Re: Plane crashes and other accidents

Michael Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Thu, 16 Apr 1998 19:51:41 -0400


Anders Sandberg wrote:

> Doesn't most airplane accidents occur during start and landing (not to
> mention while on the ground)? In that case, parachutes would not be
> very useful during the accidents.

That most happen during takeoffs in bad weather, and during approaches
(which indicates nothing, as a plane with a major failure that can try to
make it back to an airfield is said to crash on landing, even though the
root cause may have happened a while back) is true, in which case, some
sore of personal attenuation device, like a full body airbag, would
probably work much better. Of course, you'd need ejection seats for
everyone to get them away from the plane quickly...

Increasing air travel safety is best focused on a few areas:

a) aircraft system reliability (already VERY HIGH, and not likely to
improved much on.)
b) education, training, and experience of pilots (something which is sorely
lacking in many foreign pilots, whose major cause of crashes involves poor
English skills, which is the internation language of air traffic control).
With cheap computer simulations, the requirements for simulator time for
commercial pilots should be much higher than it is.
c) reducing the flammability of aircraft interior materials
d) reducing the vaporization of fuel in the event of a crash
e) increasing the amount of, the maintenance of, and the accuracy of
takeoff and landing navigation systems
f) building into passenger seats some sort of automatically deploying
environment suit, possibly with attenuation capability, which will protect
the passenger against smoke, ignition of vaporized fuel, and minor high
speed airborn objects.

--
TANSTAAFL!!!
   Michael Lorrey
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mailto:retroman@together.net Inventor of the Lorrey Drive
MikeySoft: Graphic Design/Animation/Publishing/Engineering
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