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Safest Seat on a Plane, Or How to Survive a Crash

Ant writes "Popular Mechanics shares a short article on an exclusive look at 36 years' worth of National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reports and seating charts to determine the best way to live through a disaster in the sky. Move to the back of the Airbus."

454 comments

  1. It's safer in the back and... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    you're by the bathrooms and you can watch any hottie walk back to her seat.

    1. Re:It's safer in the back and... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      and ... it often smells like shit back there.

    2. Re:It's safer in the back and... by I'll+Provide+The+War · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Have you been to America lately? The only thing you would be watching here is a BBW walking sideways just to fit down the aisle.

      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2007/07/19/wfat119.xml

      This is absurd to concern oneself with anyway since the death rate for commercial air travel is around 0.14 per billion miles. The death rate for automobile travel is 11,350% higher.

      http://www.dallasfed.org/fed/annual/2001/ar01f.htm l

    3. Re:It's safer in the back and... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, but chances are that the hottie isn't even going to take a second look at you while your "...all back-of-the-bus and shit". ("Chronicles of Riddock")

    4. Re:It's safer in the back and... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wouldn't it be better to see them coming *from* their seat so you can offer to join them ( and the mile high club)? ;)

    5. Re:It's safer in the back and... by ruiner13 · · Score: 4, Funny

      you're by the bathrooms and you can watch any hottie walk back to her seat. Yeah, and you can also smell the ripe dookie she just dropped in the can as she saunters on down the aisle.
      --

      today is spelling optional day.

    6. Re:It's safer in the back and... by kharchenko · · Score: 5, Funny

      here's an obligatory feedback on the seat you're suggesting :)

    7. Re:It's safer in the back and... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      mmmmmm... cookie..

    8. Re:It's safer in the back and... by Climate+Shill · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is absurd to concern oneself with anyway since the death rate for commercial air travel is around 0.14 per billion miles. The death rate for automobile travel is 11,350% higher.

      If I die, the fact that I've travelled a large distance in the process will hardly be much of a consolation.

      Replacing deaths/mile by deaths/hour gives figures far less different.

    9. Re:It's safer in the back and... by HungSoLow · · Score: 1

      That's HAWT.

    10. Re:It's safer in the back and... by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 4, Funny

      During the crash you will be covered with turds and blue water before being incinerated with jet fuel. Which is about as dignified as the rest of air travel these days.

    11. Re:It's safer in the back and... by Dun+Malg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Replacing deaths/mile by deaths/hour gives figures far less different.

      .87 deaths per billion passenger-miles for airplane vs 11.7 for automobile. Still more than an order of magnitude greater, and people normally cover far more miles by car than by air in their lives.

      But even at that, statistics are largely irrelevant on an individual scale. Statistically, you can say that every time someone flies on a plane, they lose 15 minutes off their life. This is, however, only true in the aggregate, as the loss is not spread across all passengers, but rather concentrated in those rare instances when 150 people lose an average of 30-odd years each all at once because they died in a plane crash.
      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
    12. Re:It's safer in the back and... by kahrytan · · Score: 1


      And you can be first person to smell the shit streaming out of the bathroom. And have the bottom of your shoes with it. And whatever bags under your seat wet with it.

      --
      \
    13. Re:It's safer in the back and... by aliquis · · Score: 1

      ... tigther to!*

      * For pregnancies that is, not HIV or whatever I guess.

    14. Re:It's safer in the back and... by Jackie_Chan_Fan · · Score: 0

      Is it wrong to jerk off after the crash? :)

    15. Re:It's safer in the back and... by RzUpAnmsCwrds · · Score: 1

      If I die, the fact that I've travelled a large distance in the process will hardly be much of a consolation.

      Replacing deaths/mile by deaths/hour gives figures far less different


      Yeah, it gives a figure that's more misleading because YOU SPEND LESS TIME IN THE AIR.
    16. Re:It's safer in the back and... by hahiss · · Score: 3, Funny

      This is absurd to concern oneself with anyway since the death rate for commercial air travel is around 0.14 per billion miles. The death rate for automobile travel is 11,350% higher. Well, duh, that's why I drive sitting in the back seat of my car.
      --
      "Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." - H.L. Mencken
    17. Re:It's safer in the back and... by Climate+Shill · · Score: 2, Funny

      it gives a figure that's more misleading because YOU SPEND LESS TIME IN THE AIR.

      Where did you get the idea that I spend more time in cars than in the air ?

    18. Re:It's safer in the back and... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And you are forgetting that if you land upon India they will think you were caste out of Heaven by Shiva because anyone with Blue skin is dignified and for a blue-skinned creature to fall from the sky and die would mean you are an alien hybrid god. Would they kill you or would they nurse you back to health as they would an albino cow? ...so...many...complications...on landing site!

    19. Re:It's safer in the back and... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My body odor masks any smeared shit I didn't wipe away. Beat that, *BSD'er. And just to let you Samuel Jackson fans know who's the boss, we Linux users bring the snakes on them planes, beotch!

    20. Re:It's safer in the back and... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you been to America lately? The only thing you would be watching here is a BBW walking sideways just to fit down the aisle. That's only on domestic flights, but sad to say, it is true. If there is anything more unpleasant than being trapped in a non-smoking airplane seated next to a woman who's fat is spilling into your seat, please let me know.
    21. Re:It's safer in the back and... by mferrare · · Score: 1

      ...it's better value for money.

      You get a longer ride.

      --
      Why would anyone want to use a text editor that is not vi?
    22. Re:It's safer in the back and... by dargaud · · Score: 1

      irrelevant on an individual scale Yup, and the seat chosen is moot like in the case of my friend Adrien Bisson who burnt to his death last week when the Sao Paulo plane crashed into the building where he was working... RIP.
      --
      Non-Linux Penguins ?
    23. Re:It's safer in the back and... by Architect_sasyr · · Score: 1

      .87 deaths per billion passenger-miles for airplane vs 11.7 for automobile. Still more than an order of magnitude greater, and people normally cover far more miles by car than by air in their lives. Just off hand, I wonder how many pilot's die in car accidents... seems to me that maybe the automobile is there to prune away the dead wood, like modern dueling...
      --
      Me failed English...
      FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
    24. Re:It's safer in the back and... by iktos · · Score: 1

      "Just off hand, I wonder how many pilot's die in car accidents... "

      I don't know, but I know that John Paul Stapp was allowed to work on car safety on USAF time because the air force lost more pilots due to car accidents than flying accidents in the 1950s.

    25. Re:It's safer in the back and... by that+IT+girl · · Score: 1

      Don't be silly...everybody knows girls don't poo.

      --
      10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
      20 DRINK COFFEE
      30 GOTO 10
  2. Easy answer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Don't get on one. Every time I have in the last few years one of the following happens:

    • I get sick, flue like symptoms - too many germs
    • Late for a connecting flight, get stuck overnight in the airport
    • Ear infection, the local doctor said 5/6 were on the same flight
    1. Re:Easy answer... by FieroEtnl · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So you would rather drive for three days to cross the country rather than fly for one? Given what gas prices are like now, you'd probably end up spending more on the car trip than the plane, and you'd be spending an extra couple of days traveling. I think I'll take my chances with the sick people and potential delays.

    2. Re:Easy answer... by Blahbooboo3 · · Score: 1

      And trains are the most civilized way to travel.

      What the heck are you smoking??? Have you been on a train in the USA lately? My god, even the nicer Amtrak Acela are barely decent.
    3. Re:Easy answer... by TheDigitalOne · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I just went through the cross-country driving exercise last week. Seattle -> Baltimore driving an RV took 4 days of driving 12 hours per day, about 48 hours all told, the RV gets 7 MPG 2,800 miles so 400 gallons of gas at around $3/per, so $1,200 in gas alone (nevermind food, etc).

      The return flight took 5 hours and cost me $149.00

      After seeing so many whacko drivers on the road during the trip I have no doubt in my mind that the driving portion was vastly more dangerous than the return flight!

    4. Re:Easy answer... by dal20402 · · Score: 1

      OK, air travel can be unpleasant and unpredictable, but it's still *way* safer than driving. Saying you'll drive because you're afraid of an air crash is like saying you'll run Windows 98 because you're afraid of the security holes in Vista.

    5. Re:Easy answer... by nelsonal · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I've had pretty good experiences in the trains in the i-95 corridor. I think it's funny that the trains are much faster than planes with the congestion at airports. Nothing beats a Western US bus trip, it's not just a ride, it's an adventure. A modern bard could build a lifetime of tales from two regional bus trips.

      --
      Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
    6. Re:Easy answer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks for the advice. Next time I'll try swimming to Japan.

    7. Re:Easy answer... by Belial6 · · Score: 1

      What in the world are you doing driving an RV with only one person? An RV is mass transit. If you would have had charted a private plane, it certainly would have cost you more than $149.

      I just did a search on Expedia, and the shortest flight from Seattle to Baltimore is 5 hours 5 minutes. This leads to the distinct impression that your not comparing doorstep to doorstep, but are misrepresenting the amount of time it takes to travel by airplane. It is safe to assume that you spent at least 3 hours in drive time, baggage check-in, security checkpoint time, baggage retrieval time, boarding time, and wait time for the plane itself. You probably spent closer to 4 or 5 hours more than you claim. Sure, it may have still have taken you 5 times as long to drive as to fly, but that is far less than the 10 times you claimed.

      There are also some significant benefits to driving a trip across country in an RV that you didn't include. Obviously if your goal is to get from point A to point B as fast and as cheap as possible, driving an RV is a pretty dumb way to accomplish that. Of course if you had driven a Prius instead of an RV, you would have gotten ~50 mpg, so you would have used closer to 55 gallons, which at around $3/per, you would have spent $165 in gas. Given the number of "abouts" in the calculations, it is safe to say that a cross country car trip costs about the same as a cross country plane trip.

      I won't argue that driving is more dangerous than flying, but given the number of hours that most people spend on the road, worrying about danger differences in the rare cross country trip, is a little like being concerned about whether your daily game of Russian Roulette is played with one bullet or two.

    8. Re:Easy answer... by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

      That's... bizarre.

      Too many germs? The airports themselves are clean enough, and the planes are practically hospital rooms. I guess it's possible, especially if you're sitting next to someone with a cold, but it just seems unlikely. Seems far more likely you'd get sick in the office than on the plane.

      Late for a connecting flight? Also seems unlikely. Not impossible, by any stretch, but they generally leave you an hour or two, even if your plane is delayed. (Last time, both ways, I had one flight delayed, and the connecting flight was delayed by more than enough to make up for it.) And for that matter, even if it did happen, I'd rather stay overnight in the airport than stay overnight in 2-3 hotels while driving cross-country -- and the entertainment is better anyway; driving you only get the radio, whereas on a plane, you can watch movies or actually get work done.

      Ear infection? How's that different than the "too many germs" bit?

      I guess this is one of those YMMV things, but really, the only problem I have with flying is being cramped, and that's my fault for not losing the weight.

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    9. Re:Easy answer... by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      A modern bard could build a lifetime of tales from two regional bus trips.

      Yeah, and a modern infectious disease specialist could build a lifetime of case reports from the little critters that get passed around in those things. Thanks, but I'm walking...

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    10. Re:Easy answer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're stressed. Your immune system is compromised. Many people have the same issue and blend together in a haven. In the airplane, there is airconditioning w/shit airflow throughout the airplane. People sneeze. Now, guess what happens? You get ill.

    11. Re:Easy answer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Astroturfing for the motorcoach industry?

    12. Re:Easy answer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      sounds like a weak immune system, or the hivvies (heh) - as the kids call it these days.

      tough break.

    13. Re:Easy answer... by mikael · · Score: 1

      Caltrain in the Bay Area was fairly good - although the hole in the top deck of the doubledecker carriages that allowed the conductor to check two levels at the same time made the train seem a bit like a cattle train. Before 2000 it was more or less a quiet rural train service, but with the dot com boom, trying to get on a train at rush hour was like a being in the New Year sales every day. Maybe it's a bit quieter now.

      The worst I saw was when Caltrain leassed some trains from Virginia. Those trains had staircases with a trapdoor at the top that led up into the carriage. The conductor pulled up a rope which opened a trapdoor which was just above the steps at each stop. The first time the engine arrived in the station, belching black smoke like a ironsmiths furnace, there was a collective groan of shock from the passengers.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    14. Re:Easy answer... by architimmy · · Score: 2

      I wonder if a better metric for determining safety would be number of operator (driver/pilot) hours per crash rather than miles traveled per life lost. Or maybe operator hours per life lost. So one would take the number of hours someone operated a vehicle and sum the total hours for the total number of individual vehicle operators. Divide that number by the number of fatalities or crashes involving a particular vehicle type. I would imagine this would show that despite the much higher bar set for operator competency (pilot license) for an aircraft that flying is not really much safer than driving. Mostly since so many more people spend so much more time behind the wheel of a car than those than at the stick of an aircraft. For lack of a better way of putting it, flying is probably a safer way to travel long distances, but only because it's a less common form of transportation than driving. Also, it's worth noting that you are MUCH more likely to survive a car crash than a plane crash. I don't know how that figures into the consideration. (yeah... that was a contradictory post if I ever wrote one)

    15. Re:Easy answer... by Rakishi · · Score: 1

      Caltrain is short distance not long distance. It can replace a car not a plane.

      I haven't seen any bad congestion myself so I guess it's cleared up but in general Bay Area transit is at best passable.

    16. Re:Easy answer... by Rakishi · · Score: 1

      I've flown dozens of times and I have never had many problems. Never got sick not counting the couple times I had congestion and slept till right before landing, sinus pressure is not fun. Took me a good week to get over one, my ears kept popping at the slightest change in elevation.

      Never missed a connecting flight save the one time I missed my original then was stupid enough to believe that "well this connecting flight may have open seats but we can't know till boarding" meant anything other than "no way in hell will there be free seats but you can't bitch at me when you're at another airport." Snowstorm at a hub airport canceled another flight for me but they got me a new one 6 hours later (despite half their flights probably being delayed or canceled) in first class.

    17. Re:Easy answer... by ObsessiveMathsFreak · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I flew once shortly after I had had a sinus congestion of some sort.

      Do not do this.

      The initial flight was unpleasant, with not only my ears, but even my sinuses popping. I'm talking about the ones near your nose. Fleeing those pop at 36000 is at once relieving and incredibly disturbing. Anyway, something must have gotten in on that flight, I suspect from one of the many other passengers who spent the flight snorting, snuffling and blowing their noses.

      By the time of the return flight a week later I had spent seven days breathing almost completely through my mouth, almost suffocating at night. The mucus was bad. It had gone from the copious runny clear kind, to a much more viscous and putrid green and yellow gunk with the consistency of caramel. I couldn't smell anything, except for the slightly puss-like odor emanating from the center of my head.

      This time, only one of the nose sinuses popped. The other one just kept discharging, which was a pity as I had half hoped the inside of my face would explode from the pressure differential, allowing me the blessed relief of death. Surrounded by another entourage of acute sinus outbreaks, I expected the worst. When I arrived, it was raining at the airport.

      It took me about six months to fully recover. I finally became able to breath through my nose after about a month. My lungs stopped feeling weak after about three months. Two or three months after that, I was able to smell things again. It occurs to me now that I really should have seen a doctor about all that.

      In conclusion, I'd wear a mask when flying, except it would set off all kinds of alarms. On the bright side, I know more about the human repository system than I ever expected to.

      --
      May the Maths Be with you!
    18. Re:Easy answer... by Dun+Malg · · Score: 2

      What in the world are you doing driving an RV with only one person? An RV is mass transit. No, a 60 passenger bus is mass transit. An RV is mobile living accommodations for 1-6 people. You don't drive one to move a lot of people around efficiently, you drive one to have a place to dwell when you arrive. It's a special purpose vehicle the same way a semi is.
      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
    19. Re:Easy answer... by mikael · · Score: 1

      Caltrain is short distance not long distance. It can replace a car not a plane.

      Very true. They talked about creating a 3 hour high speed train between San Francisco, San Jose and Los Angeles. It got past the state approval but came to a halt when a good many other cities/counties in the proposed path also wanted stations.

      It's been pointed out many times that business travellers would never be happy to travel three days and back again just to make a business trip.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    20. Re:Easy answer... by Lars+T. · · Score: 1

      That's... bizarre.

      Too many germs? The airports themselves are clean enough, and the planes are practically hospital rooms. Guess what's the most likely place to get a really nasty infection?
      --

      Lars T.

      To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck

    21. Re:Easy answer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But I question why anyone would have to travel across country anyway. If you find yourself doing that often, then something is wrong. Better to move there entirely.

      I know I'm taking the bait on this one, but seriously... it's kind of fun to get out once in a while. I think to say "If you find yourself doing that often, then something is wrong," is a really, really strange attitude.

    22. Re:Easy answer... by DeadChobi · · Score: 1

      Or you could just fly down and stay in a 4-star hotel for a couple of days. It would cost about the same, and you could even fly back!

      --
      SRSLY.
    23. Re:Easy answer... by Rakishi · · Score: 1

      But I question why anyone would have to travel across country anyway. If you find yourself doing that often, then something is wrong. Better to move there entirely. 1. Businessman. My father does a lot of contract work for various groups (workaholic and all that) and travels across the WORLD on a monthly basis.
      2. College students. We got kicked out for winter break, a plane ticket costs less than a motel for three weeks.
      3. Those with friends/family in various places. Weddings, general visits and so on.
      4. Vacations.
    24. Re:Easy answer... by DeadChobi · · Score: 1

      A few years ago my dad had to fly down to South Carolina from Washington State every few months. He'd always pick up a respiratory infection on the plane no matter who he sat next to. They're far from as clean as you say they are.

      And as for crampedness, he's stick-thin and even he complains about how small the seats are in cattle class.

      --
      SRSLY.
    25. Re:Easy answer... by rdoger6424 · · Score: 1

      There are hospital-grade air filters for every row in an airplane (I think I read this in wired).

      --
      "Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
    26. Re:Easy answer... by rdoger6424 · · Score: 1

      Did you go to public high school?
      2,000 High school students + High stress levels (weaken immune system) = VECTOR FOR TRANSMISSION!

      --
      "Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
    27. Re:Easy answer... by rdoger6424 · · Score: 1

      A school with more than 500 people in it.

      --
      "Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
    28. Re:Easy answer... by NuShrike · · Score: 1

      Well, I recently did drive from SoCal to Fort Sumner in New Mexico (and back). It's 16 hours driving, or ~6 (2 security check, 2 flight, 2+.5 to drive to destination) hours by non-stop plane. Closest airport to Fort Sumner is 2 hours away in Albuquerque.

      So, it costs $112 to flight one-way, plus ~$30 per day for rental car.

      It costed me $70 in gas to drive my Prius there (each tank is 520 miles+ @ 48MPG @ 73MPH). Add $10 if you like for partial payment of oil replacement later.

      So, 16 hours by the scenic route with my chips + iPod, or ~6 with part of it getting ass-realmed by airport security and the parking Nazis. HMMM.

      I could've taken Amtrak train for about $80, but then it would've been 16 hours + 2 for rental car to get where I needed to go with most of it browsing on my laptop...

      For a few times I would rather drive for the 10 hours & ~$80 difference, if I wasn't in a hurry, just for the convenience and price.

    29. Re:Easy answer... by jamar0303 · · Score: 1

      I don't get why there can't be various levels of service- Let's use the Japanese Shinkansen as an analogy. First, the Nozomi super-express- it would only stop at San Fransisco, San Jose, and LA (probably Sacramento too). Then, the Hikari express service- It would stop at the major stations as well as some of the more well-populated cities/counties along the route. Then, the Kodama local service- It would stop at every station on the track. Something like that would allow the business travelers to get where they need to fast enough while allowing smaller cities a link to the major metro areas.

      --
      OSx86 FTW
    30. Re:Easy answer... by bcmm · · Score: 1

      The flu symptoms probably just come from breathing really really dry air. Drink more water.

      --
      # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
      Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
    31. Re:Easy answer... by TheLink · · Score: 1

      A hospital "tent" in Iraq?

      --
    32. Re:Easy answer... by doom · · Score: 1

      A modern bard could build a lifetime of tales from two regional bus trips.
      Yeah, and a modern infectious disease specialist could build a lifetime of case reports from the little critters that get passed around in those things.

      Like air travel is any better? Flying is a great way to spend the first week of your vacation in bed with a virus. (But it's so much faster than taking the train!).

      (What we're actually talking about here is class prejudices: air travel still has this vibe of an elite, high class activity, despite all evidence to the contrary...)

    33. Re:Easy answer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Given that most people are dehydrated to start with, and then breath air with almost no water in it (hint, it's -60 outside), the incidences of barotrauma are very high. Given that you dry our nasal tissues out, don't have enough water for the mucus to drain, and then decsend, putting pressure on your now-blocked sinuses, you're going to rupture membranes that are already excessively vulnerable to infection. Now you have a wound in your sinuses. The sinus infections are your fault for not taking care of your body. Drink more water and you won't have these problems. I fly 3-4 times a week and almost never get sick. And don't give me that bullshit about recirculating air. It isn't recirculated. The air conditioning comes from the engine compressor section, which is about 500 degrees C. It's extremely sterile.

    34. Re:Easy answer... by nelsonal · · Score: 1

      Sometimes you have to sacrifice for the craft. In case I wasn't super clear, my post was a joke, bus trips are a last resort to be used only when needed, but you definitely see some interesting sights along the way!

      --
      Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
    35. Re:Easy answer... by LogicHoleFlaw · · Score: 1

      Ugh. Is there a +1 disturbing rating?

      --
      -- Flaw
    36. Re:Easy answer... by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 1

      I don't get why there can't be various levels of service

      $$$$
      Can you guarantee levels of ridership/profit before we start on the environmental impact survey?

    37. Re:Easy answer... by jamar0303 · · Score: 1

      If the super-express service is cheaper than an airline ticket, the people will use it. Have a local service that stops at places not served by an airport, and people will use it because it's more convenient than driving out to the nearest airport. Also, this is California- at least around the SoCal area the use of solar power would greatly reduce environmental impact.

      --
      OSx86 FTW
    38. Re:Easy answer... by hob42 · · Score: 1

      I just took an 18-hour (each way) trip between Tucson to Tulsa a couple weeks back. With the spike in gas prices, and spending some cash on food, it cost me about $400 round-trip. It took three days in all.

      I've taken it by air in the past, and the cheapest I can generally find for tickets is about $400 round trip - per person. It still takes two days to travel this way - with connecting flights, security checks, and waiting for late flights in airports, you have to set aside a day even for only a few hours of time in the air.

      The only way air travel is anywhere near economical is if I can book many months in advance to get good discount pricing, and if I'm traveling alone. As soon as I include my wife on the trip, let alone some or all of our kids, there's no question about whether we'll drive or fly.

      For me, the best way to handle the stupid drivers and overworked truckers is to take the non-interstate highways. US-70/60 between Las Cruces, NM, and Amarillo, TX, is shorter, faster, is just as wide, has less traffic, is more scenic, and gives better gas mileage than I-25/40.

      But no matter what, I agree that air is safer than the road. I have no fear when boarding an airplane - I've flown dozens of times, and I still feel amazement when I gaze out the window during the flight. I wish air travel could be done more cheaply - but would that compromise that very safety?

    39. Re:Easy answer... by hob42 · · Score: 1

      the planes are practically hospital rooms.

      Even hospital rooms can be serious sources of infection, despite routine deep cleaning with antimicrobial and viricidal solutions. Dunno the last time an airplane smelled like it had actually been cleaned. Most the windows on my recent flights have had oily residue from previous passengers' hair or face on them - definitely a nice touch. I don't want to think about the tray table, seat back, or arm rests.

      I'd rather stay overnight in the airport than stay overnight in 2-3 hotels while driving cross-country -- and the entertainment is better anyway; driving you only get the radio, whereas on a plane, you can watch movies or actually get work done.

      I have to say, the beds in those hotels are a lot more comfortable than the half-broken cots DFW handed out.

      Also, entertainment depends entirely upon what flight you have. I haven't been on a plane with in-air radio or video in years. The last dozen flights haven't even had power plugs to run my laptop past its less-than-stellar battery life. At least in my car, my kids can watch the portable DVD player, and charge their DSes along the way.

    40. Re:Easy answer... by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

      I haven't been on a plane with in-air radio or video in years. The last dozen flights haven't even had power plugs to run my laptop past its less-than-stellar battery life.

      That's odd -- recently took a trip to Peru, coach, and only the very last flight (a 25 minute hop, really) lacked an in-flight movie. I also do tend to go for laptops with plenty of battery life (and extend it by ripping DVDs ahead of time so I don't have to spin up the optical drive), but that's just me...

      Anyway, the odd thing is, some flights had a big screen overhead, and some had little screens in the seatback, but none had power plugs, that I could see.

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    41. Re:Easy answer... by hob42 · · Score: 1

      This year I've been on three business trips, no amenities at all. Twice through O'Hare with American, the first leg was 3:30 and the second was 50 minutes. They offer a $5 sandwich on the longer flight, and nothing at all on the second. United, which went through Denver with two flights of about 2 hours each, only had drinks. None of the Super-80s, ERJs, or CRJs had anything in the way of conveniences - which is how they adapted to compete with the likes of Southwest.

      The only time I've ever had in-flight movies were on my flights to Europe as a kid. There was one time when I was taking a couple-hour flight that they played a canned news show on monitors on the bulkhead - even that was probably 5 years ago... That was more like being bombarded with commercials than entertainment.

    42. Re:Easy answer... by Calinous · · Score: 1

      They are as clean as possible - until passengers board them.

    43. Re:Easy answer... by redcane · · Score: 1

      I find it really hard to check my 20 suitcases of burnt DVDs onto a flight..... I'm not sure exactly why this is difficult, but I usually end up in an RV of some kind. P.S. why do Americans call it an RV, when it is so unlikely to be remote from a power source for an extended time. It is also unlikely to be able to drive down a road that is remote from anywhere.... Also, what is an SUV? Should it not be a "Luggage Capacity Vehicle", or "People carrying vehicle"? What is sporty about a huge behemoth that handles poorly? What is utilitarian about something that carries luggage worse than a trailer, and wastes space carrying people?

  3. If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Insightful

    it's that if your time has come there's nothing you can do.

    Which is good, cause it fits in nicely with a bit of wisdom that a lot of people should take to heart:

    don't worry about stuff you have no control over.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
    1. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by Deadstick · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, well, if your airplane gets in trouble you'd better hope the pilot doesn't believe that.

      rj

    2. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's useless to worry when you don't have control, but it's smart to choose the circumstances. The way you phrase it if my car brakes are defective I should still drive and not worry about it.

    3. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by HalAtWork · · Score: 1

      But what if you could have prevented the circumstances had you worried enough, thus becoming more aware and thus more able to influence your surroundings? You're more likely to survive, and isn't that bit of likeliness worth it when it comes to your life?

      Trust me, I don't want to worry about anything, but I'm too worried not to.

      Infinite loop head explode.

    4. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by SRA8 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      >> don't worry about stuff you have no control over.

      Which is exactly the point of this article -- you DO have some control over survival!

    5. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by qazsedcft · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But the pilot does have control over the plane.

      Now back to the actual point. The GP wrote "if your time has come". This outcome is not determinable in advance. If you die in a crash then your time has come. If you survive then your time has not come. This is kind of like Schrodinger's cat.

    6. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by pipingguy · · Score: 2, Funny

      Is it still legal to bring toast and butter on a plane?

    7. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by debrain · · Score: 1

      it's that if your time has come there's nothing you can do.

      This is the philosophy of drivers in India.

      India also has the most dangerous roads in the world.

      It's not a coincidence. It's denial. haha

    8. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's spelt 'head ASPLODE!!!'

    9. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, well, if your airplane gets in trouble you'd better hope the pilot doesn't believe that.

      Um, obviously you didn't read what the GP said:

      don't worry about stuff you have no control over.

      Last time I checked, the pilot was in control.

    10. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by It'sYerMam · · Score: 1

      It's all fine to say, "his time came" in retrospect, but beyond metaphor, the phrase has no actual use since there's no way of determining when the time is, or, indeed, whether the time was predetermined at all.

      --
      im in ur .sig, writin ur memes.
    11. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by Threni · · Score: 1

      > it's that if your time has come there's nothing you can do.

      Do you have a way of determining when one's time will come, or is this just meaningless mumbo-jumbo with no predictive power? How do you know, for example, that for a given person who died today their `time has come` time should actually have been a week tuesday but something went wrong with fate or whatever meaningless unscientific term you want to use to describe it?

      > Which is good, cause it fits in nicely with a bit of wisdom that a lot of people should take to heart:
      > don't worry about stuff you have no control over.

      The point of this article, though, is that you do have control over stuff.

    12. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by Citizen+of+Earth · · Score: 1

      it's that if your time has come there's nothing you can do.

      Does this mean that people can be as reckless as they want or does it mean nothing? If 'your time' is ten years from now, then you can jump off a 60-story building today and live. Why not jump into an incinerator? You can't die.

      I think that if you examine actual reality, you will find that reckless people die younger. Does this mean that 'their time' was sooner, or does it mean that their recklessness probably caused their death? What if they died needlessly and predictably doing something reckless? Do we need mysticism to explain this?

    13. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Here's is a quote that was at the bottom of the page when I read this story. I found it quite fitting in response to your statement:

      Intellect annuls Fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

    14. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by nsayer · · Score: 1

      Except that the article is incorrect. The sample size is so low as to be laughably anecdotal.

    15. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by Fulkkari · · Score: 1

      Not true. It has been studied that passangers who have learned the safety instructions beforehand and thus knows what to do in case of a crash have much better survival rate than those who haven't bothered. The same applies with to house fires, boat accidents etc. It might take a couple of minutes to learn safety instructions by heart, but if you happen to be in an unfortunate accident, it might save your life.

      --
      I demand the Cone of Silence!
    16. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by slimyrubber · · Score: 1

      An exit-door procedure at 30.000 feet. Mm-hmm. The illusion of safety.

      --
      [ I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance ] -- Isaac Asimov
    17. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, because you have control over whether or not you drive your car. You *don't* have control over your brakes if you discover they don't work when you go to use them, and you don't have control over whether your plane goes down.

    18. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So how do you calculate the required sample size? What would it be in this case?

    19. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wasn't raised on 'asplode', I don't know where it comes from... It's not instinctive for me to say it.

    20. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by mstahl · · Score: 1

      Yeah as long as you don't bring a knife to spread it with.

    21. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by weber · · Score: 1

      Oh, the butter will probably be considered a liquid so (for you safety, of course) restrict yourself to less than a liter divided into 100 ml containers if you travel in the EU.

    22. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by LoztInSpace · · Score: 1

      Assuming you get to pick your seat which isn't always the case.

    23. Re:If there's one bit of mysticism I believe.. by st0nes · · Score: 1

      Bummer if 300 people die because the pilot's "time has come".

      --
      Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis
  4. Sit in the rear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Rarely does an airplane back into the side of a mountain.

    1. Re:Sit in the rear by kryten_nl · · Score: 5, Funny

      Rarely does an airplane back into the side of a mountain. Because the mountains move aside when they hear that beeping sound and see the flashing lights?
      --
      For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
    2. Re:Sit in the rear by korbin_dallas · · Score: 1

      ROTFLMAO!

      My dad told me that 20 years ago!

      --
      They Live, We Sleep
    3. Re:Sit in the rear by mh1997 · · Score: 1

      Rarely does an airplane back into the side of a mountain.
      Unfortunately, after the plane hits the mountain, it slides down and over the cliff backwards.
    4. Re:Sit in the rear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      ROTFLMAOWSIABLOL!

      My dad told me about your dad telling you that 10 years ago!

    5. Re:Sit in the rear by Wellington+Grey · · Score: 1

      Rarely does an airplane back into the side of a mountain.


      From a physics perspective, I've always assumed that the rear of the plane is safer because the front has to absorb most of the impulse from the crash. But does this also apply to (head on) car crashes? Does anyone have data about the survival rates for passengers (per capita) sitting in the front of a car vs the rear?

      -Grey
    6. Re:Sit in the rear by lukas84 · · Score: 1

      Something i heard often about car crashes (and never found anything verifiable about it) is that the driver's seat is the safest spot.

      Not because of airbags or the location in the car, but because he's usually the only one that is aware of the impending crash, and his body is thus able to absorb more damage. As said, i've never seen anything verifiable about this, but i heard it from multiple, unrelated people.

    7. Re:Sit in the rear by rossdee · · Score: 2, Informative

      If the pilot realises the mountain is there in the last few seconds and tries to put the plane in a steep climb (thus raising the nose) it is possible for the bottom rear of the plane to hit the ground first.

      Its not just a theory, it did happen this way for flight 901 in 1979. There were no survivors, all 257 passengers and crew died in the initial impact (with Mount Erebus) and fireball.

    8. Re:Sit in the rear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have heard the exact opposite; i.e. when a driver (or a passenger) senses an impending crash, they reflexively tense up. This results in much worse tissue damage. This is why drunks tend to walk away from accidents while their passengers (or victims) suffer life-altering injuries.

    9. Re:Sit in the rear by flappinbooger · · Score: 1

      drunk drivers usually fare better in crashes vs sober drivers because they don't tense up before the crash. Heard that in health class or something. Same w/ babies I would assume, they're all flexible and resilient and stuff.

      --
      Flappinbooger isn't my real name
    10. Re:Sit in the rear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Drivers probably also get less injured because they aren't lying forward with the motion of the crash as they just hit the steering wheel whereas passengers' upper bodies would fly forward and hit the dash or the chair in front with a lot of momentum.

    11. Re:Sit in the rear by WK2 · · Score: 1

      Because the mountains move aside when they hear that beeping sound and see the flashing lights?

      No. Because airplanes don't fly backwards.

      --
      Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
    12. Re:Sit in the rear by TheLink · · Score: 1

      Well babies are small and nowadays they often are strapped in a "baby seat" which gives them extra protection. So sure while they're more likely to bend than break, they are also less likely to have to.

      The odds of an adult getting crushed/pierced "beyond repair" is higher than a baby in a decent seat.

      --
  5. What are the odds? by slughead · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The odds of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 5,051 in your whole lifetime. To give you some perspective, you're 5 times more likely to drown, 23 times more likely to fall to your death, and 60 times more likely to die in a car accident.

    Therefore, a far more useful article would be "How to survive driving off a seaside cliff into the ocean."

    1. Re:What are the odds? by nerdonamotorcycle · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Indeed. You're way more likely to die as a result of the cab ride to the airport.

    2. Re:What are the odds? by kryten_nl · · Score: 4, Funny

      Therefore, a far more useful article would be "How to survive driving off a seaside cliff into the ocean."

      Install wings on your car?
      --
      For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
    3. Re:What are the odds? by Original+Replica · · Score: 1

      I thought it was established that the intial crash kills few people, but tends to fracture alot of legs, then everyone dies in the resulting fire because they can't get out. So maybe a better article would be "How to get out of a burning plane when you have two broken legs." Of course I get all my science from MythBusters:http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2005/06/myt hbusters_killer_brace_posit.html

      --
      We are all just people.
    4. Re:What are the odds? by QuantumG · · Score: 1

      Most people feel this is reassuring. Whenever I hear it I think "man, what a complete waste of money they spend on safety.. no wonder ticket prices are so high."

      I'm willing to get in a car. I'm willing to accept a certain amount of risk.. Why is it when it comes to air travel I don't have the option to accept the same amount of risk as I'm obviously willing to accept? That's a rhetorical question; I know the answer.. government regulations. The real question is, why are government regulations so much more strict for plane safety than they are for car safety?

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
    5. Re:What are the odds? by ewg · · Score: 1

      It's also worth reflecting on the leading causes of death in the USA as reported by the CDC: accidents of all kinds are only in the middle of the list.

      http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm

      --
      org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
    6. Re:What are the odds? by jointm1k · · Score: 2, Insightful

      . . . and 60 times more likely to die in a car accident.

      That's only because the average human does a whole lot less traveling by plane than he does by car.

      --
      You know it makes sense, a little reminder from jointm1k.
    7. Re:What are the odds? by dkleinsc · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I tend to view the issue with plane crashes (and terrorism, which is even more ridiculously unlikely) is the loss of control. With cars, if you're driving, you feel like you're in control of the vehicle, and by extension the situation, and thus feel safer. Even if you have a friend driving, you now have someone you (probably) trust in control of the situation.

      By contrast, in a plane, you're totally at the mercy of the pilots and air traffic controllers. You don't know them, and you know that if they screw up there's pretty close to nothing you can do about it. So even if the risk is actually less, it appears to be greater, because you are giving up control over whether you live or die.

      --
      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
    8. Re:What are the odds? by batquux · · Score: 1

      23 times more likely to fall to your death Does that include falling to your death in a plane?
    9. Re:What are the odds? by Ossifer · · Score: 1, Informative

      It's all about skewing the data to make whatever point you feel like. Actually, cars are still more dangerous per passenger mile. However airplane flights are generally only dangerous at take off and landing. I.e. airline flights are equally dangerous regardless of distance, whereas car accidents are more likely the longer the trip. But then we know that most car accidents occur close to home... but then most car trips are short ones close to home... etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum...

    10. Re:What are the odds? by Dunbal · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Aortic dissection. This is what kills you. It's the most common, lethal deceleration injury. Of course if you're going fast enough you're simply crushed, but at "lower" speeds a sudden deceleration is enough to rotate the heart (which is fairly mobile in the chest) and rip it off the aorta (which is fixed to the posterior chest wall). The arteriovenous ligament doesn't help, either. So the aorta ruptures and you die of a cardiac tamponade. Oh and this is how Princess Diana died.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    11. Re:What are the odds? by Deadstick · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because if we flew airplanes like most people drive cars, we'd die like flies.

      rj

    12. Re:What are the odds? by I.+C.+Wiener · · Score: 1

      Whoever modded this Informative should definitely be modded funny.

    13. Re:What are the odds? by sleigher · · Score: 1

      I wanna know why when they test new airplanes they have an escape hatch that you can jump out and parachute to safety but in the production models this feature is removed. Would it be that hard to have a parachut under the seat and have everyone bail out if the plane starts going down? I this does nothing for takeoff and landing crashes or even the likes of 9/11.

      Seems that some lives saved would be better than absolutely no lives saved. Or at least they tried.....

      --
      All points of time and space are connected.
    14. Re:What are the odds? by Abreu · · Score: 0

      Obligatory Joke:

      What was the last thing on Princess Diana's head just before she died? The car's engine

      --
      No sig for the moment.
    15. Re:What are the odds? by pintpusher · · Score: 4, Funny

      Therefore, a far more useful article would be "How to survive driving off a seaside cliff into the ocean."

      Install wings on your car? and then climb to the back seat on the way down...
      --
      man, I feel like mold.
    16. Re:What are the odds? by buswolley · · Score: 1

      That is why you should sit at the wing if you have flight sickness. Center of Gravity.

      --

      A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.

    17. Re:What are the odds? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Right, and the odds are 0 if you never fly, or significantly higher if you're in sales.

      ("Odds of dying" statistics are pretty meaningless in terms of actual risk. Tell me how many plane crashes per year, where they happened, how they happened, what type of planes, what airline was responsible, etc -- I can actually make some sense of those numbers.)

    18. Re:What are the odds? by Splab · · Score: 1

      I think half the planes passengers would be trampled to death in the mayhem it is when you got 500 persons on a 747 trying to put on a parachute. On top of that, just about none of them knows how to steer a parachute, so quite a few more will probably die landing their parachute.

    19. Re:What are the odds? by Tribbin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Because that would be boring:

      - Don't drive while drunk
      - Don't drive while tired
      - Don't call while driving
      - Don't verbally fight while driving
      - Don't speed
      - Fasten seatbelts
      - No sex while driving

      Who want's to read that, heh?!

      --
      If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
    20. Re:What are the odds? by joseph449008 · · Score: 1

      Btw, the odds of dying in your whole lifetime are 1.

    21. Re:What are the odds? by joseph449008 · · Score: 5, Funny

      No, I think it has to do with crashing down from about an altitude of 30,000 feet.

    22. Re:What are the odds? by dal20402 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      PItch motions are usually pretty gentle in airliners. Roll motions can be more severe, especially in widebodies. Sit closer to the centerline. On a one-aisle plane, sit in an aisle seat; on a two-aisle plane, sit in the middle bank of seats (a center seat is best). That said, sitting close to the wing isn't a bad idea either.

    23. Re:What are the odds? by Tribbin · · Score: 1

      No, that chance is exactly 0.

      People die right AFTER their whole lifetime.

      --
      If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
    24. Re:What are the odds? by stripmarkup · · Score: 1

      Obviously it depends on how much you fly. So far this year I've flown 27 segments (take offs and landings) on work assignments. I wonder what's the average per person.

      --
      See charts for twitter trends on Trendistic
    25. Re:What are the odds? by dal20402 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There are no parachutes on airliners for the following reasons:

      1. Parachutes are heavy, so a plane equipped with them could carry less cargo or passengers and ticket prices would go up.

      2. Parachutes are very complex to pack, and would have to be unpacked, inspected, and repacked at regular maintenance intervals, at considerable expense (not to mention increased time out of service for the plane).

      3. If the plane is high enough that parachutes will be of any use, it's impossible to open most exit doors as pressure seals them against the inside of the fuselage.

      4. Only a tiny fraction of passengers would understand how to use parachutes. When all the others slam into the ground at terminal velocity -- especially if the plane somehow survives -- it's a brave new world of stupendously huge liability for the airline.

    26. Re:What are the odds? by tomhudson · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "Aortic dissection. This is what kills you. It's the most common, lethal deceleration injury. Of course if you're going fast enough you're simply crushed, but at "lower" speeds a sudden deceleration is enough to rotate the heart (which is fairly mobile in the chest) and rip it off the aorta (which is fixed to the posterior chest wall). The arteriovenous ligament doesn't help, either. So the aorta ruptures and you die of a cardiac tamponade. Oh and this is how Princess Diana died."

      They wanted to install seats facing backwards in airplanes specifically to reduce the deaths from the initial crash. Howver, they determined that the flying public wouldn't accept rear-facing seats. Considering all the BS the flying public puts up with nowadyas, maybe its time to float the idea again.

      Oh, another Princess Di joke - "I heard Princess Di was on the radio... And the dash. And the seat ..."

    27. Re:What are the odds? by sleigher · · Score: 1

      well dang..... The problem I have is if an airplane crashes, specifically a commercial airliner, I am almost guaranteed to die. If my car crashes I have a better, in some cases much, better chance of surviving. I know the odds stack up that flying is absolutely the safest way to travel, but when there is a problem, it is catastrophic. Not so with autos.

      --
      All points of time and space are connected.
    28. Re:What are the odds? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Absolute rubbish. read the wikipedia page on Aortic dissection - nothing there about rapid deceleration being the common cause.
      The most common form of death on an airplane is fire/smoke inhalation, unless people are simply crushed of course. The G-forces in most crashes are far less than those experienced in a car crash, and easily survivable. Aircraft are large and compress slowly.

    29. Re:What are the odds? by Viol8 · · Score: 1

      "The G-forces in most crashes are far less than those experienced in a car crash, and easily survivable. Aircraft are large and compress slowly."

      What a load of crap. That might be true at low speeds but if an aircraft impacts with a mountain at 400kph (thats 110 metres per second) even a 70m 747 will be crushed flat in less than a second. Barely enough time for the occupants to even register they've hit something never mind do anything about it.

    30. Re:What are the odds? by Odin's+Raven · · Score: 1

      The odds of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 5,051 in your whole lifetime. To give you some perspective, you're 5 times more likely to drown, 23 times more likely to fall to your death, and 60 times more likely to die in a car accident.

      Therefore, a far more useful article would be "How to survive driving off a seaside cliff into the ocean."

      The answer is self-evident - as you're driving off the cliff, simply aim your car at a passing airplane. Once you've embedded your car into the side of the plane, your odds of dying drop dramatically.

      --
      A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
    31. Re:What are the odds? by SRA8 · · Score: 1

      >> I tend to view the issue with plane crashes (and terrorism, which is even more ridiculously unlikely) is the loss of control. If loss of control were a problem people wouldnt drink [and drive] would they :-)

    32. Re:What are the odds? by Zadaz · · Score: 1

      ...because you are giving up control over whether you live or die.


      My friend, you lost control of that the moment you were born.
    33. Re:What are the odds? by Khashishi · · Score: 1

      Obviously, your odds go up if you fly a lot. Business travelers?

    34. Re:What are the odds? by Aetuneo · · Score: 1

      Each year, one (1) person accidentally drowns in a toilet. I'm worried about that; it would be a very embarrassing way to die.

      --
      Everything is subjective.
    35. Re:What are the odds? by kestasjk · · Score: 1

      You could always buy your own and take it with you I guess, but I wouldn't want to pay extra for it since air travel is so safe. It'd be better to put the money into health insurance or a pension if I wanted the most life for my buck.

      --
      // MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
    36. Re:What are the odds? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Death is still by crushing.

      *Most* aircraft deaths are not caused by the airplanes crashing 400mph into a mountainside.

    37. Re:What are the odds? by dal20402 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You are still more likely to be involved in a fatal car crash that you can't do anything about than you are to be involved in an air accident. To think more clearly about it, think *only* of the probability of dying in a crash you can't control -- you're still in more danger in a car.

    38. Re:What are the odds? by Neflyte_Zero · · Score: 1

      Not to mention the fact that if you somehow got the doors open, activating a parachute when you're going mach .78 can't possibly help your survival rate...

      --
      Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
    39. Re:What are the odds? by Dunbal · · Score: 1

      Sorry got my terms mixed up. I studied medicine in a foreign language. this is what you want.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    40. Re:What are the odds? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Couldn't resist:

      According to your stats the probability of driving off a seaside cliff into the ocean is (5/5051) * (23/5051) * (60/5051) = 6900 / 5051^3 which is about 0.00000005%.

      Now, considering the chance of dying in a plane crash is 1/5051 or about 0.0002%, TFA is about 4000 times more useful than your hypothetical article.

    41. Re:What are the odds? by pipingguy · · Score: 1

      airplane flights are generally only dangerous at take off and landing

      Exactly. Because those are the two guaranteed states of uncertainty when flying. Pilots aren't paid to monitor the cruise control, they're there to mitigate possible undesireable forward momentum into hard objects.

    42. Re:What are the odds? by pipingguy · · Score: 1

      You are correct. Some people are afraid of flying because they (rightly) perceive that they have less control over the actions of the plane.

    43. Re:What are the odds? by multimed · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Which makes me think about the idea of parachutes for the aircraft itself. Ballistic parachutes have been used successfully with small planes for awhile & one manufacturer claims theirs have saved over 200 lives.

      Obviously the physics involved in doing this for large commercial aircraft is just slightly more difficult. But by the same means, car air bags were first envisioned decades before they became possible - and really only in recent years with smart airbags that sense & adjust based on the occupants weight, seat position & whether he's wearing a seatbelt have they really become most beneficial. Commercial aircraft parachute/drag systems just seems like a no-brainer that at some point would be a solvable problem if not today.

      --
      Vote Quimby.
    44. Re:What are the odds? by jools33 · · Score: 2, Informative

      + if you've ever tried parachuting at all -

          1. the plane has to slow down dramatically to allow the jumpers a safe exit and even then when you're sitting in the door it feels like a hurricane is blowing outside - even from a small single prop aircraft

          2. the plane must be at a safe altitude for jumping

          3. there are very few jet airliners that it is considered possible to make a safe exit from - from conversations with some old skydiving buddies I recall that a 707 is one of them - with most airliners you are most likely to get sucked back into the rear of the aircraft - and that would be very terminal

      So to summarize - jumping from an airliner is something that an expert skydiver would think twice about - and so its definitely not an option for your average passenger.

    45. Re:What are the odds? by Squirmy+McPhee · · Score: 1

      I wanna know why when they test new airplanes they have an escape hatch that you can jump out and parachute to safety but in the production models this feature is removed.

      And everyone in the plane is trained to use parachutes and the hatch. The reason they have it on test flights is because of the nature of test flights -- in essence, nobody really knows if the plane will actually fly until it actually flies.

      Would it be that hard to have a parachut under the seat and have everyone bail out if the plane starts going down?

      In general, planes don't just "start going down" -- in fact, I can't even think of one aside from aircraft that were shot down. The vast majority of plane crashes occur at takeoff or landing; once you've made it to an altitude where people could safely parachute, there's very little that will cause it to crash in spectacular Hollywood fashion. Bombs or sudden structural failures can, but then the plane disintigrates so fast that nobody has time to strap on a parachute and jump to safety, or the structural failure happens in a manner that it would be far more dangerous to get up and move around than it would to stay strapped in your seat (think Hawaiian Airlines when the roof ripped off). In a deliberate crash, either by a suicidal pilot (EgyptAir) or a hijacker (any of the 9/11 flights) you'd never get an opportunity to use a parachute -- the plane would either be diving in a manner that you'd couldn't get up and walk to the door, or hijackers would prevent you from doing so. In the case of other types of failure, the plane won't simply fall out of the sky, it will glide gently for a long, long time, and it's virtually guaranteed that the pilot will be able to land it with fewer injuries and fatalities than you'll have if 200 untrained parachutists jump out of the plane at an altitude where they're likely to pass out (not to mention that all the passengers will be scattered over hundreds or thousands of square miles, many of them likely landing in trees or water and requiring immediate assistance).

      This reminds me a bit of the floating seat cushions they give you. I suppose it's nice to have them in the event of a "water landing," as they like to say, but I've read that nobody has ever survived a water landing in a commercial aircraft. I don't know if that's true, but it's certainly believable -- the pilot has no way of braking on water or skipping over its surface to burn off energy, which makes for an incredibly sudden and violent landing -- and I can't think of a water landing with survivors off the top of my head. I suppose you could argue that would be a good time to have a parachute, but then you're talking about a search over thousands of square miles of water, most likely in an area that would take a long time for rescuers to reach (otherwise the pilot could probably have reached land). You likely wouldn't have any survivors then, either.

      Seems that some lives saved would be better than absolutely no lives saved. Or at least they tried.....

      It's such a risky proposition that I can't imagine a pilot would ever think he'd save more lives by ordering a parachute evacuation than by trying to land. And if you push a wheelchair-bound 80-year-old lady with no parachute experience out of a plane traveling 300 mph, can you really say you're trying to save her life?

    46. Re:What are the odds? by Mike_ya · · Score: 1

      Going along with feeling like you're in control of the vehicle is the perceived survivability between the two.

      When a car is involved in an accident many times people walk away from the accident.
      When a plane has an accident people usually die.

    47. Re:What are the odds? by Registered+Coward+v2 · · Score: 1

      That is why you should sit at the wing if you have flight sickness. Center of Gravity.

      Actually it the CP that's of interest,with Dutch Roll (caused by the forces acting on an a/c tail) is more noticeable in the aft section; if you're prone to motion sickness that may be a place to avoid.

      personally, I'll take a F/C upgrade any day - at least if I die in a crash it'll be with some bourbon in hand...

      --
      I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
    48. Re:What are the odds? by OldBaldGuy · · Score: 1

      Actually the odds of dying once are infinite. Odds= Probability/(1-Probability)

    49. Re:What are the odds? by JimBobJoe · · Score: 1

      3. If the plane is high enough that parachutes will be of any use, it's impossible to open most exit doors as pressure seals them against the inside of the fuselage.

      Well to be fair, the doors can be redesigned. Passenger doors on commercial aircraft are designed with pressure sealing, but the cargo bay doors don't necessarily work that way on all aircraft.

      However, the other reason for not having parachutes in commercial aircraft is, assuming that your 1-4 issues can be solved, they still aren't useful. Just about no airplane crashes from that height. (I guess they would have been useful in the United DC-10 situation at Sioux City, but that was a 1 in a million crash.)

    50. Re:What are the odds? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Quote: "The odds of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 5,051 in your whole lifetime. To give you some perspective, you're 5 times more likely to drown, 23 times more likely to fall to your death, and 60 times more likely to die in a car accident."

      Truth: Only when measured in passenger miles. If one measures in terms of passenger hours, planes are no safer than cars and less safe than trains. If measured in passenger trips, planes are about as safe as motorcycles. The reason planes look safe when measured in passenger miles is that planes travel fast over large distances. Since planes are most likely to crash on takeoff or landing they do poor when measured in units of passenger trip.

    51. Re:What are the odds? by lena_10326 · · Score: 1

      Most crashes are on take off and landing so they're usually belly flopping the ground, which would be a low G deceleration. There are some that just roll over on take off and nose dive into the ground though. That'd be similar to hitting a mountain, but only at 200 mph.

      --
      Camping on quad since 1996.
    52. Re:What are the odds? by mr_matticus · · Score: 1

      No it's not. Passenger deaths per mile, per trip, and per year are ALL proportionally and numerically lower with air travel. The number of times you do it only reinforces the statistic. If every time you fly, you've got a 1 in 500,000 chance of dying and every time you get in a car you have a 1 in 8000 chance of dying, the answer is clear.

      The number of times you roll the dice just increase your own personal odds but don't change the single-instance likelihood of the statistic. If you fly just once in your life and get in a car just once, you're 60-70 times more likely to die in that one car trip. Put another way, you can fly about many times more often without dying than getting in the car. Safer is safer. If more people started flying, the odds would still be roughly the same--the aviation numbers would just increase in proportion with the population increase. More air travel means higher numbers, not worse odds.

    53. Re:What are the odds? by jgc7 · · Score: 1

      With rear facing seats, you die from all of the flying debris. I am not sure how I would rather go, impacting the seat in front of me or getting killed by a laptop to the face.

      --
      70% of statistics are made up.
    54. Re:What are the odds? by MacGyver2210 · · Score: 1

      1. I don't know what world you're from, but my usual very small few-day-travel suitcase ways about 5 times what a parachute does, including reserve and the container. 2. True, but is that an unreasonable cost to save lives? 3. I don't know what plane you've been flying on, but most planes I've flown on have doors that open outward, which would be very easy to open at any altitude, considering the plane is fairly pressurized even at low heights. Next time you go through the gangway look next to the weather skirt and note that the door is folded back against the side of the plane...outward. 4. Make jumping optional. Put the disclaimer in the ticket agreement - you already agree to a whole bunch of legal mumbo jumbo when you buy a ticket, what's one more line? ("Article 4, SS 2: In the event of a midair problem, you will have the option to exit the vehicle with a parachute. You release and indemnify...") Regarding the laminar flow issues, yes, if a plane is going 550mph there is a very fast flow of air over the skin of the plane which will hold you against the body of the aircraft until it passes, probably killing you...unless you exit from the back or bottom of the plane. Many aircraft have tail doors for emergency exiting which would be perfect for jumping at any airliner speed. Also, some of the enormous planes such as the 747-400 have elevators to the cargohold, which have hatches which are easily opened to allow you to disembark through the bottom of the plane. These would also work for jumping. Keep in mind, also, that if something bad happens mid-air, such as a piece of the plane falling off, you probably are not doing 550mph or even close at that point. If the pilot can't slow the plane down, most likely the drag from whatever damage the plane incurs will slow it down significantly in time to jump at a safe altitude. Just my 16 cents

      --
      If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
    55. Re:What are the odds? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Col Stapp proved humans can withstand over 440m/s^2 of deceleration.

    56. Re:What are the odds? by debrain · · Score: 1

      Instead of parachutes for every passenger, would it make any sense to have giant parachutes attached to various locations of the fuselage to float it to the ground at a non-terminal velocity (pardon the pun) in an emergency/crash situation?

    57. Re:What are the odds? by Yvanhoe · · Score: 1

      I think one can easily find people who use planes 50 times more often than average, making it almost as probable for them to die in a car crash than in a plane crash. This article can be interesting for people who take planes often. Another interesting stat would be the chances to survive a plane crash where at least one passenger was killed.

      --
      The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
    58. Re:What are the odds? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Each year, one (1) person accidentally drowns in a toilet. I'm worried about that; it would be a very embarrassing way to die.

      I'm more worried that someday, one (2) person will accidentally drown in a toilet, that would be terrible.

    59. Re:What are the odds? by Poromenos1 · · Score: 3, Funny

      That does it. I'm getting my heart nailed in place!

      --
      Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
    60. Re:What are the odds? by Poromenos1 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Just about no airplane crashes from that height.

      That's true, most airplanes crash on the ground.
      --
      Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
    61. Re:What are the odds? by Poromenos1 · · Score: 1

      The part about doors is not correct, even if they open outwards they are designed in such a way that they are impossible to open in altitude.

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      Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
    62. Re:What are the odds? by Oktober+Sunset · · Score: 1

      but most drink drivers believe they are still in control of their car, which is why they do it.

    63. Re:What are the odds? by flyingfsck · · Score: 1

      Just need ONE parachute - for the whole plane. Those are available for small planes.

      --
      Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
    64. Re:What are the odds? by gerardrj · · Score: 4, Informative

      To the casual observer the doors do appear to close simply like a car door, but it's not the case. If you watch carefully when the doors move you will see the complex hinge system swings the door to the interior of the aircraft then pushes is outward against the body. When the aircraft is pressurized the door is sealed by the outward pressure. To start opening these doors you must first pull on them, to close them you end up pushing on them. For reasons I can only imagine I am unable to locate any on-line video or diagrams of how this works but in this image you can just barely make out the instructions to pull the door open then push it out.

      Jumping from 37,000 feet and hundreds of MPH requires training and equipment. At that altitude the ambient air temperature is -70 fahrenheit. If the average terminal velocity of a person skydiving is 250 ft/s then you'll take about 2m30s to get to the ground without a 'chute. At 250 ft/s the wind chill is really, really significant. You've then got a choice to make (any perhaps the airline would instruct you about the best action): open the 'chute immediately after exiting the plane or wait until you are nearer the ground.
      Opening the parachute early means you are certain to hit the ground slowly but maximized your exposure to very low temperatures and low oxygen with all those inherent injuries.
      Opening the parachute later means more wind chill and possibly more tissue damage. Your betting that you'll be conscious to pull the rip cord. You also have much less time to perform an maneuvering to get to a "good" landing spot.

      That said, given the choice of almost certain death on a severely disabled airliner or possible death by parachute I'd probably choose the parachute.

      --
      Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
    65. Re:What are the odds? by nbauman · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Aortic dissection. This is what kills you. It's the most common, lethal deceleration injury. Of course if you're going fast enough you're simply crushed, but at "lower" speeds a sudden deceleration is enough to rotate the heart (which is fairly mobile in the chest) and rip it off the aorta (which is fixed to the posterior chest wall). The arteriovenous ligament doesn't help, either. So the aorta ruptures and you die of a cardiac tamponade. Oh and this is how Princess Diana died.

      That's a good story. I wonder if it's true.

      By a strange coincidence (only on Slashdot), I just went to a conference on aortic surgery. And I used to edit the Stapp Car Crash Conference Proceedings in the 1970s (great series) and I remember at least one article on aortic damage.

      Bottom line: Most of the aortic damage in automobile collisions occurs to people who weren't wearing their seat belts. Those lap and shoulder belts (which the U.S. auto companies refused to install until 1967) really work well. You can thank Ralph Nader for saving about 25,000 lives a year. The auto companies also made steering columns that were positioned exactly right and strong enough to impale the driver's chest, often with a heart puncture. Thanks to Ralph Nader, they replaced them with a collapsable steering column around 1967.

      Let's see the latest stuff, um, http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/332/6/356 Smith MD et al, Transesophageal Echocardiography in the Diagnosis of Traumatic Rupture of the Aorta, N Engl J Med 1995 332:356-362. (Well worth reading; great X-rays.) 7 were not restrained, 2 were. Smith says:

      Blunt chest trauma commonly results from motor vehicle accidents in which the sternum of an unrestrained driver strikes the steering wheel at impact.5 Rupture of the aorta has been estimated to account for up to 18 percent of deaths in motor vehicle accidents.19 As a result of rapid deceleration of the thorax and compression of the diaphragm, the aorta is subjected to extreme torque and compression at points of attachment: the sinuses of Valsalva, the isthmus, and the diaphragm.20 With compression of the mediastinum, the heart may be displaced into the right or left side of the chest, producing further stress at these points. The severe aortic-wall stress from intraluminal hypertension results in rupture through the intima, often continuing into the media and adventitial layers. Complete rupture usually results in death at the scene, whereas patients with a contained hematoma may survive to reach the hospital.

      Whaddya know, the poster has a point. Aortic trauma is still a major cause of automobile fatalties, usually but not always when people aren't wearing seat belts (Diana wasn't).

      But wait, Smith also says,

      Thirteen patients (14.0 percent) ultimately died during hospitalization as a result of associated injuries, but no deaths were related to aortic injury (Table 1). The four deaths in the group with aortic injury were due to multiorgan-system failure (two patients), acute myocardial infarction (one patient), and hemorrhage from pelvic fracture (one patient).

      I forget how to do the equations, but as I recall when a car collides against a solid barrier at 50mph, it has about 50 inches of crush space in which to come to a halt, and that comes to about 50g, which everybody told me is survivable. (One of you young whippersnappers can check my numbers.) John Paul Stapp tested it himself on his rocket sled and lived. But if you subjected 100 people to 50g, I don't know how many of them would get aortic rupture.

      The other major cause of death (mostly to people who aren't wearing seat belts) is head injury. Thanks to Ralph Nader, those windshields are carefully designed with plastic laminate that has just the right elasticity to bring a passenger's head to a stop with low enough force to avoid breaking his

    66. Re:What are the odds? by PhotoGuy · · Score: 1
      Aortic dissection. This is what kills you. It's the most common, lethal deceleration injury. Of course if you're going fast enough you're simply crushed, but at "lower" speeds a sudden deceleration is enough to rotate the heart (which is fairly mobile in the chest) and rip it off the aorta (which is fixed to the posterior chest wall). The arteriovenous ligament doesn't help, either. So the aorta ruptures and you die of a cardiac tamponade. Oh and this is how Princess Diana died.

      Jeeeesh, thanks, Captain Bringdown. You must be a lot of fun at parties.

      (Okay, that was actually one of the more interesting and informative posts, despite not being terribly cheery.)

      --
      Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
    67. Re:What are the odds? by clearreality · · Score: 2, Informative
      Preview: your odds of dying each time you get on a commercial flight are: 1 in 523,810. (See below.)

      Here is the source of the "1 in 5051" figure cited by the GP.
      http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm
      The methodology is also explained on that page. (Note, the NSC has many other interesting statistics and reports on this and related topics.)

      Basically, the number of airplane crash deaths in the US was divided by the entire population of the US in the year of the study (2003). The data was presented in two forms, annual odds of dying a particular way and lifetime odds of dying a particular way. This means that all of the following discussion is directly relevant only to someone living (and/or dying!) in the US.

      The airplane crash numbers were 1 in 391,981 (annual odds) and 1 in 5051 (lifetime odds). This means that the "1 in 5051" figure is the odds of a given person that died having died in a plane crash.

      The odds of a person who died in a given year having died in a plane crash are 1 in 391,981. These numbers are NOT directly translatable into an individual's odds of dying each time they get onto an airplane. For that, you would have to know how many flights over US territory there are in a given year and how many plane crashes occur in that same time (since the odds of dying are roughly equal to the odds of a plane crash).

      For an exact calculation, you'd need to know how many people flew on those flights (the aggregate would be ok), and how many people died in crashes (again, the aggregate is ok). From that, you could determine the odds of dying on any given plane flight.

      The FAA also has some interesting data. The target safety rate for the U.S. is 0.010 fatal accidents per 100,000 departures (appears to include all flights, commercial and private, even though the statistic is called the "Commercial Airline Fatal Accident Rate"), though the current rate in 2007 is 0.023 fatal accidents per 100,000 departures.

      http://www.faa.gov/data_statistics/accident_incide nt/

      See the "Airline Fatal Accident Rate" PDF on the linked page.

      For the below data, FAA/NTSB reports were used. Much more data is available at these sites for anyone who wants to do more analysis. For example, the commercial data below is a summary of Part 121, Part 135, and On-demand Part 135. The accident rates were much higher for the "On-demand Part 135" which not what we typically fly as commercial passengers.

      Also: http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/A_Stat.htm has annual summarized reports.

      The data for 2003 is:

      Commercial Air Carriers:
      Background data in 2003 (rounded to nearest whole million/billion):
      639 million passengers boarded commercial airplanes
      8 billion miles were flown
      11 million departures
      23 million flight hours
      Accidents:
      Total: 130
      Fatal: 21
      Deaths: 66
      Fatal accidents per departure: 1.9091x10^(-6) (1 in 523,810)
      Fatal accidents per hour: 9.130x1-^(-7) (1 in 1,095,239)

      General Aviation:
      Total Accidents: 1739
      Fatal Accidents: 352
      Injuries:
      Fatal: 632
      Serious: 324
      Minor: 523
      Involved but Not Injured: 1697

    68. Re:What are the odds? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Quite. During take-off and landing to be precise.

    69. Re:What are the odds? by Cracked+Pottery · · Score: 1

      Darn, you add it all up, and I figure my odds of dying are almost 100%.

    70. Re:What are the odds? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I feel safer rock climbing than flying in a commercial airline flight. Rock climbing is a potentially lethal activity -- lots of great climbers have died while climbing. Why do I feel safe?

      1. I get to choose who's belaying me. It's somebody I've worked with, and know, and explicitly told him I trust him with my life.

      2. The equipment is mine. I bought it new, and it's been in my possession ever since. I check it every time I use it, and climbing equipment is cheap enough that if it looks even a little bit off, I retire it on the spot. I would never think of trying to repair climbing equipment.

      3. I can take any gear that I think makes me safer. (Want an extra couple biners, just in case? Sure.) On an airline flight, I can't even take a knife any more. (Would-be hijackers rejoice, your passengers are now unarmed.)

      If you asked any rock climber to get belayed by Some Random Guy (who has a belay card from some gym, honest!) using only equipment used by hundreds of people before him (and possibly repaired when it was found to be damaged), he'd never go for it.

      (OK, maybe in a climbing gym, but the chance of dying in a climbing gym is pretty low, even if the equipment fails: they're usually not very high, and have really squishy floors. And if you want to do serious climbing, like lead climbing, they make you bring your own equipment.)

    71. Re:What are the odds? by fishbowl · · Score: 1

      Do you have any data to support that claim? That is, do you have accident data that is limited to cab rides en route to airports?

      --
      -fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
    72. Re:What are the odds? by Silver+Gryphon · · Score: 2, Funny

      Already got mine well padded. Papa John's, Pizza Hut, Mickey D's...

    73. Re:What are the odds? by AlecC · · Score: 1

      Lighter, cheaper, and more likely to save your life, you could buy a smoke hood.

      --
      Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
    74. Re:What are the odds? by NotmyNick · · Score: 1

      Motion sickness is caused by a disconnect between the information coming out of the visual system and the information coming from the vestibular system. In normal maneuvers, your best bet would be a window seat with a clear view of the horizon near but forward of the wing. In daytime. In clear weather. In hard maneuvering all bets are off since your body's sense of vertical will be wrong.

      --
      Notmysig
    75. Re:What are the odds? by Alsee · · Score: 3, Funny

      the aorta ruptures and you die of a cardiac tamponade

      Speaking as a guy, tamponade sounds like a really embarrassing way to die.

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
    76. Re:What are the odds? by KlaymenDK · · Score: 1

      The odds of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 5,051 in your whole lifetime. To give you some perspective, you're 5 times more likely to drown, 23 times more likely to fall to your death, and 60 times more likely to die in a car accident. Then, what are the odds of falling out of the sky and into the ocean with your aircar? Would you die, or suffer an overflow error?
    77. Re:What are the odds? by nerdonamotorcycle · · Score: 1

      No, but it doesn't seem to be too much of a leap to infer accident rates in taxicabs from accident rates in automobiles generally. The difference in death rates per passenger-mile between automobiles and commercial aircraft is huge--like, orders-of-magnitude huge. So I doubt that any difference between commercial taxicabs and private automobiles is going to matter.

    78. Re:What are the odds? by The+One+and+Only · · Score: 1

      Having parachutes and escape systems on airlines would allow D.B. Cooper-style hijackings and escapes.

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      In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
    79. Re:What are the odds? by ensignyu · · Score: 1

      I trust the pilots are a lot better at flying the plane than I am, so yes, I'm happy giving up control to them :)

      I suspect that people are overly confident about their driving skills as well. If I knew someone else were a better driver and responsible enough not to do anything stupid, I'd definitely want them to drive instead of me.

    80. Re:What are the odds? by Citizen+of+Earth · · Score: 1

      The odds of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 5,051 in your whole lifetime.

      I think a more useful statistic would be this: you're getting on a plane to fly 1000 miles in a first-world country(s). What is the probability that you will be killed or seriously injured?

    81. Re:What are the odds? by Alsee · · Score: 1

      If we drove cars like most people fly airplanes, we'd live like platypus.

      -

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    82. Re:What are the odds? by chgros · · Score: 1

      What about trains? I haven't heard of many people being afraid of riding trains, but you don't have any more control.

    83. Re:What are the odds? by aliquis · · Score: 1

      But if you do, how likely are you to die and because of which one of the factors?

    84. Re:What are the odds? by aliquis · · Score: 1

      I'd rather have the pilot control it than myself thought ;D

    85. Re:What are the odds? by bertok · · Score: 1
      I keep hearing these excuses over and over, but they still make no sense.

      There are no parachutes on airliners for the following reasons: 1. Parachutes are heavy, so a plane equipped with them could carry less cargo or passengers and ticket prices would go up. So? They already have life jackets on planes. Parachutes are not made of lead. the last time I put one on, it wasn't more than a few kg.

      2. Parachutes are very complex to pack, and would have to be unpacked, inspected, and repacked at regular maintenance intervals, at considerable expense (not to mention increased time out of service for the plane). How does that make any sense? The plane doesn't have to be grounded to repack a parachute. They can be replaced with a set of already checked and repacked parachutes, and they can be repacked at any time while the plane continues on its merry way. They're called 'spares', heard of them?

      3. If the plane is high enough that parachutes will be of any use, it's impossible to open most exit doors as pressure seals them against the inside of the fuselage. That's a design feature that can be changed. They're not designed to open because no existing airline uses parachutes. If airlines started using parachutes, the doors could be redesigned to open!

      4. Only a tiny fraction of passengers would understand how to use parachutes. When all the others slam into the ground at terminal velocity -- especially if the plane somehow survives -- it's a brave new world of stupendously huge liability for the airline.

      There is no user intervention required: They could be opened by a cord attached to the exit, just like the airforce uses for large paratrooper jumps.

      And are dead passengers much better for liability? This is exactly like the car manufacturers dragging their feet on installing seatbelts. There's no excuse. If the parachutes could save lives in some circumstances, they should be installed. Life jackets on the other hand are useless. Planes hitting the water 'at speed' invariably disintegrate and kill all aboard. However, many 100% fatal accidents have been over land, with enough available time to get the passangers out. Parachutes could have saved hundreds of lives.

      Think of it this way: In world war two, tens of thousands of allied soldiers were thrown out of planes, in the dark, while getting shot at. Most of them survived. Some people broke bones, some didn't have their chute open, but by and large, most people survived.

      The hardest part to having people jump from a jumbo is getting 300+ people to put on their parachutes in a reasonably short period of time. That's the only thing I can think of that would be a stumbling block. Everything else can be solved.

    86. Re:What are the odds? by Cthefuture · · Score: 1

      Yeah but the difference is, unless I'm flying the plane I have more control over my death while not on a plane.

      Don't give me that crap about illusion of control either. I know statistically driving a car looks more dangerous but those statistics include every moron on the road and there are a crapload of idiots driving around with no training, no care, and no skill. Those skew the results severely. If all drivers had professional training and took the same care/skill/maintenance that pilots do then maybe you could compare the safety of flying versus driving.

      Or maybe if you only examined car accidents where someone was killed and they really truly had absolutely no control over it (extraordinarily rare I would bet). Accidents that aren't your fault are often avoidable, especially with training (motorcycle rider here).

      --
      The ratio of people to cake is too big
    87. Re:What are the odds? by fishbowl · · Score: 1

      If you say so. I don't consider auto travel and air travel as comparable. Okay, they are modes of transportation. That's it. It's really just another "car analogy", just like those tried for every other controversial topic. It just happens that in this case, at first glance, a car analogy seems more appropriate, even though it's not (unless cars are going 900 km/h, carrying >100 passengers, loaded with tons of fuel, etc.) Car travel is *not* comparable to air travel, and the fact that people making the analogy do desperate things to make it fit (putting constraints on the statistics like 'miles traveled' or 'hours traveled', why not by 'surface area of windows?' sheesh). should be a giant red flag that there are confounding variables not being considered.

      --
      -fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
    88. Re:What are the odds? by Kreigaffe · · Score: 1

      727s work, too. Well, used to, at the very least. Just ask Mr. Cooper about that little trick.

      --
      ... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about. :|
    89. Re:What are the odds? by tygt · · Score: 1

      Given that facing forwards on a plane, I always feel like I'm facing uphill (not overly unpleasant), I'd imagine that facing backwards would require that the seats be considerably more reclined, else you'd feel like you're going to fall forwards out of your seat.

    90. Re:What are the odds? by aliquis · · Score: 1

      That was my joke! Damn you!

    91. Re:What are the odds? by RzUpAnmsCwrds · · Score: 1

      It's really just another "car analogy", just like those tried for every other controversial topic.


      Car travel is a valid benchmark to measure our risk tolerance. It's not about whether the danger has ANYTHING TO DO with car travel.

      Confounding variables are irrelevent, because we're not trying to determine WHY either activity is dangerous - only HOW dangerous it is.
    92. Re:What are the odds? by RzUpAnmsCwrds · · Score: 1

      What a load of crap. That might be true at low speeds but if an aircraft impacts with a mountain at 400kph (thats 110 metres per second) even a 70m 747 will be crushed flat in less than a second. Barely enough time for the occupants to even register they've hit something never mind do anything about it.


      You're assumiong that the "crash into mountain" accident is common. It isn't. Far more commin are accidents that occur during takeoff or landing (overrun runway, landing gear fails, etc.).
    93. Re:What are the odds? by dw604 · · Score: 2, Funny

      This could be solved if they used one giant parachute to help the entire plane float to the ground...

    94. Re:What are the odds? by munpfazy · · Score: 1

      Really?

      Falling deaths outnumber drownings? I find that really surprising. I'd love some more detail on that statistic if you've got it. (I'm also surprised that car deaths are not many orders of magnitude more frequent than the other causes. But, perhaps my intuition is mislead by the frequency of non-fatal car accidents.)

      Except for the elderly, the very unlucky, and those who climb around high places for sport, it seems pretty hard to actually kill yourself by falling.

      Drowning, on the other hand, seems like it ought to be a pretty regular occurrence given a world of beaches and pools and huge numbers of children and inexperienced and or intoxicated swimmers who visit them and probably don't take safety seriously.

    95. Re:What are the odds? by tomhudson · · Score: 1

      The idea is you dump all your stuff on the floor if you don't have much time, or stow it if you do, and the seat in front of you now acts as a partial shield from flying debris.

    96. Re:What are the odds? by imemyself · · Score: 1
      Regardless of the technical challenges that many other people have mentioned, parachutes would be completely useless for the vast majority of crashes. Most crashes happen within a fairly short period of time. It would probably take atleast five or ten minutes to get a hundred people to put on parachutes, stand in line, and jump. And that's if the plane is flying straight and level, at the right altitude, made for jumping out of, and if everyone is calm. People will be scared, some won't want to jump or will get to the door and freeze up. In the case of a mechanical failure on the aircraft, when being able to parachute out of the plane would probably be most useful, the plane will most likely not be flying straight and level. High g-forces would also make it much more difficult for people to move around the plane, as would shaking and turbulence.

      In very few accidents do the crew know five or ten minute ahead of time that they will be crashing. If the crew knows that long ahead of time, they could probably do something about it. Most planes could probably go from cruising altitude to landing on the ground with ten or fifteen minutes warning in an emergency.

      Also, the crew would have to be almost certain that the aircraft is going to crash. Otherwise, it would probably be much safer to try to land the plane. With hundreds of scared, inexperienced people jumping out of a plane, there is a pretty good chance that some of them will not survive. Someone else mentioned something about having them automatically deploy when people go out of the door. I'm not exactly sure of how that would work, but I would assume that they would either have to have the parachutes connected to a wire during normal flight (which would be kind of awkward, if not impossible), or connected during the emergency, which would be difficult to do in a short time period.

      Other thoughts:
      • What about kids? I'm sure it would be possible to have them be connected to their parents but that's an additional complexity and risk. What about young kids traveling along?
      • I guess these could work on long, over-water flights where the plane cannot land in a short period of time, but then you would have to make sure everyone took a flotation device thing with them or integrate them into the parachute, making them larger, and more complicated. However, then people would be scattered over a fairly long distance in the ocean, more likely than not by themselves. If the plane could be ditched in the water, atleast people would be together. If a plane is ditched at low speed and not going down too quickly it is possible for most of the people to survive. And I think that larger trans-oceanic aircraft carry inflatable rafts (though I could be wrong on that. I can't remember where I heard that)
      In conclusion I doubt that this would save more people than it would kill. And space wise, if given the option to take carry-on bag with stuff to do so I wouldn't be wasting hours of my time, or have a parachute stored in that space, that arguably *might* increase my chances of survival in the extremely unlikely event of an emergency where I would have the time to use it, I would take a carry-on bag without a second thought.
      --
      Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
    97. Re:What are the odds? by vr · · Score: 1

      The odds of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 5,051 in your whole lifetime.

      That is for everyone in the world, or only for those who ever fly? I would guess there are many people who never fly, or only fly a few times in their lives.

      How are the stats for people who actually go on an airplane? For people who fly once a year? Twice a year? Once a month? Only with European airlines? Asian airlines? ... and so on ...

    98. Re:What are the odds? by Fastolfe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      While I agree that those four issues are relatively weak (but still important when costing solutions for the problem), the biggest problem with parachutes is that exceedingly few air accidents occur in a manner that allows parachutes to be useful. If you suffer a catastrophic failure mid-flight, it's unlikely that you're going to have time to get parachutes on everyone and get them all out the door, even assuming the plane is continuing to fly straight and level (imagine trying to accomplish this while you're spiraling toward the ground). If you do have time to do all of that, then the plane really isn't in that bad of shape and it's more likely that the landing will be safer, even if it's unpowered with some critical systems failed, than throwing everyone out the door to fend for themselves.

      For accidents that occur during landing or just after take-off, even ignoring the time factor, your altitude is far too low to safely bail out.

      There could be some scenarios where parachutes would save lives, and the crew would be in a position to know that parachutes would be safer than trying to land, but I rather suspect these scenarios are going to be rare.

      At some point you have to ask yourself if the odds of this solution saving lives justify the enormous costs of implementing it.

    99. Re:What are the odds? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That is total bullshit. Airplanes have problems happen constantly. You just never hear about them because they're incredibly robust systems with multiple redundancies and the problems never even become apparent to the passengers the vast majority of the time.

      Even when the problems do become apparent to the passengers, the vast likelihood is that they will not die. Airliners can experience a loss of an engine, a partial loss of control, hydraulic leak, landing gear failing to retract or extend, run off the end of a runway, and many other serious problems without actually killing anyone inside. And this happens, and much more frequently than fatal accidents.

      Even when fatal accidents do happen, many people in the airplane survive. That is, oddly enough, the entire point of the article we are commenting on; some seats are more likely to survive than others. It would be hard to deduce this if you were "almost guaranteed to die", wouldn't it?

      The problem is that you get all of your information on these things from the evening news, which only reports the big ones because those are the only ones which sell eyeballs.

    100. Re:What are the odds? by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 1

      Exactly. People see news of huge plane crashes, and it's more spectacular, so they remember that as well. Also, seemingly every jumbo crash is news worldwide, but most fatal car crashes might be lucky to get a footnote in the local newspaper.

    101. Re:What are the odds? by munpfazy · · Score: 1

      It seems to me (someone with no significant knowledge of any related field) that there is one additional, fairly major problem.

      Passenger chutes only work if all of the following conditions are met:

      - A crash is overwhelmingly likely. (So likely that you'll accept losing a quarter of your passengers in botched jumps.)
      - the plane is stable enough that people can buckle on their chutes, get to a door, and open it.
      - the plane is high enough that you've got at least a few minutes before crashing. (Within which time a staggeringly efficient evacuation could empty a significant fraction of the plane at an altitude suitable for parachutes.)

      I don't have any statistics handy, but I certainly don't recall having heard of a crash involving a large commercial airliner for which those all apply. And, it's hard to think of a situation in which all three apply. Something like total engine failure in the middle of nowhere over rough terrain is possible, but even in that case it isn't easy to decide when to stop trying to get the engines started and give the order to evacuate.

      On the other hand, in a military plane where you've got a small number of people trained in using parachutes, equipment designed with smaller safety margins, and a significant chance that the plane will break in an obviously irreparable way because people are shooting at you, it makes a lot more sense.

    102. Re:What are the odds? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The times when an accident comes with enough warning to evacuate everyone from the airplane in flight are so rare that it simply isn't worth the money.

      Remember that money is a finite resource. Any safety improvement you make necessarily comes at the cost of some other improvement you don't make. Are parachutes truly the best improvement you can make for the money you spend? I doubt it.

      Even in extremely rare cases like the Sioux City DC-10 crash, there's no point at which death is certain and everybody knows that they should evacuate. Given the choice between jumping out that airplane in some inadequately-tested built-by-the-lowest-bidder parachute and riding it to the ground, I'd probably ride it to the ground. A lot of people died in that crash but a lot of people survived too.

      You're basically going to spend a ton of money and save maybe a hundred people every couple of decades. I'm sure there are plenty of better ways to spend that money, on things like better traffic detection and avoidance technology, better ATC facilities, better security, etc.

    103. Re:What are the odds? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Truth: it is only passenger miles that matter. You see, when I go on a plane, I travel usually at least a few hundred miles. When I get in a car, I only travel a few miles. The alternative to a several-hundred-mile plane trip is not a several mile car trip... it is a several hundred mile car trip. The useful mechanic for calculating which is safer for a given trip is.... passenger miles.

      Now, the probability of dying on a plane in your lifetime compared to in a car is stupid, because you travel many more miles in a car then in a plane, over a typical lifetime... but still, if I were going on a single trip (or any given trip) I'd care to know the comparative odds of dying in a plane traveling 500 miles vs the odds of dying in a car in those same 500 miles. The only point you have at all is that planes are less safe over shorter trips - so I wouldn't advise using air-travel for trips to your grocery store. Besides, you really don't want to go through hours of security for that.

    104. Re:What are the odds? by toddestan · · Score: 1

      Because if we flew airplanes like most people drive cars, we'd die like flies.

      You mean smeared upon the windsheild at 70MPH?

    105. Re:What are the odds? by sir_montag · · Score: 1

      Er... Regarding #3, isn't the outside pressure *lower* the higher you are in the atmosphere? One would think that the doors would be easier to open up at a high altitude, if anything.

    106. Re:What are the odds? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lower pressure on the outside sucks the door towards the outside, hence sealing it. Since you need to push it inward to open, fighting the force pulling it outside, it impossible for a human to open.

    107. Re:What are the odds? by WK2 · · Score: 1

      They wanted to install seats facing backwards in airplanes specifically to reduce the deaths from the initial crash. Howver, they determined that the flying public wouldn't accept rear-facing seats. Considering all the BS the flying public puts up with nowadyas, maybe its time to float the idea again.

      How about seats that swivel? Then passengers could sit facing forward, and in the rare crash, could turn backward, at the instructions of a flight attendant. This could cause problems, like kids being asses and glaring at the person behind them while seated, but they could all easily be remedied by the seats being locked, and unlocked in an emergency.

      --
      Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
    108. Re:What are the odds? by evildogeye · · Score: 1

      There is another significant difference, which is the complete faith you must give to technology you had nothing to do with. If you are driving in a car, and the engine stops working, you have a very good job of coming to a slow stop. In a plane if a component stops working, you are dead. Human nature is more prone to be concerned with this type of problem. Ironically, technology is so reliable these days that you are far more likely to die due to human error in a car (your own mistakes behind the wheel or another drivers mistakes behind the wheel) than you are in a plane due to machine failure.

    109. Re:What are the odds? by PingPongBoy · · Score: 1

      Sitting close to the wing isn't a bad idea

      But then I can't see down.

      --
      Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
    110. Re:What are the odds? by PingPongBoy · · Score: 0

      variables not considered

      If I drive, I am master of my own destiny to a large degree. On a plane, if one stupid thing breaks, there's a higher chance for total control loss.

      The statistics for flight safety are probably skewed heavily by the fear of flying. If the entire population flew even half as much as they ride in cars, the reality of flight dangers would make you cry for your mommy.

      --
      Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
    111. Re:What are the odds? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you're missing a big one.

      If the plane is actually sufficiently under control to allow people to jump off using parachutes, it's almost certainly sufficiently under control to have a good chance of landing it safely.

      For parachutes to be likely to be of any use, passengers would have to be wearing them all the time, and every seat would have to be equipped with an ejection mechanism.

      By the time a crash is nearly certain, you aren't going to be able to move around the plane, open doors or put on a parachute. Imagine the worst turbulence you've experienced in-flight, multiply that by ten, and add a steep angle.

    112. Re:What are the odds? by SoupIsGoodFood_42 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's interesting about Nader -- I did see a book about this once, but didn't read it. If this event and 9/11 had happened around the same time, Nader would have been laughed at compared to The Evils of Terrorism. While 3000 people dying in one year is a tragedy that would be great to avoid, obviously, 25,000 a year is a greater tragedy, yet undoubtedly, out of many who don't make their kids wear a seatbelt, some probably think the dangers of terrorism are so great that they support war to stop it.

      It really does put things into perspective. Nader deserves a lot more respect than being the butt of many jokes, especially compared to what his opponents have achieved.

    113. Re:What are the odds? by Phroggy · · Score: 1

      WHen life gives you lemons, make lemonade; when life gives you something else, well, you do what you can.

      --
      $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
      $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
    114. Re:What are the odds? by einhverfr · · Score: 1

      There are some statisticians who think that the odds of being killed in a plane crash are approximately the same as being killed in an asteroid strike. The idea is that, when a major asteroid strike occurs, it could kill a sizeable portion of the earth's population, but based on the average time between major strikes...

      --

      LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
    115. Re:What are the odds? by tomhudson · · Score: 1
      Several problems with swiveling seats:
      1. If you've seen how they pack people in, swivelling isn't an option. The swivel mechanism would be heavier and weaker, defeating the purpose - no point if all that's going to happen is the seat breaks off and crushes the occupant in the next seat, and so on ... domino effect;
      2. How do you deal with the handicapped, limited mobility, kids ...

      Why not just have them facing backwards, and be done with it. Far safer, and a lot cheaper to implement using mostly existing hardware.

    116. Re:What are the odds? by CensorshipDonkey · · Score: 1

      You could always buy your own and take it with you I guess, but I wouldn't want to pay extra for it since air travel is so safe. It'd be better to put the money into health insurance or a pension if I wanted the most life for my buck.

      I bet you get some funny looks from checkpoint security as you try to explain why you want to bring a parachute as a carry-on.
    117. Re:What are the odds? by TheLink · · Score: 1

      You auction "La Tamponade du Mystere" to the highest bidding vampire?

      They should be able to afford high prices. Compound interest while in torpor for centuries should add up to quite a lot. But of course maybe a few of them forgot that banks tend to treat dead account holders differently and didn't make the necessary "arrangements".

      --
    118. Re:What are the odds? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You lose that the moment you were conceived.

      Abort Y/N?

    119. Re:What are the odds? by ptbarnett · · Score: 1
      Lighter, cheaper, and more likely to save your life, you could buy a smoke hood.

      I used to keep one of these in my carry-on bag. It was about the size of a can of Coke.

      But, they were recalled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission:

      http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml06/06144. html

      Apparently, they weren't as effective against carbon monoxide as was claimed. They were probably still better than nothing at all, but the product was pulled off the market and the company is out of business:

      http://www.evacsafety.com/

      I found another smoke hood for sale here (ironically, from the same place I bought the last one):

      http://www.aeromedix.com/product-exec/parent_id/1/ category_id/12/product_id/1074/nm/Safe_Escape_Smok e_Hood

      But, I don't know if it's small enough to easily pack in my carry-on bag. The images only depict the hood on people that are wearing it.

    120. Re:What are the odds? by chris.evans · · Score: 1

      The passenger compartment should be modular so it can be ejected w/ a chute or too mounted on the top to slow the decent.

    121. Re:What are the odds? by nbauman · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That's interesting about Nader -- I did see a book about this once, but didn't read it. That's probably Unsafe at Any Speed. Even though it was published in 1965, it's still a great book about how automotive engineering failed -- the engineers did a great job of figuring out how to save lives, but the politicians and corporate owners brushed them aside for reasons that I still can't understand.

      Every engineer should read this book. (The Wikipedia entry sucks BTW.)

      If this event and 9/11 had happened around the same time, Nader would have been laughed at compared to The Evils of Terrorism. While 3000 people dying in one year is a tragedy that would be great to avoid, obviously, 25,000 a year is a greater tragedy

      Thomas Schelling, the Nobel laureate in economics, said that 9/11 is three months of auto fatalities, and more people die every year in bathtubs.

      It really does put things into perspective. Nader deserves a lot more respect than being the butt of many jokes, especially compared to what his opponents have achieved. I'd compare Nader to Michael Moore. Sicko is also dramatic and slightly overstated, but its facts are basically right. Same with Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

      I believe that scientists and engineers, technical people generally -- like the ones who read Slashdot -- have a special obligation to look at the facts, because they can understand the science better than most people.

      They should also look at the politics behind the science (as Nobel laureate chemist Mario Molina said), because all your science doesn't mean shit if some stupid corporate shill like George W. Bush can brush it off.

      When they start ridiculing Nader and Moore and Gore, that's when, instead of joining in, you have to look at the facts. These corporations are spending billions of dollars to put one over on you, and if you fall for it, they'll be laughing at you too.

      The point Nader and Moore and Gore are making is that there's a problem with democracy when these wealthy interest groups are running the country, and we have to take it back.
    122. Re:What are the odds? by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      i'm sure on test flights for some jet airliners they added exit tubes that allowed a parachute jump to be made.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    123. Re:What are the odds? by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      I think the real problem is that in most crashes by the time it is realised there will be a crash it is too late to use parachutes.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    124. Re:What are the odds? by edunbar93 · · Score: 1

      Whereas if you get creamed by some dumbass running a red light, it's not quite as scary as you don't even know it's going to happen until it has?

      --
      "No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
    125. Re:What are the odds? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, this isn't a new idea. I have an old copy of Popular Mechanics somewhere showing passenger compartments, made as separate units, dropping out of the plane fuselage on parachutes. I doubt that this would work any better than trying to parachute the plane as one unit though.

    126. Re:What are the odds? by mstahl · · Score: 1

      But with rear-facing seats you face the possibility of debris flying directly at you with nothing to block it. It's sort of a trade-off. When I heard an engineer talking about this on TV (was it mythbusters?), he said that a baby sitting in its parent's lap could "become a projectile" in a crash. Kind of a wild way of putting it but it makes sense. I lean towards backward-facing seats, though. The flying public would put up with it just as well as forward-facing seats if they could board from the rear anyway.

    127. Re:What are the odds? by steveheath · · Score: 1

      ...but, what are the odds of dying in an plane crash? I mean, if you're involved in a crash the odds of dying must be pretty damn high. This talk about the odds of being involved in the crash in the first place, must seriously dilute the useful stats that tell us the best place to sit.

      Having said this, I think that if you're in a crash, you must be a very lucky individual to survive it - I'm still not convinced the seat is going to make a big difference.

    128. Re:What are the odds? by tomhudson · · Score: 1

      "When I heard an engineer talking about this on TV (was it mythbusters?), he said that a baby sitting in its parent's lap could "become a projectile" in a crash"

      What a bunch of BS. You could say the same about a car. Belt the kid into a certified car/aircraft child seat.

      For infants and children who fit in rear-facing and forward-facing car seats with harnesses: FAA recommends using car seats that have this label: "This restraint is certified for use in motor vehicles and aircraft." For best fit in aircraft seats, use a seat less than 16 inches wide.

      The FAA requires airlines to allow the use of a certified car seat if the child has a ticket. The FAA strongly recommends, but does not require, that children under age 2 ride in a car seat.

      Not allowed: booster seats or child vests. Also, NO "belly belts" made to hold a child on an adult's lap (allowed in some countries).

      For children over age 2 without car seats: seat belts must be used. A snug fit may not be possible for small, thin children.

      For children who no longer fit into car seats with harnesses: lap belts must be used. The aircraft seat belt may fit a child better than a lap belt in a motor vehicle. The lap belt will help restrain a child in turbulance or an air crash.

      Harnesses that hold a baby on a parent's lap are NOT permitted, even if claiming to meet FAA standards.

      A bit of common sense or a few seconds searching would have told you this.
    129. Re:What are the odds? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, I think it has to do with crashing down from about an altitude of 30,000 feet.

      Which is a little silly, really. You're just as dead either way. And a plane crash is less likely to end in a drawn-out, agonizing death -- the car crash statistics no doubt include all the people who died on the way to the hospital.

    130. Re:What are the odds? by mstahl · · Score: 1

      s/baby/laptop/ and my point still stands.

    131. Re:What are the odds? by tomhudson · · Score: 1

      Riiiight .... you'd rather have a 1near-00% guarantee of death by aortic hyper-extension rather than a chance of injury by some bozo's laptop. Stop being so negative. Rear-facing seats are less of a risk because of how your body is made. And there's nothing to say you can't put your arms in front of your face. Better a bruised or broken arm than your heart being ripped off its arteries.

  6. Reminds me of... by rundstykke · · Score: 5, Funny

    ..an entertaining read I bumped into a couple of months back, describing how to survive a freefall from 35'000 feet...

    http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/carkeet.html


    /Rundstykke

    1. Re:Reminds me of... by Dunbal · · Score: 1

      This "article" is so very, very wrong in a number of ways. It's a work of fiction, nothing more.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    2. Re:Reminds me of... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm still reading it. Just in case.

    3. Re:Reminds me of... by Elemenope · · Score: 3, Funny

      It's funny. Laugh.

      --
      All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
    4. Re:Reminds me of... by felipekk · · Score: 1

      Well, if I endup in that situation, I`m doing what it says unless someone shows me other things to try. It`s not like what is going to kill me is those tips...

  7. Worry about something else by Kohath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you're really worried about a plane crash, I suggest staying home. Maybe don't get out of bed at all.

    Watching and reading the news is your real problem. Things that happen on the news are extremely unlikely to happen to you. That's why you never see headlines like "Jill Larson Goes to the Market. Buys Coffee. (Subtitle: Coffee purchase exceeds analysts' expectations by 100%)"

    That's all. I have to go to the market. But I'm not buying coffee, so no commercial airliners will crash today.

    1. Re:Worry about something else by LGagnon · · Score: 1

      That's why you never see headlines like "Jill Larson Goes to the Market. Buys Coffee.
      Actually, you do. They call these things commercials.
    2. Re:Worry about something else by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe don't get out of bed at all.
      Remember, most people die in bed.

    3. Re:Worry about something else by ensignyu · · Score: 1

      I see headlines like that in The Onion :)

  8. BBC already did this... by Joce640k · · Score: 5, Informative

    The BBC did a documentary on this...and...

    The best place is "near an exit door".

    Statistically, most crashes are survivable if you can get out. The biggest impediment to getting out is the number of other people between you and the door. The ones who don't get out die of smoke/fire.

    --
    No sig today...
    1. Re:BBC already did this... by Wellington+Grey · · Score: 1

      The best place is "near an exit door".


      On a German plain...

      -Grey
    2. Re:BBC already did this... by jools33 · · Score: 1

      I heard from a safety expert in the oil industry that fire survival was the biggest problem - and he suggested that all airliners should issue their passengers with oven proof turkey bags - to place over your head should a fire breakout - by his reckoning - it would give a minute or 2 extra survival time to make an exit from the plane. Also he commented that life jackets are almost a complete waste of space on a commercial airliner - their have been very few recorded instances of them being successfully used in a crash situation.

    3. Re:BBC already did this... by johnw · · Score: 1

      The trouble with that Youtube clip is that it's utterly unrealistic. Everyone on the plane was clearly prepared to evacuate and moved swiftly onto the ramps and out. In real life you'd get lots of people dithering at the exit doors, a few wanting to go back to fetch things, etc, etc.

      You'd need two strong people at the top of each ramp physically throwing people out of the plane, and then more at the bottom to move the passengers away as soon as they reached the bottom if you wanted to get close to that with real passengers.

    4. Re:BBC already did this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      On the other hand, the "flotation cushions" and life jackets come pretty much free, and in those very very very few cases where they might actually matter, wouldn't you rather have them than not?

      It's been known for a long time that the fire is the most deadly part of most airplane crashes, though (other than the ones that involve, you know, slamming vertically into the ground at high speeds). I remember watching a show that mentioned an effort to develop less flammable jet fuel, that wouldn't ignite during crashes. The test was a partial failure in that the fuel still ignited (pretty hard to come up with a mixture that'll burn efficiently in an engine, but not during a crash), but temperatures in the passenger cabin were much more survivable.

      I wonder if they ever followed up on that research. The fuel probably makes up the majority of the ticket price these days, so maybe it's not economical. There have been very few major crashes in the U.S. lately, at any rate.

    5. Re:BBC already did this... by LingNoi · · Score: 1

      Actually I remember watching a TV program years ago that said the airliners wouldn't use the same fuel that the military use (which doesn't explode) because it was more expensive.

    6. Re:BBC already did this... by juan2074 · · Score: 1

      Actually, seeing all those Germans sliding out of the plane with that music was SCARY!

    7. Re:BBC already did this... by juan2074 · · Score: 1

      It is still pretty hard to make Jet-A (kerosene) explode.

    8. Re:BBC already did this... by GoulDuck · · Score: 1

      I have seen this about 10 times now .. the music definitely adds allot to the visuals.
      My guess is that many of the passengers got scared of the crew, when the whole thing starts!

      But true - this is under ideal conditions and there is no way that this could be achieved in a real life situation. I would be amazed to see this get pulled off in the only double the time, with real passengers.

    9. Re:BBC already did this... by WombatDeath · · Score: 1

      I saw that documentary. They also mentioned that there was a positive correlation between getting out alive and watching the pre-flight demo by the flight attendants. In particular, it seems that a significant minority of people inflate their life jacket as soon as they pull it on, and are subsequently unable to make it through a submerged exit.

    10. Re:BBC already did this... by LingNoi · · Score: 1

      Aren't there different levels of jet fuel? From what I remember from the TV program the military used class A and commercial airlines used class B fuel. I have no idea what the differences are. Do you know what this means?

    11. Re:BBC already did this... by juan2074 · · Score: 1

      I don't know what class A or class B mean.

      The Air Force often uses JP-8 -- also kerosene, just like Jet-A, but with additives that are not put into commercial fuel.

  9. Front or back seat of a car by antifoidulus · · Score: 2, Funny

    provided you aren't driving. That is much more important question. Or even better yet, why in the hell are SUVs legal? An ever better question that can save many more lives!

    1. Re:Front or back seat of a car by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To minimize the gene propagation of losers like you who can't afford one. :-)

    2. Re:Front or back seat of a car by that+IT+girl · · Score: 1

      As opposed to the single drivers and soccer moms who don't need one, and never take it off-road or any of the sporty things you see in commercials that it was supposedly designed to do, but still feel the need to drive a giant vehicle that gets 15 mph.
      And then swerve around every little bump in the road with your rugged tires and extra-strong suspension. I don't get you people.

      --
      10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
      20 DRINK COFFEE
      30 GOTO 10
    3. Re:Front or back seat of a car by that+IT+girl · · Score: 1

      mpg* missed that typo in the preview, sorry.

      --
      10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
      20 DRINK COFFEE
      30 GOTO 10
  10. Not on Oceanic 815... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... where all but one of the survivors from the tail section so far as been kidnapped or murdered.

    1. Re:Not on Oceanic 815... by no_pets · · Score: 1

      Damn, I wish that I had mod points. :-)

      --
      "A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
    2. Re:Not on Oceanic 815... by AJWM · · Score: 2, Informative

      where all but one of the survivors from the tail section so far as been kidnapped or murdered.

      And, strictly speaking, he wasn't a tail section passenger. His assigned seat was midsection, he just happened to be in a tailsection bathroom when the excitement started. (Although IIRC he had time to strap himself into a seat which ended up in a tree.)

      (I just got Season 2 from the library and watched the whole thing in about three days. Probably fried some neural circuits. ;-)

      --
      -- Alastair
  11. Excuse me... by AsmCoder8088 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The raw data from these 20 accidents has been languishing for decades in National Transportation Safety Board files, waiting to be analyzed by anyone curious enough to look and willing to do the statistical drudgework.

    So, they are working off of a sample size of twenty??? Not sure if I would draw too many conclusions from this dataset.

    1. Re:Excuse me... by pyite · · Score: 1

      I had the exact same thought. At first I thought this might be kinda cool. Then I saw 20. Twenty? You have to be kidding.

      --

      "Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman

    2. Re:Excuse me... by kfaroo · · Score: 1

      They had to discard the data from the other 5000 accidents where no one survived irrespective of where they were seated.

    3. Re:Excuse me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't worry they are working with Al-Qaeda to get more data soon.

    4. Re:Excuse me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      20 plane crashes is a bit different than 20 car crashes. Lets say the least populated plane had 150 people on board - thats a sample size of 3,000 people. Now compare that to a car with four people in it (extremely rare from what I've seen, but what the hell) - 80 people. Yup.

    5. Re:Excuse me... by vought · · Score: 0, Redundant

      So, they are working off of a sample size of twenty??? Not sure if I would draw too many conclusions from this dataset.


      Exactly - and one of those twenty is Delta Air Lines flight 191 - a freak accident in which the back of the aircraft separated and stopped, while the front of the airplane crashed into two four-million gallon water tanks, blew up, and killed everyone in it.

      That's enough to skew your data right there. But I'm sure we'll hear all the funny quotes about "backing into mountains" anyway. The back of the airplane is barely safer - if you're in a crash that kills people, it's likely that the vast majority of the people on the airplane will die.

    6. Re:Excuse me... by sumdumass · · Score: 1

      5000? Have there been that many commercial airplane that crashed? I don't think the number is all that high.

    7. Re:Excuse me... by T-Bone-T · · Score: 1

      That's what I was thinking!

      I also came to the realization that there have been only 20 crashes with survivors over the last few decades. That isn't very many crashes at all. Just think how that compares to the perhaps thousands of car crashes every single week with survivors!

    8. Re:Excuse me... by LordNimon · · Score: 1

      Holy cow, Delta Flight 191 crashed, American Airlines flight 191 crashed, Prinair Flight 191 crashed, and Comair Flight 191 crashed. I think I'll stay away from Flight 191.

      --
      And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
      To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
    9. Re:Excuse me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, they are working off of a sample size of twenty??? Not sure if I would draw too many conclusions from this dataset.

      I understand the need for more data.
      Maybe they're taking volunteers. Want to sign up?

    10. Re:Excuse me... by fermion · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Yeah, and this is likely the least of their troubles. The data was basically 50/50, and they did not show that 5% difference was significant.

      Given thier analysis, and what often happens in a plane crash, this is what I think might be a more reasonable conclusion.

      In the event of a passenger jet crash, probability is that everyone will die. If everyone does not die, the statistics still favor a majority of the passengers being killed in the crash.

      The analysis in the paper appears to show a slightly higher probability of survival in the back of the plane, but did not show that the level was statistically significant. In the other cases the was not a clear effect of seat position, and often the back of the plane appeared to be preferentially fatal.

      So, in summary, the passenger jet is not likely to crash. In the few cases where a crash does occur, and fatalities ensue, then there are not, on average, going to be many survivors. In the extremely rare case that jet crashes and there are survivors, a passenger may be safer up back, unless it is one of those cases where you are safe in front. Therefore, the best thing to do is sit somewhere in the middle.

      --
      "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
    11. Re:Excuse me... by rv8 · · Score: 1

      In the event of a passenger jet crash, probability is that everyone will die. If everyone does not die, the statistics still favor a majority of the passengers being killed in the crash.

      Sorry to burst your bubble, but the actual data from the NTSB shows that there is less than a 10% chance of a fatality in any single accident for scheduled US airline operations. The data from 1987 to 2006 shows a total of 628 accidents, but only 60 of those had any fatalities at all (Note: their definition of an accident is essentially "aircraft gets damaged, or anyone gets injured"). For the accidents with fatalities, an average of 36.6 people died per accident. Thus much less than half of the people on the aircraft die in each fatal accident. The data over that period shows 0.018 fatal accidents per 100,000 flights, or about one fatal accident in 5,500,000 flights.

      --
      Kevin Horton
  12. The MythBusters say it is the by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The MythBusters say it is the rear facing flight attendant seat in the back of the plane.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(season_2 )#Escape Slide Parachute

    1. Re:The MythBusters say it is the by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I realize my family dinner conversation strays from the norm, but I figured that was the relatively logical conclusion (it's what we came up with). Back of the plane, because having a airbag of 400 people and many tons of steel is helps, rear facing because rear facing is much safer (and no whip lash), and the jump seats because jump seats have 5-point harnesses instead of shitty belts that's probably more likely to rip you in two rather than save you.

    2. Re:The MythBusters say it is the by IBBoard · · Score: 0

      Which is exactly the reason why military aircraft full of soldiers normally have the seats facing the rear.

      Rear-facing seats are much safer in a crash* but civilians feel uncomfortable that way round. Since comfort is most important to air passengers, seats normally face the front (except some of the posher 1st class ones where they have them paired and facing in opposite directions).

      Squadies probably feel a bit uncomfortable and disorientated flying backwards as well, but at least you can just say "tough luck, soldier, you're going to have to bear it". That doesn't go down so well with customers!

      * because as the vehicle decelerates then you're already pushed against the seat, rather than being suddenly thrown forwards and having your heart tear itself out, as mentioned at http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=253561 &cid=19938945

    3. Re:The MythBusters say it is the by Cairnarvon · · Score: 1

      On another episode they demonstrated that's the most dangerous seat, because the crash position isn't adapted for rear-facing seats in typical crash landings. All they demonstrated on the episode you're talking about is that in very, very specific circumstances, it's possible for a person sitting there to survive.

    4. Re:The MythBusters say it is the by mykdavies · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The MythBusters say it is the rear facing flight attendant seat in the back of the plane. Without having seen the episode in question, I'd imagine that all that they could reasonably show is that a sober and alert member of cabin crew who has been through extensive training in how to survive emergency situations and is sitting in the rear facing flight attendant seat in the back of the plane is most likely to survive.
      --
      The world has changed and we all have become metal men.
  13. Is it expensive by WormholeFiend · · Score: 3, Funny

    to get a seat inside the black box?

    1. Re:Is it expensive by Dunbal · · Score: 1

      It's the G forces that kill you. Even inside the "black box" you'd be splattered all over the front wall.

            If you're sitting in the back of a plane that hits the ground nose first, all that damage and crumpling buys you time since the plane is changing kinetic energy into "damage". By the time your section enters the impact zone (and yes we're talking milliseconds) you will have decelerated a little. This means less G forces when your section hits the ground (which is NOT that flexible and rather unforgiving), which might allow you to live. Provided the speed of impact was close to what was survivable. Then again, you might survive just long enough to be burned to death.

            Planes don't always hit the ground nose first, however. Looking on the bright side, it's over fairly quickly...

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    2. Re:Is it expensive by Albert+Sandberg · · Score: 1

      to get a seat inside the black box?

      Probably, but the shocks would still kill you, however, you can pickup a cheap black plastic bag at your local supermarket and pretend it's like the real thing. Warning though, do not try while driving. Better use your tinfoil hat.

    3. Re:Is it expensive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Warning warning! Joke alert!

    4. Re:Is it expensive by Alsee · · Score: 1

      That depends.... how many hours can you say Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! while holding your breath under water?

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
    5. Re:Is it expensive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why don't they just build the whole plane like the black box? And what's the deal with airline peanuts??

      Thank you, I'll be here all week! Try the veal!

  14. I always choose the seat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    adjacent to Cory Doctorow. If Death stops by, surely, it'll die (ha!) laughing at his stupid, stupid haircut.

  15. Best way to survice a crash... by niceone · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...just reboot and you should be fine.

    1. Re:Best way to survice a crash... by Alsee · · Score: 1

      A really bad crash can leave your system deader than a doornail.
      That's why it's important to always make backups.... especially before going on a flight.

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
    2. Re:Best way to survice a crash... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      unless it's a head crash...

    3. Re:Best way to survice a crash... by tepples · · Score: 2, Funny

      ...just reboot and you should be fine. Yeah, if you're Hindu.
  16. excellent by JustNiz · · Score: 3, Funny

    All those arrogant dicks in first class get to die first.

    1. Re:excellent by nelsonal · · Score: 0, Redundant

      These days most people in first class are very polite fliers for rather than being their by virtue of mad cash they are mostly there on frequent flier upgrades so they have a pretty good understanding of what bugs people about flying. Of course it never hurts that they usually had the champane over the oj when they sat down.

      --
      Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
    2. Re:excellent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      So, sitting in the back, I get to die laughing. Cool.

    3. Re:excellent by RockWolf · · Score: 1

      About 42ms before you meet Mr Ground, yes.

      --
      February 9th, 2009 8:55pm: Slashdot becomes self-aware.
  17. How's this for irony? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    So, the back of the plane is safest, and that's where they put the smokers?

    You'd think they'd put those who want to commit slow suicide in the nose or something, just to help them speed things along.

    1. Re:How's this for irony? by ari_j · · Score: 1

      Is there still anywhere in the world where commercial airline flights are not non-smoking by law?

  18. The real answer is different by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
    Deep vein thrombosis is more dangerous to travellers than crashes. In that light the answer to the safest place to sit is; choose an aisle seat. http://www.pacificislandtravel.com/airlines/deepve inthrombosis.html

    With over 1 million passengers at any one time in the air and up to 10% medically unfit to fly, according to one estimate, problems both minor and serious are just as likely to happen at 7000 ft. as on the ground. Regardless of whether you are sitting in an airplane high in the sky or on the ground at the movies - one is suscptible to DVT, because the rate of blood flow to your lower limbs is reduced by about two thirds. According to sme estimates, there are about 2,000 passengers that die from the condition every year. "The airlines are not in the business of scaring people, " says Andrew Keller, Director of the Airport Medical Centre at Sydney's Kingsford Smith airport, who sees one person a day with leg swelling and perhaps one every two months with actual DVT. "There's always the risk of a terrorist boarding an aircraft: do you warn passengers about that too?"

    http://www.karinya.com/dvt.htm

    It used to be (on the airlines I travelled on, I don't travel any more) that the bulkhead seats had significantly more leg room. That made them easier to get into and out of. It also made it easier to keep my legs moving.
  19. Anti-EU much ? by Altesse · · Score: 0

    Move to the back of the Airbus. I find this sentence somewhat xenophobic and anti-european. Does this mean that an Airbus is more likely to crash than a Boeing ? Feh.
    1. Re:Anti-EU much ? by funwithBSD · · Score: 3, Informative

      You are a little over sensitive.

      "Move to the back of the bus." is a common phrase in America.

      --
      Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
    2. Re:Anti-EU much ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      to - it means: (to be safe in case of crash) find an Airbus and take a seat in the back

    3. Re:Anti-EU much ? by dubbayu_d_40 · · Score: 2, Funny

      C'est honky - it's a noir thing.

    4. Re:Anti-EU much ? by toddhisattva · · Score: 1, Troll

      Are you kidding?

      The damn tails fall off of Airbus planes.

      Then they blame the pilot for being hard on the rudder. And some worthless US government functionary leans over forwards to appear fair, and goes along with blaming the dead pilot.

      The pilot can dance a jig on the rudder pedals and the damn rudder should not fall off!

      I have never been on a Airbus, and will try hard never to be on an Airbus.

      They're cheap glued-together crap. Obviously the result of committees representing *multiple* socialist governments. Perhaps the second-worst way to design a passenger plane. The worst is a committee of a single big communist government.

      Sure, the '37 had some rudder reversal issues a decade ago, but they did not come unglued during the excursions. Shareholders have limited patience, unlike governments.

      And you'll not smear me with "xenophobia" or whatever the current socialist excuse for not thinking is. I'd get on a Japanese jumbo with no worries whatsoever, if they made any.

      Here's hoping that Japan starts building heavy bombers and their civilian spin-off passenger liners. *Clink!*

      Until then,

      It's Boeing or I ain't going.

    5. Re:Anti-EU much ? by teebob21 · · Score: 1

      This comment likely has nothing to do with Airbus vs. Boeing safety statistics. You may recall the early 1960's in the US when the back of the bus was a stigmatized area. Blacks in back, whites rode up front. The phrase "(Move to the) Back of the bus, Rosa" still gets thrown around as a racial joke in my area, although rarely in seriousness. I believe the submitter was attempting to create a witty wordplay which was lost on many Slashdotters.

      --
      khasim (12/9/06): In a blind taste test, more people preferred Coke over the Pepsi that I had previously pissed in.
    6. Re:Anti-EU much ? by AJWM · · Score: 1

      Does this mean that an Airbus is more likely to crash than a Boeing ?

      Actually it probably does. Boeing has a lot of corporate history to draw on when it comes to making aircraft that can survive serious failures and still keep flying -- a lot of this came from analysis of flak damage to returning bombers during WW-II. Areas that were never damaged on returning aircraft indicated an area that was particularly vulnerable (if the plane got hit there, it didn't come back), and they'd design around whatever the weakness was (typically by adding another layer of redundancy). This leads to robustness against certain kinds of accidents (e.g. a DC-10 crash caused because a cargo door failure ripped up all three "redundant" hydraulic lines to the tail, as they passed through the same area. A similar class Boeing aircraft used four lines, with no one location containing all four. And yes, I know a DC-10 is not an Airbus.)

      I'm certainly not aware of any Boeing crashes caused by software failure, which can't be said for Airbus.

      That said, I've never changed a flight just because the designated equipment was an Airbus.

      --
      -- Alastair
    7. Re:Anti-EU much ? by moco · · Score: 1

      I don't know where you got your information from, but Airbus is consortium of aviation companies owned by EADS which answers to stockholders, not any socialist government.

      Check the wikipedia entry for EADS

      --
      moi
    8. Re:Anti-EU much ? by Milkyman · · Score: 1

      I still think you're thinking about this too much. Do you ever ride the bus? when you get on you are expected to move to the back of the bus so more people can keep getting on. The phrase is that simple.

    9. Re:Anti-EU much ? by gibbsjoh · · Score: 1

      > A similar class Boeing aircraft used four lines, with no one location containing all four lines

      As an all-round geek and TriStar fan, I'd point out that the Lockheed L1011 had similar redundancy, with none of the hydraulic systems all coming together in the same place. There's a reason they call the DC-10 the 'Death Cruiser."

      >I'm certainly not aware of any Boeing crashes caused by software failure, which can't be said for Airbus.

      I'd challenge you to find a crash of an A320 or later (A300 and A310 are not fly by wire) that was caused by a _combination_ of pilot error and some idiosynchracies in the flight control software (such as AF296, here). And in case you think I'm being anti-pilot, "why yes, I am a pilot." (Commercial Single and Multi Engine Land, Instrument Airplane.)

      JG

      --
      -- "...I'm a bad guy because I, well, I sing some rock-and-roll songs." M. Manson
    10. Re:Anti-EU much ? by Doctor+O · · Score: 1

      "Move to the back of the bus." is a common phrase in America.

      Yeah, as it was in South Africa not too long ago.
      --
      Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
    11. Re:Anti-EU much ? by WindBourne · · Score: 1

      And I would challenge you to prove the FAA and EASA do not have a vested interest in covering up issues.

      In particular, I was thinking of the European investigation of the airbus airshow crash blamed it on "pilot error". At the time of the investigation, the Air France captain was saying that the craft would not respond to him, and yet, the then forming EASA stated that it was pilot error. Likewise, the tail issue in the 737 took a probable couple of crashes before it was being investigated. In particular, the c.springs crash of a 737 that went straight into the ground (nose first), was blamed on partial windshear and pilot error, though the wind shear was considered the minor issue. But, it was the crash that lead to the FAA to quietly start checking the 737's tail mechanism. All in all, do not fully trust safety agency's of the current generations. The ones from the 60-70's are gone. The feds now put pressure on ALL safety agencies to not blame companies or even nations.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    12. Re:Anti-EU much ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Having recently worked with Airbus (on the A-380), I have to tell you that I am NOT impressed. In particular, they wanted to push windows in the total cockpit. If they could have gotten past the FAA regs (do-178a and do-178b), they would done it. For the software that I worked on, they wanted it on windows and it was a nightmare to get them to understand that it was NOT going to happen. Boeing at least has a concept that windows is not even an option. Will I change my equipment? Nah. But I do feel a bit better on Boeing (though it has it own set of issues).

    13. Re:Anti-EU much ? by The+One+and+Only · · Score: 1

      I'm sure a 747 is much better at surviving German anti-aircraft guns. This brings to mind an old joke:

      "British Airways Flight 27, this is Frankfurt airport, please taxi to gate 7."
      (pause) "British Airways Flight 27, please taxi to gate 7."
      "Stand by, I'm looking up the gate location now."
      "British Airways Flight 27, have you never flown to Frankfurt before?"
      "Yes, in 1944, but I didn't land."

      --
      In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
    14. Re:Anti-EU much ? by The+One+and+Only · · Score: 1

      Do you complain this much when people make anti-American remarks? Or are you a fat steaming pile of hypocrite?

      --
      In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
    15. Re:Anti-EU much ? by Lars+T. · · Score: 1
      Lauda Air Flight 004. http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/12.69.html

      A former Boeing computer expert said yesterday that the company ordered him to play down his discovery of a software flaw in a critical control unit that could have triggered last May's fatal crash of a Lauda Air Boeing 767. Darrell Smith, a computer software engineer employed as a troubleshooter by Boeing in 1989 and 1990, said in an interview with the P-I that he warned the company last year of problems with software that runs the "proximity switch electronics unit" (PSEU) on Boeing's 747 and 767 jetliners.
      --

      Lars T.

      To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck

    16. Re:Anti-EU much ? by JerkBoB · · Score: 1

      You may recall the early 1960's in the US when the back of the bus was a stigmatized area. Blacks in back, whites rode up front.

      Blah blah blah... I seriously doubt the submitter was thinking of Ms. Parks when he made the comment... You ever heard the song called, "The wheels on the bus"? "The driver on the bus says, 'Move on back, Move on back, Move on back' ... etc." It's simple logic. If everyone tries to find a seat at the front of the bus, the driver will have to wait longer to close the door and move on to the next stop.

      It's understandable that most Americans under a certain age have little to no experience with public transportation. Sad. Maybe if gas prices keep going toward sanity, this situation will change.

      No, I'm not a european socialist commie... I am just an american who's had the pleasure of living in the denser parts of new england, so I have an appreciation for good public transit.

      --
      A host is a host from coast to coast...
      Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
    17. Re:Anti-EU much ? by WindBourne · · Score: 1

      That was Boeing saying to play it down. Happens all the time. FAA/EASA are not suppose to be that way, though they are. Though, I had not heard of this one. Thanx.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    18. Re:Anti-EU much ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In that light, the editors should have written: "move to the back of the airbus." (Notice: no capital letter).

    19. Re:Anti-EU much ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow, the US has public transport? I've lived here almost ten years, and it seems almost non-existant outside of any major city. :p

    20. Re:Anti-EU much ? by SoupIsGoodFood_42 · · Score: 1

      The pilot can dance a jig on the rudder pedals and the damn rudder should not fall off!

      Here's to hoping you never get a pilots license. Flying a plane is not like diving a car, or using your computer. The have operation limits for reasons. They aren't built to be idiot proof -- that would be too expensive, then idiots like you would complain about the prices. And the idiot could still fly it into the ground, anyway.

      To think that one of the major companies is worse than another to the point where it makes a real difference to you, is simply unfounded.

  20. Yes - but what are the odds of ... by dustpuppy · · Score: 1

    being in a plane that disintegrates in mid-air, falling onto a road, getting hit by a car whilst it's raining where I drown in a deep water-filled pothole. That's what's got me most concerned.

    1. Re:Yes - but what are the odds of ... by AragornSonOfArathorn · · Score: 1

      It could be worse. There could be piranhas in that water-filled pothole.

      --
      sudo eat my shorts
  21. Oh well by kilodelta · · Score: 1

    I guess being in first class isn't that much more advantageous.

  22. Don't sit in the back! by Per+Wigren · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's where the snakes are!

    --
    My other account has a 3-digit UID.
  23. First Class by 15Bit · · Score: 3, Funny

    As a regular flier in cattle-class, i'd just like to say that its nice to see first class passengers getting the preferential treatment they deserve. First on, first off and first into the mountainside...

    1. Re:First Class by pipingguy · · Score: 1

      And you get the schadenfreude of watching them get squished microseconds before you say, "oh, fuck" to yourself for the last time.

  24. I want to die like my grandfather... by microcars · · Score: 4, Funny
    peacefully in his sleep

    not like the passengers in his car, screaming and yelling

    --
    I like microcars
    1. Re:I want to die like my grandfather... by pcgabe · · Score: 1

      You're doing it wrong.

      >not like the passengers in his car, screaming and yelling

      You have the word passengers before screaming and yelling! Passengers is the PUNCHLINE (punchword?), that goes at the END!

      AND, you specify that his passengers are in a car. Why a car? Why not a bus? Why not a plane? Why give any specification at all? Better to let the reader's imagination fill in the most terrifying situation.

      >I'd rather die peacefully in my sleep like my Grandfather,
      >not screaming in terror like his passengers.

      See?

      Sheesh, kids these days. Don't know the classics.

      --
      Don't put advice in your sig.
  25. The safest seat in a crash by highlander76 · · Score: 2, Funny

    The safest seat in a crash is probably a window seat so God can better hear your pleas for him to save you.

    1. Re:The safest seat in a crash by Dunbal · · Score: 1

      God does not answer prayers. This is established scientific fact.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    2. Re:The safest seat in a crash by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Doesn't it say somewhere in the Bible about having faith and not testing God. This study could be counted as a test and God didn't answer those prayers because of it. Or maybe God did not consider those cases worthy/necessary to answer. In any case all you can prove is that God doesn't seem to answer prayers when it is being studied, you can't prove absolutely that God doesn't answer prayers.

      If you are wondering, I don't believe in God, but you can't just proclaim it as fact that God does not answer prayers. Besides the GP comment was a joke.

    3. Re:The safest seat in a crash by hkmwbz · · Score: 1

      Except the Bible has several stories about people testing God.

      --
      Clever signature text goes here.
    4. Re:The safest seat in a crash by hkmwbz · · Score: 1

      Wooosh! Right over your head...

      --
      Clever signature text goes here.
    5. Re:The safest seat in a crash by Nullav · · Score: 1

      Keep up with the times, man! God changed his prayer policy last month.

      --
      I just read Slashdot for the articles.
  26. Or ... by amightywind · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Move to the back of the Airbus.

    Fly in a Boeing airplane.

    --
    an ill wind that blows no good
  27. What about up front? by T-Bucket · · Score: 1

    I'm almost afraid to ask what the survival rate is for the people sitting up in FRONT of first class... I mean, they're the important ones! They deserve to live! (Though, I guess perhaps the alcohol will soften the blow a bit).

  28. I disagree... by keytohwy · · Score: 2, Funny

    On Lost, the ones towards the back were the first to be picked off by "the others." Only the front seats for me!

    1. Re:I disagree... by AJWM · · Score: 1

      Only the front seats for me!

      On Lost, the only survivor in the front section of the plane was the pilot, and that was just long enough to be dismembered by whatever-it-was (oh, and to pass along an important plot point about too far off course to be found by searchers). Most of the survivors were from the midsection.

      --
      -- Alastair
  29. Sitting in back is counterproductive by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 4, Interesting
    According to this site, if you fly every day, you'd get killed once every 19,000 years. That's about a 1 in 7 million odds per flight, which sounds about right.

    When you sit in the back, it takes longer to get off of the plane because you have to wait for all the bozos in front of you to fumble for their personal belongings. I'd say that a conservative estimate is an average of 5 extra minutes. So before your first expected crash, you'd waste 5 * 7,000,000 minutes, or 66 solid years waiting at the back of planes. So to save each life, you're essentially using up an entire lifetime standing hunched over watching old codgers wrestle with their suitcases. (It's actually much worse than that, because only a fraction of fatal crashes even have a difference in outcome between the front and the back. A lot of times, everybody dies and sitting in the back doesn't help anyway.)

    1. Re:Sitting in back is counterproductive by adamofgreyskull · · Score: 1

      Or you could sit patiently in your seat and laugh at all the people frantically scrambling to get off the plane...so they can rush and push and crush their way to the baggage carousels. Where they then wait for 20 minutes...

      It's really not "wasting" time, is it? The way I see it, for no extra cost, you could increase the odds of surviving a plane crash, even if only by a minute amount..

      And don't be so hard on those old codgers, you'll be one one day. And they may help you survive by absorbing some of the impact!

    2. Re:Sitting in back is counterproductive by swillden · · Score: 1

      Or you could sit patiently in your seat and laugh at all the people frantically scrambling to get off the plane...so they can rush and push and crush their way to the baggage carousels.

      I fly a lot, but I'm always one of those who is up and ready to get out as soon as possible. After several hours in a cramped seat, I want to stretch my legs. If I'm at the back of the plane, I wait my turn to exit standing up. If I'm in front (which I usually am) I have my stuff arranged so that as soon as the door is open, I'm ready to go.

      Oh, and like most frequent travelers, I almost never check bags, so while the few minutes I save usually aren't important, I actually do save them.

      Bottom line, I agree with the GP: I'll gladly accept the fractional increase in the already miniscule risk of death and sit up front so I can avoid the smelly toilets, rough ride and long, cramped (and usually stuffy) wait.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    3. Re:Sitting in back is counterproductive by Poromenos1 · · Score: 1

      you'd get killed once every 19,000 years
      This is the kind of optimism slashdot needs. Not only does the parent suggest you can die multiple times, but deaths are also 19,000 years apart!
      --
      Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
    4. Re:Sitting in back is counterproductive by Nibbler999 · · Score: 1

      Why can't you leave the plane from the rear exit?

    5. Re:Sitting in back is counterproductive by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 1

      Why can't you leave the plane from the rear exit?

      The 15-foot drop onto the tarmac would be too painful.

    6. Re:Sitting in back is counterproductive by Nibbler999 · · Score: 1

      Most airports provide stairs at no extra cost.

    7. Re:Sitting in back is counterproductive by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 1

      No, most airports that handle large planes exclusively use jetways. They wouldn't let you use stairs even if you asked them nicely. Not to mention that the rear exits are usually monopolized by the food service truck during stopovers.

    8. Re:Sitting in back is counterproductive by Nibbler999 · · Score: 1

      I don't normally fly long distance, but smaller places such as the A320 both board and unload from the front and back simultaneously. I assumed those running larger planes would do that too for efficiency.

    9. Re:Sitting in back is counterproductive by radish · · Score: 1

      Or you could sit patiently in your seat and laugh at all the people frantically scrambling to get off the plane...so they can rush and push and crush their way to the baggage carousels. Where they then wait for 20 minutes...

      Spoken like someone who doesn't deal with the joy that is the non-citizen immigration line at JFK on a frequent basis :) Believe me, getting out of the plane ahead of everyone can save a LOT more than 20 minutes.

      --

      ---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"

    10. Re:Sitting in back is counterproductive by duhjim · · Score: 1

      from the /. story above this one (listed in todays email notice) -- Or, if you were underage and from Nigereia, you could fire up your OLPC laptop and surf frantically for porn.

    11. Re:Sitting in back is counterproductive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      EasyJet don't do food in-flight, so they use both entrances to cut time so they can get the plane ready for the next flight quickly.

    12. Re:Sitting in back is counterproductive by adamofgreyskull · · Score: 1

      I have known the joy of flying into JFK as a non-citizen, once, and 5 years ago for New Years, and it wasn't so bad, but I'll bow to your greater knowledge on that particular front. I'm sure that if I flew more frequently, or didn't check bags, then yes, I would probably see the benefit of those extra 20 minutes :)

      My last flight was from London to Dublin (just enough time in the air to get comfortable in your seat and do a few sudoku) and I didn't see the point of jumping up and rushing off. If I'm on holiday, I'm not in a rush, and it's far less stressful to just amble off.

      My next flight will be another trip to New Zealand, 24 hours on two planes with a 1 or 2 hour stop-over. Last time I did it, by the end of the journey, I was too bloody tired to rush off the plane.

      I'm sure I'm probably a special case, in that I'm pretty laid-back in that respect. And quite the paradox in that I'd consider changing seats to fare better in a plane crash, but then I also plan mentally for the contingency of zombie invasion...so...ya know...

    13. Re:Sitting in back is counterproductive by adamofgreyskull · · Score: 1

      Or if you're underage and from the UK travelling to Ghana, you could get your laptop bag searched frantically for coke.

    14. Re:Sitting in back is counterproductive by KingOfBLASH · · Score: 1

      This is true, but what happens if you're the first one out?

      You end up waiting for your baggage to come out of the carousel. In the twenty minutes it takes for your bag to come out, everyone's already off the plane.

    15. Re:Sitting in back is counterproductive by PPH · · Score: 1
      At smaller airports where the practice is to disembark passengers via stairs onto the ground, this would work. Its not a big issue with maintenance access. They can't really get started cleaning and restocking the aircraft until the passengers are off the airplane anyway. They can disembark from one side while using the other side for service access.

      At larger airports where they use jetways, they can't easily reach the rear of the airplane. They don't want a bunch of passengers running loose on the tarmac anyway, so they disembark from the front only.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
  30. Move to the back of the Airbus? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And what about Boeing? The options are:
      - don't enter one at all
      - move to the front of the Boeing
      - it does not matter what you do, you're toast anyway
      - move to the back of the Boeing as well

    Or was that last line just a little bit of sarcastic USofAnism?

  31. I'm a god damned pilot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What fucking chance do I have according to this statistics? :P

  32. Statistics can mean anything you want by Viol8 · · Score: 1

    "and 60 times more likely to die in a car accident."

    Given I use my car everyday and I fly about twice a year max (and that probably roughly applies to a lot of people) it would seem to me that my car is actually safer than the plane. In fact you could say that for most people the safest method of transport is the space shuttle since hardly anyone will ever travel in it!

  33. Oh like that will work... by reality-bytes · · Score: 2, Funny
    If you're really worried about a plane crash, I suggest staying home. Maybe don't get out of bed at all.


    Okay, so it would work up to a point. The 'point' being the airliner that crashes into your house.
    --
    Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
  34. Control by Tim+Ward · · Score: 1

    don't worry about stuff you have no control over

    Usually when I fly I'm in the pilot's seat. Is this:

    (1) good because I have control, or:
    (2) bad because having control means I should worry?

    1. Re:Control by Plutonite · · Score: 1

      It's probably:

      A) Bad because you can't see all the hotties go to the toilet and back

      Although it might still be good if

      B) You have peep cameras installed in the toilets.

      PS: People who surrender are never favored by fate.

    2. Re:Control by TheLink · · Score: 1

      Don't the pilots get to date a lot of the hotties? ;).

      --
  35. The Young Ones, on the subject of statistics. by adamofgreyskull · · Score: 1

    --EXT: PLANE FLYING OVERHEAD
    --INT: PLANE COCKPIT
    PILOT #1: Oh wow, I really hope we don't have a crash.
    PILOT #2: Me too.
    PILOT #1: But they say it's safer than crossing the road!
    PILOT #2: Yes, but we have to do that too.
    PILOT #1: Best not to think about it.

    --EXT: OUTSIDE HOUSE
    RICK: Oh no! That plane is going to crash on us!

    [Shots of each of the four lads looking up: MIKE, RICK and NEIL with concern, VYVYAN with excitement.]
    [KA-BOOOOM!]

  36. Surviving... but how well? by martyb · · Score: 1
    Quoth the parent:

    So, they are working off of a sample size of twenty??? Not sure if I would draw too many conclusions from this dataset.

    Agreed! But look closer: FTFA:

    REALITY: It's Safer In the Back.

    The funny thing about all those expert opinions: They're not really based on hard data about actual airline accidents. A look at real-world crash stats, however, suggests that the farther back you sit, the better your odds of survival. Passengers near the tail of a plane are about 40 percent more likely to survive a crash than those in the first few rows up front.

    That's the conclusion of an exclusive Popular Mechanics study that examined every commercial jet crash in the United States, since 1971, that had both fatalities and survivors. The raw data from these 20 accidents has been languishing for decades in National Transportation Safety Board files, waiting to be analyzed by anyone curious enough to look and willing to do the statistical drudgework.

    What *I* would like to see: a comparison of severity of injury vs seating location. They used only two statistical baskets: dead or not-dead.

    How many survived UNinjured? Where were THEIR seats? Of those who were injured, how severe were the injuries, and where were THEY seated? Sure, there's a gray area there, but isn't that what is done with triage? (see: triage, Simple Triage And Rapid Treatment, and also Emergency department).

    For example, the article states a survival rate of 56 percent in the section behind first/business class and ahead of the wing and the SAME 56 percent survival rate for those in the section OVER the wing. (See the picture.) And were the various injuries equally distributed, too? What about burns? (Isn't the jet fuel primarily stored in the wings? Hmmm, how many of the crashes were on takeoff, during flight, or during landing?)

    So, I commend them for taking this first look at the data, but I would love to see them perform a follow-up analysis. Ideally, publishing the data they found in machine-readable form for others who are interested to perform more in-depth analysis.

  37. Bad Statistics by punka · · Score: 2, Informative

    To quote the article, In 11 of the 20 crashes, rear passengers clearly fared better. What kind of statistical analysis is this? If they are going to publish something with as broad a claim about an enormous industry as airlines, they need to back their claims up. That means t-tests, multiple ANOVA, chi-square tests, etc.

    But most importantly, that means stating their p-values! With a sample size as low as 20, I wouldn't be surprised if the statistical significance of this data is null (that is, the likelihood of being wrong is greater than the likelihood of being right).

    Until they publish that number, I will take this study with a grain of salt.

    1. Re:Bad Statistics by The_mad_linguist · · Score: 1
      Well, if the likelihood of being wrong is higher than the likelihood of being right, then it's clear the front seats are safer.

      ;)

    2. Re:Bad Statistics by TERdON · · Score: 1

      "Well, if the likelihood of being wrong is higher than the likelihood of being right, then it's clear the front seats are safer."

      No, it's not clear. They'd be wrong even if the risk was only identical, which is a special case not covered by you.

      --
      I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
  38. Sample size = 20 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The problem is that according to the article, there have only been 20 incidents with both fatalities and survivors within the time period they studied. Compared to the total number of incidents, and more tellingly, passenger miles flown during that time, the evidence is at best annecdotal.

  39. Re:control... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    uhmm arguably you are in control of the vehicle you are driving... but the semi two miles behind you coming your way at 85 mph driver's late has been driving for 12+ hours and is on speed ( don't buy this scenario years ago my friend was run over from behind on the freeway in just such a situation fortunately for him the cab of the truck stop climbing over his rear end when it smushed the rear passenger seats...), or the road rage maniac with a forty-five coming up behind you at 100mph+ (who'll get there first stay tuned!) oh yes then there the black ice on the overpass not to mention the van of illegal alien smugglers driving along on the wrong side of the road at 70mph+...
    take your pick

  40. The real answer by sunking2 · · Score: 1

    Anywhere that isn't next to an engine. In an MD-80 with the engines in the rear the last place I want to be is sitting next to them so the blades can fly off and slice me in half. I thought I remembered hearing that this is what happened to that ValuJet DC-9 that crashed in the everglades. On a 777 I'll prefer the back to the middle for the same reason.

    But the real answer of course is that the best place to be is in the section with the free booze. At least then you can be numb when the inevitable happens.

    1. Re:The real answer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ValuJet crashed because oxygen canisters and tires in the forward cargo compartment were ignited, causing heating to the point of structural failure. It had absolutely nothing to do with the engines.

      Commercial high bypass turbofan jet engines are very, very safe. They're actually tested by blowing one of the fan blades off, which as you can imagine, is a very spectacular and expensive test that completely destroys the engine. However, the casings are designed to completely contain the results of such an (extremely unlikely) failure. The worst that happens is that you lose one engine, and all airplanes are designed to survive the loss of at least one engine.

      In fact, I can't think of a single fatality that directly involved the engines. There was the ingestion of debris that brought down that Air France Concorde, and I think I remember something about thrust reversers turning on in mid-flight (although I think that might have been debunked), but generally the causes of crashes don't even involve simple loss of engine power, let alone catastrophic failures.

    2. Re:The real answer by felipekk · · Score: 1

      Here`s one flight in wich one of the reversers turned on in mid-flight (shortly after takeoff): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAM_Linhas_A%C3%A9rea s_Flight_402

    3. Re:The real answer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm certain that I recall one accident in the past ten years which involved a passenger in the rear being struck and killed by engine parts. IIRC the flight itself landed safely however.

      Of course I don't have time or inclination to spend the next hour looking up the details, but I'm sure it is out there somewhere.

    4. Re:The real answer by sunking2 · · Score: 1

      You are correct about the valuejet not being engine related, I wasn't sure which is why i said I thought. However, we're not talking about the cause of the accident, we're talking about how people died. That's like saying that people didn't die from a fire from a crash because that may not have been what brought the plane down. It's certainly plausible that you could survive the initial crash only to have a side affect of it being that the engines and protective cover are damaged enough that in the aftermath you get sliced and diced by the blades. No idea if it's ever happened or is documented anywhere but the thought of it always has me looking at what I'm flying on and where my seat is.

      I've seen Pratt & Whitney video of their GP7000 test in which they purposely have a blade blow out (I work for their parent company and it made the rounds in emails a few years ago). It shows how the protective sheathing is able to contain the blades. P&W and GE made a pretty big deal over the tests so I'm thinking it's not something that most engines are designed for. If it weren't plausible why would they test it. And again, if you need to use it then have things already not worked as expected, hopefully the protective sheath isn't among the failures.

    5. Re:The real answer by sunking2 · · Score: 1

      Here's an older test for PW4098 which is used on the 777. Really pretty slick, contains a single blade no problem. But what happens when the whole plane smashes into something and there massive failure?

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqRpsq7BosM

      It seems this is actually an FAA required test for engine certification.

  41. Old news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Its almost 20 years ago when I set in class in aircraft mechanics school and we studied the plans for some commercial airliners. Our teacher asked us what we thought to be the safest place in those aircraft.

    After accepting several gueses he showed us the easy way to determain the safest seats. He pointed out the location of the black box in all aircraft. They all where in the back section near the tail.

    At that time there where still smoking sections and these where all at the back of the aircraft (has to do with the ventilaton). So smoking was safer in the 80's if you did a lot of airtravel!

  42. We are in control, you not worry! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Flight control is outsourced to banagalur and we are in control. You not worry !

    We trained good! Full 2 weeks ! And we can always call our boss in Bangalur!

  43. If I were the pilot by s4ltyd0g · · Score: 1

    you can bet I'd be trying to pull the nose of the plane up as we went down.

    1. Re:If I were the pilot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Which is probably why you're not a pilot. If you haven't suffered a loss of control (which seems to be cause of most spectacular, mechanically-caused airplane crashes, short of relatively freak occurrence like something exploding), best practice for crash landings is to try and glide into a level surface (terminating in an emergency landing if you can manage it).

      This means that you absolutely do not pull the nose up (in fact, you want to keep it pointed slightly down; the exact angle is listed in the particular aircraft's manual) unless you're executing a landing flare, as that bleeds of airspeed and leads to an early stall at low altitude, which means everybody dies. You want to stretch out the glide as long as possible, which means minimizing violent maneuvers.

      Of course, if you're going down with power and control, you're not really crashing at all, in which case you follow the usual procedures for a landing, albeit expedited.

  44. Rest assured by bjinatj · · Score: 0

    All those snotty fucking (thinking they are too good) people in first class will be petitioning to put first class in the back of the plane with their own private entrance.

  45. Connect the dots by SamP2 · · Score: 1

    Well, we all like to laugh about the "first class dicks" dying first, but I wonder if there just might be some kind of connection between the (1) first, luxurious, prestigious, pride-of-the-airline class having a higher statistical danger, (2) placement of the aforementioned class always in the front of the plane, and (3) multiple airlines repeatedly stating that there is NO safety difference between front and back.

    Nah, I'm just being paranoid, right?

  46. Why would anyone be anti-EU? by Kohath · · Score: 1

    Why would anyone be anti-EU?

    It's not like people from the EU get offended and complain about meaningless phrases mentioning Airbus. It's not like EU folks are sitting at their computers, anxious to call anyone xenophobic with no good reason. It's a good thing no one in the EU is like that, because it's really annoying.

  47. How to Survive a Crash by iminplaya · · Score: 1

    Stay OFF the Airbus! Take the train or a boat. What's the hurry?

    --
    What?
  48. Exaggerated relative risk by nealmcb · · Score: 1

    Interesting study. But described in a misleading way.

    In particular, since they only looked at accidents with some deaths and some survivors, you can't compare the risks or make intelligent tradeoffs.

    Naive readers might assume that if 49% survive in the front but 69% survive in the rear, then you are 69/49=1.4 times more likely to live in the back.

    But most fatal plane accidents result in everyone dying and those were left out. So the difference is much less. And they don't help you find out how much less.

    Unanswered questions:

      * how many totally-fatal accidents happened over that period of time?
      * how many people died in the ones they studied?
      * how many people died if you include all the accidents?

    And for another study:
      * what about injuries - did those vary by location?

    Some information on some of the years is at
      http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/Table6.htm

    --

    --Neal
    Go IETF!

  49. Daffy Duck by turgid · · Score: 1

    I once saw Daffy Duck doomed to certain death as the elevator he was in plummetted earthwards. When it was about 3 feet above the ground, he simply stepped out, leaving it to crash and be pulverised.

  50. And life jackets ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    On the very same topics, how many lifes have life jackets saved in the modern jets? They are only usefull:
    - on a plane landing on a water surface
    - with a reasonably slow speed and flat glide
    - with limited structural damages
    - and reasonably warm waters

    Statistics, anyone ?

  51. Um, semantic quibble by argStyopa · · Score: 2

    From TFA: "...So when the "experts" tell you it doesn't matter where you sit, have a chuckle and head for the back of the plane. And once your seatbelt is firmly fastened, relax: There's been just one fatal jet crash in the U.S. in the last five-plus years"

    1 jet crash in the last "five-plus" years? Doesn't five-plus = five or more?
    I'm pretty sure that there has been more than one fatal crash in the last "five or more" years, no?

    Perhaps he meant "slightly more than five"?

    --
    -Styopa
    1. Re:Um, semantic quibble by pjt33 · · Score: 1

      I seem to recall a set of fatal crashes almost six years ago.

  52. I'll go further by gerardrj · · Score: 1

    I'm going to go out on a limb and generalize that in almost any mode of transportation those in the rear of the vehicle will tend to survive more often than those in the front.
    My reasoning is that there is simply more stuff in front of you to absorb the impact energy and allow your body to decelerate more gradually. Most collisions occur because the vehicle impacts something and that something is almost always in front of the vehicle. Even if a train derails, you'll almost always see that the front cars are in a heap and the rear cars are sitting politely on the rails like noting happened.
    As in most things in life, the more "stuff" you have between you and the potential impactor, the better off you'll be.

    --
    Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
    1. Re:I'll go further by edraven · · Score: 1

      Your generalization should restrict itself to front-impact collisions. Vehicles do get struck from behind or the side by other vehicles. Friend of mine's mother was driving a convertible, waiting at a traffic light when a truck failed to come to a stop behind her. The car was rolled up like a jelly-roll; the back bumper ended up pinning her head to the steering wheel. Luckily there was no-one in the rear of that vehicle.

  53. If the thing's burning you need to get out fast by Joce640k · · Score: 1

    If the thing's burning you need to get out fast, and "at the back" is a long way from the exit doors (and a lot of panicky old people in between).

    This study is very basic - only front/back.

    Get the BBC program called "how to survive an air crash" (or something like that) off your local P2P, it's much more details. IIRC most people who survived air crashes were within seven rows of an exit door.

    --
    No sig today...
  54. Comfort by felipekk · · Score: 2, Funny

    From TFA: "So when the "experts" tell you it doesn't matter where you sit, have a chuckle and head for the back of the plane. And once your seatbelt is firmly fastened, relax: There's been just one fatal jet crash in the U.S. in the last five-plus years."

    Thats good to know, specially when I live in Brazil.

  55. I'll go for 56% by t4ng* · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'd rather be in the 56% section behind first class. It's close to the exits. The noise level is lower in front of the wing. And the 69% section behind the wing are probably all going to be covered in flaming fuel from the wing tanks anyway.

    Plus, you can check out all the hotties on your walk to and from the bathroom at the back.

    1. Re:I'll go for 56% by VagaStorm · · Score: 2, Informative

      I would think that any one in front of the wings where most likely to be covered in fuel as the fuel is generally tossed forward if/when a plane it self stops violently in a crash.

    2. Re:I'll go for 56% by rbarreira · · Score: 1

      And the 69% section behind the wing are probably all going to be covered in flaming fuel from the wing tanks anyway.


      If that's the case, how come 69% is bigger than 56%?
      --

      The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
  56. Same as the school bus? by DTemp · · Score: 1

    You may have a better chance of surviving an accident if you're sitting in the back... but I bet turbulence is more bearable in the front! Back when I was riding the school bus, we would all sit in the back because it was more bumpy (and fun). So I'm going to assume that airplanes are exactly the same, and are less bumpy in the front.

    1. Re:Same as the school bus? by PPH · · Score: 1

      Probably less bumpy in the middle. Think of an airplane as pivoting around its wings as it maneuvers.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
  57. Oh yeah? by mcmonkey · · Score: 1

    it's that if your time has come there's nothing you can do.

    What is it's not my time? The guy sitting next to me, what if it's his time, and I'm just caught in the crossfire? What then, mysticism-boy?

  58. Eureka! by Alsee · · Score: 1

    I've figured out a way to save lives!
    Make planes twice as big with twice as many seats, and just put everyone in the back half!

    -

    --
    - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  59. /If/ you die? by ishmaelflood · · Score: 3, Funny

    I've got some bad news for you, unless you are a bacterium. It is WHEN you die, not IF.

    1. Re:/If/ you die? by hobo+sapiens · · Score: 2, Funny

      If you are ever in a plane and a crash is imminent, the best position for you is this: put your head between your knees, hold tight...and kiss your ass goodbye.

      --
      blah blah blah
  60. Re:control... by fishbowl · · Score: 1

    "uhmm arguably you are in control of the vehicle you are driving... but the semi two miles behind you coming your way at 85 mph driver's late has been driving for 12+ hours and is on speed ( don't buy this scenario years ago my friend was run over from behind on the freeway in just such a situation fortunately for him the cab of the truck stop climbing over his rear end when it smushed the rear passenger seats...), or the road rage maniac with a forty-five coming up behind you at 100mph+ (who'll get there first stay tuned!) oh yes then there the black ice on the overpass not to mention the van of illegal alien smugglers driving along on the wrong side of the road at 70mph+..."

    I'll take Bigoted Clichés for Four Hundred, Alex.

    --
    -fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
  61. Chivalry has not died by icepick72 · · Score: 2, Funny

    All of a sudden chivalry makes a comeback as men everywhere offer their mother-in-laws the more comfortable front seats of the plane.

  62. What causes that? by Myria · · Score: 1

    I get the same feeling on planes... What causes that? Is the fuselage actually tilted?

    --
    "Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
    1. Re:What causes that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, it is.

      Summary: airplanes don't develop enough lift when flying perfectly level. There is always some angle between the oncoming air and the wings and body of the plane. If the plane's path is level then the plane's body will be angled slightly upward in order to be in the most efficient attitude.

    2. Re:What causes that? by tygt · · Score: 1

      If you look at a aeroplane on the ground, the plane of the wings is typically parallel, or close to parallel, to the axis of the fuselage. During flight, however, the wings are positioned upward somewhat - 5 degrees? - which is considered the angle of attack compared to the direction of travel. The fuselage will therefore also be pointed upward somewhat, as it comes along for the ride.

  63. This Study is Bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I just talked to a good friend of mine who had worked in the airline industry for a good many years.

    I approached him and said, "I just read about a study that analyzed the best place to be in the event of an airplane crashing. What do you think it is?"

    His immediate response, "The tail section of the airplane. We've known that for over 30 years now". When I told him about the claims in the study, he said it was bullshit and that all that data has already been analyzed and reported. Sounded to him like someone just needed to sell a story of previous knowledge.

    Looks like Popular Mechanics should have done a bit more research before they did "the statistical drudgework".

  64. it's misleading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    it's more like it's misleading in a sense that other plane types could require different seat choice.

  65. The best way to survive.... by SCHecklerX · · Score: 1

    They won't let me bring my parachute as a carry on, unfortunately.

    1. Re:The best way to survive.... by Joce640k · · Score: 1

      You couldn't open the doors even if you did.

      Before 9/11 you could carry det. cord and make your own door. Not any more though, sigh.

      --
      No sig today...
  66. what airlines don't tell you by juan2074 · · Score: 1

    I always wanted to read this safety pamphlet on the airplane.

  67. And what about the lucky numbers? Chair 7? 13? by pcontezini · · Score: 1

    I think they are wrong! The best chair is always 7!!!

  68. The one with handles by SEWilco · · Score: 1

    The safest seat on an airplane is the ejection seat.

  69. Or an immortal jellyfish by mr_tenor · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_nutricula

    "Turritopsis nutricula is a hydrozoan (jellyfish) with a life cycle in which it reverts back to the polyp stage after becoming sexually mature."

  70. So tell us...? by Joce640k · · Score: 1

    Does her shit stink as bad as the 300lb land-whale who went before her?

    --
    No sig today...
  71. Re:asshole by heinousjay · · Score: 1

    And you probably wonder why no one gives you any respect...

    --
    Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
  72. Not without a canopy, and not in a helicopter.. by cheros · · Score: 1

    400 canopies + passengers weighing twice as much + the huge per seat cost = no way.

    And in a helicopter it gets a bit tricky too. Not sure there IS a safe place in a heli that's going down other than not being in it in the first place. Anything affecting the rotor and you're history, I think (I'm no expert, but it appears to me that losing the rotor is about the same as losing the wings off a plane - at that point gravity wins).

    --
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  73. It's not the hurry ... it's not crashfree either ! by freaker_TuC · · Score: 1

    Euh .. train crashes still happen; but .. the back of the train will probably be safest with frontal crashes and crashes won't be so fatal because you don't have to worry so much about the gravity...

    Enjoy your train ride!

    --
    --- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
  74. Total engine failure... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... is not as bad as one might think. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_glider

  75. Re:No, this is pathetic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Yup, because there's no activity that is bad for you that people still partake in, bar smoking. Drinking, why that's just a big bottle of multivitamin!

  76. Sometimes the food doesn't make it all the way ... by hadaso · · Score: 1

    Sometimes the food doesn't make it all the way to the back. Last time I fleww Iberia I was seated in the back and when they got to our seat there was n food left. They apologized, promised that perhaps we can get some leftovers from the first class but we have to wait till they finished their meal. Actually the first class leftovers were quite good (or whatever they were - some kind of special meals...)

    But then, perhaps not getting the airline meal is good ...

  77. Safer? at the back by hicksw · · Score: 1

    I believe the more accurate statement is that the bodies at the back are easier to identify.

    You will have wasted the flight insurance premium if you can't prove you died in the crash.

  78. airplane failure analysis by circusboy · · Score: 1

    I once had the curious experience of sitting next to a failure analyst on a plane. he had some rather interesting animations on his laptop which were a curious thing to watch while flying.

    on contract with the military, his company had run simulations of what happened to a cargo plane when it hit a wall. here is the basic set of steps of what happens when a plane hits something head on.
    1. nose hits wall, rest of plane keeps moving. everything forward of the wings is immediately flattened.
    2. wing hits wall, plane stops
    3. tail of plane crumples and tears off.

    structurally there is very little in an airplane fuselage that prevents if from collapsing on impact. only the sudden spreading of that impact across the forward edge of the wings is enough to stop or slow the plane. more so on military cargo planes, as their wings (at least the ones in the tests he showed me,) are not as swept back as the average passenger plane.

    conclusions,
    1. if you are in front of the wing, you are a pancake.
    2. if you are in the middle of the plane, around the wings, you will be eating that pancake.
    3. if you are in the back, there is a chance you might survive...

    however that is only impact damage, the fireball from the wings tends to swallow the rear of the plane.

    --
    -- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
    1. Re:airplane failure analysis by PPH · · Score: 1

      however that is only impact damage, the fireball from the wings tends to swallow the rear of the plane.
      Many years ago, I watched a program public TV did on crash survivability. If you survive the impact, odds are that you will die either from smoke inhalation or being burned to death because you couldn't escape the cabin's smoky interior quickly enough due to visual impairment.

      They looked into the visual impairment problem further. It turns out that, in most fires, your inability to see is caused in large part by your eyes reaction to noxious fumes, not the density of the smoke itself. If you have a full face mask on, you can actually see pretty well (ask any firefighter).

      The recommendation of some independent researchers was to replace the oxygen masks with high temperature plastic smoke hoods, essentially clear plastic bags with an elastic band to secure them around ones neck. They would be connected to the O2 generators and provide air during depressurization. Following a crash, the O2 hose would break away and the air in the bag would be replenished through a small filter. This would prevent smoke inhalation and improve visibility for the critical few minutes it takes to evacuate.

      Air transportation officials did have one minor valid concern, which was the reluctance some people would have to sticking a plastic bag over their head. But other than that, the only reason I could see for shooting the idea down was cost.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
  79. "Popular Mechanics shares..." by BarnabyWilde · · Score: 1

    Awwww..... did they learn how to share in pre-school? How cute....

    (Ugh... think about it people, that usage is a sickening New Age-ism)

  80. Re:It's not the hurry ... it's not crashfree eithe by iminplaya · · Score: 1

    I do enjoy the train very much. It's the only way to fly

    --
    What?
  81. The worst place is Business/First class! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Kind of got a chuckle after looking at that diagram the provided.

  82. "Pouring" over spelling data by Money+for+Nothin' · · Score: 1

    For several weeks, we poured over reports filed by NTSB crash investigators, as well as seating charts that showed where each passenger sat and whether they lived or died.

    (emphasis mine)

    Now if only Popular Mechanics' editors had pored over the article before publication...

    </nazi type="spelling">
    1. Re:"Pouring" over spelling data by tholomyes · · Score: 1

      Thanks, I knew I wasn't the only member of the Grammar Youth Corps to be annoyed by that.

      --
      When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat? -C. Palahniuk
  83. Safe for me, maybe by PPH · · Score: 1

    But not for that little kid who keeps kicking the back of my seat.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  84. Jump? by kramulous · · Score: 1

    I'm surprised I didn't see "jump just before the plane smashes into the ground" mentioned.

    --
    .
  85. Diana Spencer's crash injuries by Latent+Heat · · Score: 1
    Are you sure about the aorta injury in the case of Diana? I would think an aorta laceration would kill quickly, from blood loss or from filling the chest so the heart cannot pump.

    Part of the controversy was that she didn't die right away and perhaps could have been saved by American-style emergency medicine in comparison to what they do with the ambulances in France where they regard the ambulance as already being in the ER where they can stabilize the patient. The American method is that for critical trauma cases, there is little to be done at the site, in the ambulance, or even in the ER and that the thing to do is to rush a person into surgery where such bleeding can be stopped.

    The story I heard was that Diana had a laceration of a pulmonary artery, a similar injury as Ronald Reagan had when he had been shot. What President Reagan had was major life-threatening as is the laceration of any major artery, but initially he didn't realize he had been shot, and when he got to the hospital, he was conscious and didn't know what the big deal was all about, but his doctors rushed him into surgery because they figured out how badly he had been hurt. If Diana had a similar injury, there could have been the same deal as a lucid, conscious patient where they puttered around in one of those fancy ambulances where if she had gotten the express treatment as Reagan, she would have lived.

    The death of Diana was not one of these single-point-failure situation but one of these cascades of bad events, if any one of which had been prevented, would have kept her alive. You had her high-profile lifestyle, combined with the mobbing by photographers, followed by the driver way over the legal limit, in conjunction with the body guard who wasn't clued into the state of the driver, in combination with the way excessive speed, with the lack of seat belt (the belted body guard was seriously hurt but lived) (is this a Jon Corzine effect where people being driven as passengers in limos and taxis almost feel it is an insult to the driver to buckle up? - I have only started searching for seatbelts in taxis after the Diana tragedy although I have buckled up in my own car for years), with the procedures of emergency medicine to remove the final chance at life.

    Part of the tragedy of Diana was that she was not dead at the scene from an aortic laceration, she suffered a laceration of a smaller artery, but it was one last link in a deadly chain, the interrupting of any link could have saved her.

  86. Actually, we fly planes much like we drive cars by Latent+Heat · · Score: 1
    I think the average person (yes, the "other guy", not just myself) does a great job of driving an automobile.

    In 100 hours of general aviation flying, I don't think I ever got past the experience level of having to think through every action, much like my days of being a teen driver. If you have put 100,000 miles in a car, you are at least at 2000 hours experience level, and a 2000-hour pilot is a high-experience pilot.

    So the average "non-professional" pilot is a beginner who is this short of "getting behind the airplane" (having one's attention saturated by the multiplicity and sequencing of tasks), but I doubt the average 2000-hour "non-professional" driver is ever distracted by the tasks required to simply operate the car.

    That the fatality rate per hour in commercial jets is nearly the same as in your own car supports this. I mean we can argue that the jet captain is much more capable because 1) the captain is operating a much more complex set of controls, and 2) there are many more "minor" compared to fatal accidents in a car. But my argument is what kills you is not lack of skill in either normal or emergency situations but instead the complacency factor, the completely unexpected, the brain-fart where you rolled right through a stop sign or the brain-fart where you rolled on to an active runway without tower clearance.

  87. A vaguely relevant paraphrase... by ThomsonsPier · · Score: 1

    There's a short monologue by Michael Flanders (of Flanders & Swann fame) about flying, including a short section on travelling to the airport. There's more chance of being in an accident involving a motor vehicle, they say, than one involving an aeroplane.

    The airport bus drivers have been given instructions to keep the statistics favourable.

  88. Not exactly impressed by otter42 · · Score: 1

    I'm a little underwhelmed by their report. The statistical variations are rather small considering the sample size, so it's very difficult to say anything conclusive. As they point out, the only accident in the last 5 years was in (my hometown of) Lexington, KY, so what happened in the 1970s doesn't necessarily reflect on what's happening now.

    What would have been far more educational is a survey of all accidents they can find (Europe and Canada have organizations that publish data just like the NTSB) and then a statistic showing the likelihood of surviving any crash at all based on seating. Analyzing only those ones where someone survived is, or course interesting, but it doesn't give the full picture. In fact, it seems a little sensationalistic.

    Still, someone did the start of a good journalistic job, pouring over all those NTSB reports. Having done that myself many times, I can completely sympathize with what they call "drudgery". I give a 3 out of 5 for the report.

    --
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  89. My favorite airline story by myth_of_sisyphus · · Score: 1

    Some of the comments made me laugh so I want to share the funniest airline story I know.

    Some airline executive opened a low-cost carrier in the rural Middle East. People got on the plane with goats and other animals. At first they refused to take the animals but the people started protesting and nobody was going to fly. They relented and allowed the animals on board.

    During the flight, the Captain notices that one of the landing gear is having problems and won't go down. So they have to land on one and slide it in. The Captain makes the announcement and the airline executive is scared shitless. He's in the crash position while everybody around him seems unaffected.

    The pilot lands the plane skillfully, putting all the weight on the one gear while slowing down and then the other side hits the ground and they spin out gently into the sand. The executive is joyful and he looks around. People start gathering their possessions and animals without batting an eye. They thought this was how planes normally landed!

    (Forgot where I heard that.)

  90. It's the Fuel by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

    Yeah, this isn't a new idea. I have an old copy of Popular Mechanics somewhere showing passenger compartments, made as separate units, dropping out of the plane fuselage on parachutes. I doubt that this would work any better than trying to parachute the plane as one unit though.

    I remember that one - the point is to separate the passengers from the dangerous bits. The fuel tanks go up like fireballs, and I imagine that shredded spinning jet blades aren't good for your health either.

    In this scenario the pilots set the autopilot to do the best job it can not to crash into a congested area and hop into the passenger compartment. At that point, explosive bolts or something blow the cabin away from the fuselage and three or four giant parachutes slow the descent to the ground to a point where most everybody survives with minimal injury.

    But that would cost money, and no airline has the vision to advertise this as a safety feature. Going after the 'worried about flying' market is apparently something no carrier thinks is significant. I can think of some pretty fun, "conventional aircraft vs. PeopleSafe(TM) aircraft" commercials, though they'd better switch over their whole fleet in a hurry.

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  91. If you had seen the episode... by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

    ... you'd have seen a neat (really large) rig they made up with a passenger cabin that they dropped onto their parking lot and they had crash test dummies in various seats and positions fitted with G-shock sensors on various body parts.

    The rear-facing attendant seat delivered the least lethal impact forces.

    --
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    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  92. Decongestant? by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

    Next time take a decongestant - works well for scuba diving under similar circumstances. Hey, in a plane you even have the luxury of the drowsy-inducing variety, which is a major plus.

    Stick to the non-drowsy kind for scuba diving :) and take plenty - I only popped one the first time and got a nice bloody 'pop' when the pressure changed. Nothing life threatening, but there were a few sharks nearby...

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  93. Parser Error by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

    "Move to the back of the Airbus."
    I find this sentence somewhat xenophobic and anti-european. Does this mean that an Airbus is more likely to crash than a Boeing ? Feh.


    I don't care if you want to get upset about anti-EU sentiment, but do it appropriately.

    They're talking about the safest place to be, not the most dangerous. So, by mentioning an Airbus over all other brands of planes (there's at least half a dozen around here) they're placing it in the highest safety echelon. At least that's how I read it when I read the story summary.

    I guess they don't teach reading comprehension skills in all those socialist EU countries. ;)

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  94. The safest seat... by uigin · · Score: 1

    ...is the ejector seat.

  95. that doesn't mesh with what I was taught by Magius_AR · · Score: 1

    I don't know where I heard it, but I was always told the safest place was near the wing.
    Was that just a myth?