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Though he has climbed aboard small planes thousands of times, forestry worker Bob Pomponio always feared he was sitting on a flying gas tank that might one day cause trouble.

"Fire is the nature of the beast," Pomponio sighed matter-of-factly as he recalled the worst-case scenario that erupted around him last summer. "It's not a happy thought."

Last August, the Pacific Coastal Grumman Goose carrying Pomponio, 55, colleague Lorne Clowers and five others crashed and burst into flames about 10 minutes after takeoff from Port Hardy, B.C., a tiny community near the northern tip of Vancouver Island.

With his bare hands, Pomponio beat out the fire that threatened to consume Clowers before dragging his fellow traveller to safety. All five others aboard the plane died in the inferno.

"Adrenalin is an amazing body function," he said, thinking back. "I wouldn't be here without it."

What Pomponio didn't know at the time was that three years earlier, the Transportation Safety Board had released a study into the fires that follow plane crashes and made recommendations that could have prevented the one that nearly killed him.

The board, which investigates air, marine and rail accidents and makes recommendations for improved safety, does its job well, say survivors, the families of victims and a former judge who presided over the inquiry into one of Canada's worst-ever domestic plane crashes.

But the TSB's reports are too often ignored by Transport Canada, the federal department in charge of regulating those industries, those same people have told The Canadian Press.

They say they fear the department is too easily swayed by transportation companies reluctant to spend money to upgrade safety.

Instead, some recommendations sit gathering dust, and critics say lives are needlessly lost in the meantime.

Former Alberta judge Virgil Moshansky, who conducted an inquiry into an 1989 Air Ontario crash that killed 24 people in Dryden, Ont., agreed the aviation industry is a powerful lobby group.

"They exert extreme pressure on the government not to do anything to allow Transport (Canada) to regulate certain areas which would cost them money," Moshansky said. "It's always the bottom line."

The board's report on the cause of the fire on Pomponio's plane hasn't been released yet. But earlier investigations suggest lives could have been saved had the federal transportation department implemented fire safety rules governing planes the same way it has for automobiles and helicopters.

Fiery small-plane crashes have taken the lives of at least two dozen people in Canada since the safety board concluded four years ago that design improvements in new aircraft and retrofits in old aircraft could significantly increase the chance of surviving any fire that broke out after a crash.

It's not the first time Transport Canada has opted not to follow the safety board's advice.

In 1994, the board urged that float plane passengers be required to wear flotation devices on takeoff and landing. Since then, at least 45 people have died after their float planes crashed into the water.

It's impossible to say if some of them might have survived had they been wearing life jackets, but those left behind say they might at least have been given a better chance.

Brad McNulty, a spokesman for Transport Canada, acknowledged that recommendations to avoid post-crash fires have not been implemented. That's because "the issue does not pose an immediate threat to safety," he said.

Safety board data spanning a 25-year period shows that fires occur in about four per cent of crashes involving small aircraft, but account for 22 per cent of the deaths and 11 per cent of serious injuries.

"A fire resulting from otherwise survivable accidents puts the small-aircraft occupants at unnecessarily high risk of fire-related injury and fatality," the report said.

Kirsten Stevens said she's convinced that her husband Dave would be alive had Transport Canada acted on two major safety reviews and numerous TSB investigations into float plane crashes.

After her husband's death in a float plane crash in 2005, Stevens started reading the numerous reports recommending passengers wear life-jackets during takeoff and landing.

Dave Stevens was wearing the float jacket that his wife bought him when he managed to get out of the wreck. A coroner's report says he had a head injury and hypothermia, but concluded he died by drowning.

Five months after the accident, when the plane was pulled from the water near Quadra Island, between central Vancouver Island and the B.C. mainland, Kirsten realized the other four people on board also managed to get out of the plane, but weren't wearing float jackets.

"That was when I really came out of shock, because I suddenly realized that he hadn't been out there by himself."

Kirsten, whose children were aged 11, four and two months when their father died, said she believes if everyone on board had been wearing life-jackets, they might have been able to band together, call for help and keep each other alive.

"But with only one little red guy floating in the middle of the water, instead of a big plane of five people yelling all together," she said, "he just didn't get found."

"He was out there with his friends and must have watched them go down one by one and sink in the water," she continued, her voice cracking. "They must have been hanging on to him."

That crash, along with several other similar incidents involving float planes across Canada, has set off yet another review.

Like previous safety board reports, the latest review recommended life vests be worn during takeoff and landing, enhanced flight crew training on getting out of submerged planes, and guidance about the accessibility of exits and how to unlock doors.

Transport Canada has consistently rejected the recommendation that life vests be required.

Mark Clitsom, director of the TSB air investigation branch, said the board often does reports when there's a common theme, such as float plane crashes and post-crash fires.

The safety board is assessing the response from Transport Canada and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to the report about post-crash fires, he said. "Basically their response was, they don't think the problem is as big as we think it is."

Clitsom acknowledged the department has a larger mandate than the safety board. The TSB only has to think about safety, while Transport Canada must consider the practicality of enacting new rules industry-wide.

"Our job is a watchdog, to identify safety deficiencies and to make recommendations," he said. "That's what we do. We keep telling them and telling them and telling them." Change often takes time, he added.

Transport Canada, meanwhile, reviews and takes seriously every recommendation made by the board, said McNulty. "Some of the board's recommendations are not exclusive to Transport Canada's jurisdiction and require co-operative harmonization efforts with aviation authorities around the world."

That's part of the reason why the response to the safety board's report on the 1998 Swissair crash near Peggy's Cove, N.S., remained in the board's "unsatisfactory" file for years.

While the insulation that caused the in-flight fire on the plane was ordered removed from aircraft, the board felt there might be other, equally flammable insulation materials in play and wanted those removed too.

It took nearly a decade for the TSB to be satisfied.

Kirsten Stevens said she believes some in the air-taxi industry are resisting the need for changes, protesting the expense and arguing that forcing passengers to wear life-jackets could be unduly alarmist. The life-jacket recommendation would be "such a simple solution," she added.

Chris Day, a spokesman for Federal Transport Minister John Baird, said there are several reasons why the recommendations on life-jackets haven't been implemented.

"The use of a life-preserver on each flight could result in the occasional inadvertent inflation of a life-preserver within an aircraft, renderering it unserviceable," he said.

"Another reason cited was pilferage, (which) could leave ... the next passenger on the next flight without a life-preserver available."

Pomponio, who is still suffering the psychological and physical effects of the crash, said he wants planes to have better emergency locator transmitters that can survive fire and water.

He said had it not been for his own cellphone, which he used to send text messages to rescuers to guide them to the site of the crash, they might never have been found.

"My battery was dying. That day would have been my last hurrah," Pomponio said. "Things worked out well that day for me. But they didn't work out well for my friends."

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