FAA Weighs New Jet Fuel-Tank Rules

The Federal Aviation Administration will consider requiring all commercial airlines to pump inert gas into aircraft fuel tanks before takeoff to prevent explosions like the one that brought down Trans World Airlines Flight 800 in 1996. The FAA has examined the issue in the past but has rejected the idea as expensive and probably impractical. Now, however, rapidly advancing technology has not only made the process, called nitrogen “ground inerting,” practical but has also cut its previously estimated costs in half, Elizabeth Erickson, the FAA’s director of aircraft certification service, said.