

Romano has pledged to her organization whatever award or
settlement is reached in her $175-million lawsuit against
Swissair, its maintenance company SR Technics, and the
MD-11 jet's manufacturer, Boeing.

Among other things, her lawyers are claiming negligence by the
airline and the maker, alleging the plane's inflight entertainment
system was improperly installed and its general wiring was
inherently faulty.

Friday, March 5, 1999

Air safety group incorporated

Swissair crash costs Canada $62.7 million

By STEPHEN THORNE -- The Canadian Press

OTTAWA (CP) -- A worldwide air safety group founded by a woman whose husband was killed on Swissair Flight 111 was named and registered on her birthday this week.

Papers forming the International Aviation Safety Association, or IASA, were submitted to the secretary of state in Delaware on Thursday, the 45th birthday of Lyn Romano, whose husband Ray died last Sept. 2 off Nova Scotia.

"I couldn't celebrate my birthday this year," Romano said from her home in Goldens Bridge, N.Y. "There was no reason to celebrate my birth.

"What I could celebrate is the legal birth of this organization. Its establishment gives me hope that not only my husband's death but those of so many others will come to have a purpose."

Romano has pledged to her organization whatever award or settlement is reached in her $175-million lawsuit against Swissair, its maintenance company SR Technics, and the MD-11 jet's manufacturer, Boeing.

Among other things, her lawyers are claiming negligence by the airline and the maker, alleging the plane's inflight entertainment system was improperly installed and its general wiring was inherently faulty.

Romano's non-profit group already has representation in Canada, the United States and Europe.

"We want to emphasize the necessity of safety in civil aircraft in view of specific problems we have encountered," businessman Adam Smythe, the group's European co-ordinator, said from outside Rotterdam.

"We want to emphasize the technical issues which are, in fact, the root of the problem."

The group is assembling experts and insiders on issues such as aircraft wiring, industry regulation, even post-crash procedures -- a special project of Romano, who waited all night Sept. 2-3 for news of her husband's fate.

Documents of incorporation show the group will provide grants to
organizations "to enable them to do aviation safety research and teaching, and to disseminate their findings to the public quickly for free and without discrimination."

It will also try to influence public policy and provide related information "to create public awareness about the resources and limitations of programs and services in the field of aviation safety."

Participants at the association's first meeting in Romano's home last month complained of an incestuous industry where neither the regulator nor the regulated represent the best interests of the people they serve.

Changing such long-engendered policies and practices represents the organization's biggest challenge, but Smythe says IASA has an advantage.

"We don't suffer from the financial problems so many other organizations have," he said. "They have to, depending on the nations involved, pay a lot of attention and time to arranging sponsors.

"We can concentrate on the specific issues. And we have technical expertise available."

Smythe warned the industry it shouldn't underestimate Romano's ability to get what she wants. Already the passionate woman -- a self-described loudmouth -- has rallied varying degrees of support in half a dozen countries.

"The drive she has is enormous. She has the potential to do it."