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Coming Soon: Airplane Air Bags

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WitteeFool
06/30/09

In reply to Coming Soon: Airplane Air Bags
The only thing they need to work on is getting better pilots. And that means higher pay. Sully went to Congress to talk about this problem-- why are we letting pilot quality decline?
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PandoraSpocks
06/30/09

@WitteeFool: Because it is better to lose an occasional plane than fix what needs fixing? Because the FAA and NTSB and DOT and whatever other acronyms are in charge of flying are not doing so great? All of that and 9/11 and well, all I know is airline travel has become a real pain and I avoid it whenever I can?
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badasscat
06/30/09

In reply to Coming Soon: Airplane Air Bags
Airplane seats have been improved dozens of times over the years, most recently with a complete redesign of the support structure within the last decade. Not sure how much better it's going to get with current technology. But it's not like anybody's been standing still on this. They say that changes in this industry are written in blood, and that's been true with seat design.

There is a point at which better seat design is not going to help you. When the airplane is crumbling all around you, or rather crumpling in front of you, a seat that can't hold itself to the floor is not your biggest problem. But yes, there have been survivable accidents in the past where the seats failed and killed people. That probably won't happen again. Better seats would not have saved anybody in AF447.

An airbag, well, that just sounds foolish.
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Robert Synnott
06/30/09

In reply to Coming Soon: Airplane Air Bags
It's probably impractical to expect seats which won't come loose at any stress that a crashing plane is expected to undergo. Making them stronger will add weight, thus reducing passenger capacity. Since the increases in strength would presumably have to be considerable (these things crash at considerable speed) it would likely make commercial passenger aviation economically impractical.

So not gonna happen.
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CaptainFantastic
06/30/09

@Robert Synnott: No sense making them stronger than the g-force that will cause the seat belt(s) to slice the human body into pieces.
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Mymoustache
06/30/09

In reply to Coming Soon: Airplane Air Bags
Why not just make the plane out of the same thing you make the black box? **crickets chirping** And airplane food....what's the deal with that?
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Dave J.
06/30/09

@Mymoustache: In former Soviet Union, plane crash dies in YOU!
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Scout 3.0
06/30/09

In reply to Coming Soon: Airplane Air Bags
How about sleeping pills that knock you out until after you've landed?
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MsMuffinMcGuffin
06/30/09

@Scout 3.0: My dog used to travel on the plane that way. I was always somewhat envious.
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BookishLookish
06/30/09

@Scout 3.0: A Dramamine and two airplane mini-vodkas works pretty well.
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Buenavista
06/30/09

In reply to Coming Soon: Airplane Air Bags
Like that red arrow is really necessary.
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Lizawithazee
06/30/09

@Buenavista: You Are Here. Here, formerly known as 14F.
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lobstr
06/30/09

In reply to Coming Soon: Airplane Air Bags
If I may, I will use this opportunity to yet again vent how the crash of AA flight 587 (NYC to Dominican Republic, crashed in a Queens neighborhood) about a month after 9/11/01 was duly swept under the rug and categorized as an accident due to it being IN THE WAKE of a JAL plane which was at least a mile ahead of it on the takeoff pattern.

If an airplane with all its might cannot withstand the wake of another plane's jetstream far ahead of it, then they need to ground every single airline. Every plane that takes off is behind another one not far in front of it. If we are really to just shut up and believe there was nothing more to that crash, then the NTSB really knows how to get everyone to STFU. Let the four letter acronyms fly!

I'm not a conspiracy theorist by any means, but there was something awfully fishy about that crash, and the general perception was "if it was ruled terrorism in any fashion, the entire flying public would bail on flying immediately" since we were so reassured a lot of lessons were learned (and security was unbelievably tight) after 9/11.
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Dave J.
06/30/09

@lobstr: You should find one of the available-on-YouTube NTSB re-enactments of what the pilot (or co-pilot's) rudder inputs did to the plane when it hit the wake vortex. Watch that, and it's not hard to imagine how the tail could essentially fall right off. And the CVR indicates that they hit some serious turbulence, the pilot says something like "holy shit, we're really into it" just as it hits. Yeah, the timing was pretty bad, but I really do think that one was an accident.
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Atilla the Bun
06/30/09

@lobstr: The plane did not just fall apart because of wake turbulence; as Dave J. pointed out, pilot error in handling the wake turbulence via the rudder is what likely caused the rudder to fail/fall off. That has never really made me feel any better, though. "Pilot error" always seems like a much more amorphous, uncontrollable thing than structural or mechanical issues with the aircraft itself. So yes, I'll take an airbag, please, or at least a large dose of Ambien before my next flight...
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badasscat
06/30/09

@Atilla the Bun: People are people, and they will always make mistakes. All you can do is try to minimize them. But even a fully automated system is not infallible because they, too, are designed by humans, and there have probably been just as many accidents that have been ascribed to software or hardware design over the past two decades as there have been to pilot error. At some point, you have to just have a little trust. It is better than getting in a car with another driver, because at least pilots go through intensive and continuous training, unlike most people on the roads.
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badasscat
06/30/09

@Dave J.: IIRC, it was actually the captain who said "shit, we're really into it", and he said it after the tail had snapped off. He was reacting to the fact that control had already been lost, not to the turbulence. His reaction to the turbulence was to try to calm the first officer down (the FO was flying), because he was clearly overreacting and, according to the accident report, was well known to other pilots for overreacting to turbulence. The captain only really got alarmed when it became clear that control was lost, though he did not understand why. (There's no gauge or warning light for "tail missing").
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lobstr
06/30/09

@badasscat: You gotta admit, a "Tail Missing" light would be kind of awesome. Not a lit one, of course :p But it's essentially the same as a "You're Fucked" light.

This may be one of those 9th party rumors, but I did hear more than once that two firemen on the ground watching the plane out of control said they saw flames while it was still in the air... Of course, there's so much jet fuel and electrical shit going on on an airplane, bursting into flames seems commonplace in a catastrophe -- the really strange thing to me, though, is that after that crash, there has not been another major one over the US since (unless you count Continental Express over Buffalo a few months ago).. you'd think planes all the time would be getting ripped apart from wake turbulence, even if the pilot freaks out on the rudder.. I'd expect the plane to slam into the ground as a result of that as opposed to it just ripping up in air..

Hard to believe in this day and age, a PILOT can fuck an entire plane up WHILE IN AIR just by fiddling with the controls..
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BookishLookish
06/30/09

In reply to Coming Soon: Airplane Air Bags
I posted this earlier: the "airbag" was the brave mother or father of the five-year-old who shielded the little one's body with his/her own, and that is why the child survived, no doubt.
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Dave J.
06/30/09

In reply to Coming Soon: Airplane Air Bags
Last night, a Yemenia Airways flight ditched in the Indian Ocean, killing 152

Minor quibble, but isn't "ditching" when you intentionally land the plane in the ocean/river/etc., a la "Sully" and the heroic Hudson landing? I think what the Yemenia Airways did is what we usually call "crashing." I don't think there was anything controlled about that one.
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MattGaymon
06/30/09

In reply to Coming Soon: Airplane Air Bags
What a lovely thing to read before I fly away on vacation. Tx.
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Phyllis Nefler
06/30/09

@MattGaymon: Pretty hair-raising, amirite?
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MattGaymon
06/30/09

@Phyllis Nefler: What he said
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SelbyNoser
06/30/09

In reply to Coming Soon: Airplane Air Bags
Oh. God.

I already need to be heavily medicated when I get on an airplane - any more of these stories and I'll just starting swimming everywhere.
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bboston88
06/30/09

@SelbyNoser: Word girl.

Let's talk about why Airbus can't seem to keep their planes in the sky when the wind starts getting above 10mph. Really? Planes aren't supposed to just CRASH when there's some bad weather. 2x in one month? Airbus is DONE in my book.
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ElleL
06/30/09

@bboston88 (star please?): I am flying to Vegas in less than a week, and sure enough it's an Airbus.

Aaaaand I'm officially freaking out.
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Crustaceans Rarely Get Past Me
06/30/09

@bboston88 (star please?): Yeah, give me a break. Boeing and Airbus are the two manufacturers providing planes for basically all commercial airlines. While Boeing has a larger number of aircraft in service currently (something like 3 to 1), you can hardly point to these two chance crashes as somehow being a reflection on the safety of the entire Airbus fleet.
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ElleL
06/30/09

@Crustaceans Rarely Get Past Me: After doing my paranoid research, you are correct. It's like saying Honda's kill everyone on the highway.

Feeling slightly better.
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TedSez
06/30/09

In reply to Coming Soon: Airplane Air Bags
Seats that squeeze you in place so you can't move?

I thought they just referred to that as "coach."
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Trulymadlyme
06/30/09

In reply to Coming Soon: Airplane Air Bags
What they need to invent is seats that eject and turn into parachutes.
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CaptainFantastic
06/30/09

@Trulymadlyme: Don't forget the sun roof in the design. That would be embarrassing.
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Mymoustache
06/30/09

In reply to Coming Soon: Airplane Air Bags
Let's focus on the important things - like why Southwest won't let you pay cash for booze anymore and the perfect way to execute membership in the mile high club.
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mfnher
06/30/09

@Mymoustache: I think they said people weren't helpful enough with change. I don't know why Southwest can't bring enough small bills on the plane so they don't have to pilfer the pockets of other passengers.
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