By Stephen Thorne / The Canadian Press

Ottawa - The world's top aviation regulator has banned the use of an inflight entertainment system that may be implicated in last year's crash of Swissair Flight 111 off the Nova Scotia coast.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said the system, already disconnected on Swissair planes and not used anywhere else, is "not compatible with the design concept of the MD-11 airplane."

All 229 aboard the Swissair MD-11 were killed Sept. 2, 1998 after its captain reported cockpit smoke, then crashed off Peggys Cove.

Lack of immediate crew control over power to the system, built by U.S.-based Interactive Flight Technologies, "limits the flight crew's ability to respond to a smoke or fumes emergency," the FAA said in an airworthiness directive Wednesday.

The agency, whose dictums are usually followed industry-wide, said such emergencies demand removal of electrical power from all non-essential systems in the passenger cabin, including the inflight entertainment system.

"Although the electrical power for the system would eventually be removed as the flight crew proceeds down the checklist, the installation could be confusing and could possibly cause a delay in identifying the source of smoke or fumes."

Pulling the entertainment system's circuit breakers is the only way to cut electrical power to it, the FAA noted.

The system was installed under the authority of an FAA approval known as a Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) issued to Santa Barbara Aerospace, a former FAA-sanctioned representative that has since gone out of business.

The Swissair crash and a subsequent FAA investigation of its own procedures highlighted a major flaw in the approvals process, a source said.

"They have been doing a rather extensive review of their system of issuing STCs and they found a problem," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "They're in the process of doing something about it."

Canadian investigators found arced and burned wiring from both the inflight entertainment system and the jet's general electrical systems.

They are currently testing the wires to determine whether they burned from the outside in or inside out, which will indicate whether they were the source of the fire that brought down Flight 111.

Inspections based on information from the Canadian investigation showed damaged and poorly installed wires aboard at least a dozen other MD-11s and spawned several other airworthiness directives from the FAA.

The Swissair system offered high-paying passengers video on demand, as well as gambling and video games. At least two other airlines, Alitalia and Qantas, tested the system and deemed it unsuitable.