The profit drive by the airline companies was sharply highlighted November 12, when 265 people were killed after American Airlines Flight 587 crashed shortly after takeoff from JFK airport bound for Santo Domingo. Of the victims, more than 170 were Dominicans. Residents are demanding the federal government waive immigration rules to allow family members of the crash victims to travel between the United States and the Dominican Republic, a request that has so far fallen on deaf ears in Washington.

Safety problems with the A300 Airbus used by American on the route have been featured in the press since the crash. This includes jet engines whose blades crack and fly apart and the possibility that the vertical tail broke off the airplane during takeoff. The plane, nicknamed in the industry "The Regional Profit Machine," was used in what the airlines called the "fat runs" to the Caribbean, where people are herded like cattle onto jets filled to capacity.

The tail of the airplane is made of plastic, reinforced with carbon fibers. Claimed to be stronger than metal alone, the composite material also makes the plane lighter, allowing the companies to save on fuel costs. In an article posted in the AviationNow web site, Sean Broderick notes that although inspections of other Airbus 300 planes since the accident have turned up no problems in the tail fin, this particular plane originally had a faulty tail fin attachment piece that was repaired in the factory prior to being delivered to American in 1988.

In 1994, 47 people were injured when the same plane experienced severe turbulence in Puerto Rico. Possible damage to the tail fin, not caught in the follow-up visual inspection, is under consideration as a possible cause of the New York crash.

Prior to investigators focusing on the tail problem, information about a series of failures of the GE CF-6 engine that powered the plane came to light in the press. Five of the engines blew up in 2000, including two during takeoff from Newark, New Jersey, and São Paulo, Brazil. National Transportation Safety Board officials said the engine problems could result in a "catastrophic accident."

Washington used the disaster to put some kick into its security clampdown. Immediately after the plane went down authorities closed all bridges and tunnels into New York and shut down airports in the region.  
 
Monopoly service
American and TWA, now owned by American, have a monopoly on the New York–Santo Domingo route. "Flight attendants don't speak Spanish and TWA only allows you to bring one suitcase," said José Henriquez, a worker in the garment industry here. "But the prices are the real abuse." A Christmastime round-trip ticket on American listed at $893 this week. The same ticket to London cost $534 for a trip more than twice the distance.

Dominicans are requesting visas to come to the United States to retrieve the bodies of their family members. Immigration officials "are being very selective of the persons that want to come to identify family members," said Romelinda Grullón of the Centro de desarrollo de la mujer Dominicana [Center for the Development of Dominican Women]." They investigate the person's finances to make sure that they won't stay in the United States."

"They have to give the Dominican people the visas," José Henriquez said. "In the case of Elian González they gave visas to the family to come here and bring him home. This is the same situation."

A serious problem facing many family members in the United States is lack of legal residency. Working people are asking for an amnesty to enable them to travel to the Dominican Republic to bury their family members and then return to their homes here. While New York senators and a congressman met with Dominican community leaders and promised to lobby for amnesty, there appears to be no motion towards granting this.

In an opinion piece on the "Townhall" web site, Michelle Malkin railed against the proposal for amnesty. "This is truly a heartbreaking predicament," she wrote. "But these family members are illegal immigrants who chose to break the law." Beating the pro-war drum, she asked, "How can we crack down on terrorist-linked aliens with fake papers and expired visas if our elected leaders go running to the feds every time some other politically connected constituency demands special treatment and new immigration-law loopholes for their alien population?"

Since the accident, El Diario, a Spanish language daily in New York, has been filled with full-page ads offering condolences to the families from law firms offering their services in suing American Airlines. Many lawyers have set up offices in Santo Domingo to more easily solicit business.

A full report on the causes of the November 12 disaster will probably not come out for many months, as is the case with TWA Flight 800, which exploded off of Long Island, New York, in 1996.

Newsday reported August 8 that five years later "a task force made up of the aviation industry and government regulators will issue a draft report today concluding that it is too expensive to make aircraft fuel tanks less flammable, a move that could have prevented the TWA explosion that killed 230 people." The U.S. government insisted for months that the explosion of the plane involved a terrorist act, a claim that made front-page headlines. The actual conclusions of the investigation received little exposure in the press.

The government report estimates the cost to fix the tanks would be between $1.6 billion and $10 billion, compared with a $250 million price-tag on the cost of future fuel tank explosions. Newsday says the report concludes "that it is cheaper to allow the future explosion. The $250 million figure includes a set dollar amount assigned to the value of each human life lost."
 
 
Related article:
Waivers for Dominicans!  
 
 
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