By Susan LeBlanc / Staff Reporter

The fire aboard Swissair Flight 111 started in a compartment that didn't even have a smoke detector, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada said Monday.

That's just one of the industry safety failings the board criticized in releasing a third set of recommendations stemming from its investigation of the fatal Sept. 2, 1998, jet crash off Nova Scotia.

"The industry has fallen short," said Benoit Bouchard, safety board chairman.

When the pilots of the Geneva-bound MD-11 detected an odour and then smoke soon after leaving New York, they thought it came from the air conditioning unit and turned to standard troubleshooting checklists.

But such checklists take too long to go through and should be rewritten, said the safety board, adding Swissair has apparently revamped its checklists.

Any smoke or odour should be considered an emergency that may require landing immediately, the board recommended.

But the Swissair pilots obviously "had very little information to go on," chief investigator Vic Gerden said at a news conference held in an aircraft hangar at 12 Wing Shearwater.

Though flying over Queens County, the pilots considered heading for Boston after detecting smoke. They also issued a "Pan, Pan, Pan" warning, rather than the more serious "Mayday."

"There has tended to be some complacency in the aviation industry concerning smoke or odour events," Mr. Gerden said.

The board called for adoption of smoke and odour detectors in more areas of airplanes, plus better training and equipping of crews to fight inflight fires. A Swissair representative could not be reached, but a spokesman for Boeing said the recommendations provided a comprehensive approach to dealing with the issue of inflight fires.

"It's the best way to approach safety enhancements by looking across the board, so we think that's an effective approach," Russ Young said from Seattle.

Mr. Young said Boeing has already teamed up with Swissair to develop fire detection equipment, which they began testing days ago.

The five recommendations were released against the backdrop of a mockup of the plane's cockpit, reconstructed from some of the two million pieces of jet recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Investigators also displayed mangled and charred sections of fuselage, including pieces of the nose section's aluminum skin that had been squished accordian-style.

All 229 crew and passengers aboard Flight 111 died.

More than two years later, investigators do not know the cause of the fire but said it began in "the attic" above the dropped ceiling in the cockpit area.

The attic is not considered a "fire zone," so has no smoke or odour detection equipment, as the cargo compartment and lavatories do.

The area is difficult to access.

"These areas have been considered by the industry as being benign," Mr. Gerden said.

"It seems strange to us that in order to ensure public safety in a time of so rapid technological advancement, we rely so much on the human sense organs to detect (on-board) smoke or fire," Mr. Bouchard said.

Though the probe has cost $50 million to $60 million and is the most complex one ever undertaken worldwide, investigators may never know what started the fire, Mr. Bouchard admitted.

Much attention has focused, however, on the plane's wiring. Investigators have 21 wires that show signs of arcing, which is similar to a short circuit.

As the investigation shifts officially to Ottawa on Dec. 15, wire testing will continue. Investigators are also using custom 3-D imaging computer software to learn more about the fire.

"Overall, today's recommendations emphasize the need for a comprehensive, integrated approach to putting in place effective inflight firefighting procedures," Mr. Gerden said.

But he stopped short of saying that the 229 people aboard the jet would be alive today if such standards had been in place that night.

The recommendations emanating from the Swissair probe would cost the airline industry about $1 billion to implement on existing aircraft, Mr. Bouchard said, adding he hopes regulators and industry react favourably to these latest findings.

Yet some of the recommendations, such as taking a tougher attitude towards smoke and odour, would be easy to implement, Mr. Gerden said.

Mr. Bouchard said he would like to see a report released on the probe some time next year, but cannot guarantee it. A report has not been issued on the crash of a TWA flight off Long Island in 1996, Mr. Gerden said.

With The Canadian Press