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Airlines meet fire equipment installation deadline.
A 1998 rule to retrofit aircraft within three years resulted from the investigation of the 1996 ValuJet fire and crash in Florida's Everglades that killed 110 people. Investigators blamed the crash on a cargo hold fire. Another 264 planes will stay in maintenance until the work is completed. Sixty-five planes were either grounded because carriers decided not to fly them for financial reasons or could not meet the deadline. Most wide-body passenger airplanes already had fire detection and suppression systems in their cargo compartments when the rule was imposed.