“…(T)he Canadian government concluded that entertainment system wiring may have caused or contributed to a fire that sent a Swissair jet into the ocean near Nova Scotia in 1998, killing all 229 aboard. The Canadian Transportation Safety Board said an entertainment system wire or another wire short-circuited, creating a fiery electric arc that ignited acoustic insulation blankets.

Despite intense scrutiny after the Swissair accident, in-flight entertainment systems continue to malfunction, and U.S. airlines are still being ordered to modify some systems.

A USA Today analysis found that since the Swissair accident, U.S. airlines have sent the Federal Aviation Administration 60 ‘service difficulty reports’ about in-flight entertainment systems, many involving fire, smoke or sparks. Airlines are required by the FAA to report within 72 hours each ‘failure, malfunction or defect’ that endangers an aircraft’s safe operation.

Pilots and flight attendants have voluntarily reported to another government database 20 incidents of entertainment system problems. It’s unknown how many of those incidents are also included in the service difficulty reports…

Manufacturers insist that the most sophisticated entertainment systems, as well as older ones, are safe and meet FAA standards. They blame the type installed on Swissair, which was banned a year after the crash, for giving everyone in the industry a bad name.

That system, built by a Phoenix company now out of the airline business, was put on to replace an existing system and pioneered interactive entertainment at each seat. But, as a USA TODAY investigation found in February, it was improperly designed, installed and certified by contractors without adequate FAA oversight. The General Accounting Office and the Transportation Department’s inspector general recently began investigating the matter.

Other systems, though, have had problems since the Swissair accident. Safety experts say the number of service difficulty reports about entertainment system problems endangering passenger safety during the past two years could far exceed the 60 received by the FAA.

“The 60 reports are probably just the tip of the iceberg,” says Alex Richman, whose company, AlgoPlus Consulting, analyzes FAA data for some aircraft operators. “More incidents probably go unreported than are reported.”” USA Today