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After Challenger, Feynman calculated the shuttle's reliability to be two 9s (ie. a 1 in 100 chance of failure), and he seems to have been about right.

The overall safety rate for commercial airliners is about six 9s (a crash every million flights), so space travel is a long way from that. Keep in mind that flying is safer than driving, crossing the street, etc.

Seemed to work great for Airbus. They built a flying chainsaw over 15 years ago.

Crossair Flight 498. Instrumentation failure exactly concurrent with the receiving of an SMS text message by someone on the plane. Perhaps it's just coincidence, but 10 lost their lives, possibly because some dipshit like you thought he or she knew too much about cell phones and planes to ignore a simple safety rule to shut the damn phone off.

How about a Complete Online Productivity Suite?

Not really. Any incident that involves an escape of the fuel from it's containment tanks, implies airframe failure. Airframe failures at subsonic speeds are normally catastrophic, but occaisionally surviveable . At hypersonic speeds there is no possibility of survival. If the airframe sustains enough damage to allow fuel to escape its tanks, the airflow may as well be a solid brick wall. There wont be much left but itsy bitsy pieces once the forces of mach 10 are thru with it.

Sure, aeroplanes have been doing it for years - changing public opinion is going to be difficult.

With good reason

Sure, aeroplanes have been doing it for years - changing public opinion is going to be difficult.

With good reason

Sure, aeroplanes have been doing it for years - changing public opinion is going to be difficult.

With good reason

While this wasn't actually a "successful" ditching attempt, IIRC, over half the passengers lived through it. The video link on the site doesn't actually lead to a video of the crash, but I can remember seeing the video on one of those "Real-People-In-Real-Pain" TV shows for which the Fox network is so famous. The Aircraft came to rest roughly 500 metres or so from the beach, and the water was relatively shallow. Several people on the beach waded out and helped the passengers to shore.

See also

Link to possible video

Re:The real question is - some further notes about the crash

The side of the plane looks like it says "Air France", the mpeg file is titled af320

See Re:Traditional Boeing vs. Airbus debate for more links.

Airbus Paris Crash

Rebuttal about Airbus Paris Crash

Thanks for the reference. I found a better one here. This was not because the hijackers intentionally crashed the aircraft but because the hijackers were fairly inept and unknowledgeable about fuel levels and the range of the aircraft they had taken. They thought the pilots were lying to them when they were told the plane didn't have enough gas to get to Austrailia.

Here. I actually meant that, in this incident, the Airbus got confused about it's altitude and crashed into the ground.

text of the com of UAL232 prior to landing in Sioux City, video

In Soviet Russia, Concordski lands on you!

Ahhhhh, the Concord. We'll never forget you!

If we design our aircraft so poorly as to not have any manual controls, then some re-evaluation needs to occur.

Exactly. The problem however, is when pilots (or air controllers) rely on instruments they believe to be accurate and have no way of knowing whether this is true. In some instrument landing system (ILS) landings, it is virtually impossible to land without the instruments or verify all the parameters. More often, this only makes it hard to recover from another mistake such as leaving air brakes on or verifying that the ground aid is working. Pilots have well defined procedures for preventing these mistakes and for recovering from them as well. Yet the danger of faith in an inaccurate instrument can lead the crew to feel nothing is wrong until it is too late.

If we design our aircraft so poorly as to not have any manual controls, then some re-evaluation needs to occur.

Exactly. The problem however, is when pilots (or air controllers) rely on instruments they believe to be accurate and have no way of knowing whether this is true. In some instrument landing system (ILS) landings, it is virtually impossible to land without the instruments or verify all the parameters. More often, this only makes it hard to recover from another mistake such as leaving air brakes on or verifying that the ground aid is working. Pilots have well defined procedures for preventing these mistakes and for recovering from them as well. Yet the danger of faith in an inaccurate instrument can lead the crew to feel nothing is wrong until it is too late.

The airplane will not put itself in a situation where it would stop flying.

An Air France A320 (a new design) was doing a low-altitude fly-by at an airshow when the aircraft descended into terrain.

The pilot, since convicted of manslaughter, claims the aircraft reported AGL (above ground level) altitude to be 100', while video shows the aircraft was closer to 30'. There is significant evidence to support this story, such as the apparent swapping of DFDRs and the issuing of Operational Engineering Bulletins to correct problems as explained by the captain of the aircraft.

The captain claims that the throttle by wire system would not respond to increased command, so he retracted them to idle, then advanced them to Takeoff/Go Around (full). The aircraft had crashed by that point, killing 3 aboard.

See this for more.

As for the TCAS system, while it is mandated by the FAA (at least in the US), some may argue that it doesn't work all that well. The pilots are told to follow the TCAS rather than ATC instructions. This has led to a few "interesting scenarios."

However, while ATC usually keeps the aircraft apart, in high traffic areas TCAS can be useful. Especially when Joe pilot in his little Cessna flying VFR wanders across your approach unbeknownest to the tower. Of course visual awareness on the crews part is important there as well.

Airlines, however, tend to be a little paranoid about electronic devices. Northwest is the best telling you that "we have been cleared to land so please turn off all of your electronic devices, blah, blah, blah." I'm not too sure about the experiences of others, but all the times I've flown into Greater Pittsburgh I have never been cleared to land at 12,000 feet when not even established on the approach. But hey, that's just me.

Kris

The final accident report found the Dutch Pilot entirely to blame. Ten seconds with google will find plenty of links, but if you are too lazy (grin), here's a short summary.

"Southwest has never suffered a crash, defined in airline parlance as a plane falling out of the sky, or a fatality since it began flying in June 1971." from a story about that accident.

It's a little more complicated then that. Here's the whole story of the crash and the following scandal: Investigation: Air France 296