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(under the guise of "safety") There's no need for scare quotes here. There is a legitimate safety concern: airlines have packed their aircraft with so many sea

(under the guise of "safety") There's no need for scare quotes here. There is a legitimate safety concern: airlines have packed their aircraft with so many seats that it's not possible, in an emergency, to evacuate safely and quickly. The usual certification procedure for a new type of aircraft calls for simulating an evacuation with half of the doors inoperable, and requires everyone out (literally out, not merely "queued up at a door waiting to get out") within 90 seconds from the order to evacuate. And the argument is that while this is achievable in test conditions, the test conditions tend to involve cabin configurations less dense than what the airlines fly, which means the 90-second evacuation target cannot be met with the planes as they're actually flown. Enforcing changes to return to compliance with the 90-second evacuation does not require enacting any new seat-width or legroom regulations, which is why it's an attractive option for people who want to get something done ("enforce this existing thing" is easier than "draft and enact a new thing"). There are also concerns about survivability of high-density cabins, based on lack of room between rows; flight attendant seats are the place to look here, because they're designed to have a certain minimum amount of space available for a flight attendant's head to swing in the event of a sudden jerk of the body (as in a collision). The high-density passenger seating doesn't have this, and would almost certainly produce head and neck injuries in a real emergency due to everyone's heads smashing into seat backs.

dmurray 8y ago
Planes basically never crash, though. So legislating less dense cabins under the guise of safety, while tempting for those of us who would like slightly more expensive and less crowded flights, is at best intellectually dishonest and at worst a direct path to more overall transport deaths thanks to increased car use. It's actually not the airlines who are being hypocritical here.
- dsr_ 8y ago
  Let's not forget about the many deaths that typically occur in the traffic jams between Sydney and London. Hey, since planes basically never crash, maybe they shouldn't have any safety equipment at all? I bet you could reduce weight a lot by just marking sitting positions on the bare floor in economy. And you could provide hand-hold straps every so often for turbulent bits (we're acknowledging those, right?). Strangely, there are relatively few opportunities to shift transport modes for intercontinental travel, other than trivial cases like crossing from Europe to Asia across the Bosporus, which some people do as part of their daily commute. Claiming that you're going to reduce deaths by moving people in aircraft versus cars? Even if aircraft were 100% safe, you couldn't move enough people through the current commercial aviation system to make a noticeable dent. (Fermi estimate: 800 million passenger tickets in the US (2015), 350 million people make an average of 2 ground vehicle trips per day, that's 700 million * 365 = 255 billion. If airplanes can carry 25% more people (and they can't) by perfect substitution for automobile trips, that would reduce it from 255 to 254 billion trips. 1/255 fewer deaths. That's best case, because the US already makes more plane trips per capita than any other country.)
- tzs 8y ago
  The relevant number for this discussion is not how often planes crash, but rather how often they need an evacuation. That is much more frequent than crashes [1]. [1] http://avherald.com/h?search_term=evacuation&opt=0&dosearch=1&search.x=51&search.y=15 http://avherald.com/h?search_term=evacuation&opt=0&dosearch=...
frankchn 8y ago
The evacuation test configuration is be the densest possible configuration - the aircraft will be certified to carry that many passengers based off this test. For instance, the A380 evacuation test had 873 people get out in 90 seconds (https://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2006/03/a380-successfully-completes-evacuation-test.html https://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2006/03/a3...), and I don’t think anyone flies a 800+ seat A380 today. I believe the densest A380 is the Emirates Regional configuration with 600 seats.

dmurray 8y ago

Planes basically never crash, though. So legislating less dense cabins under the guise of safety, while tempting for those of us who would like slightly more expensive and less crowded flights, is at best intellectually dishonest and at worst a direct path to more overall transport deaths thanks to increased car use. It's actually not the airlines who are being hypocritical here.

dsr_ 8y ago
Let's not forget about the many deaths that typically occur in the traffic jams between Sydney and London. Hey, since planes basically never crash, maybe they shouldn't have any safety equipment at all? I bet you could reduce weight a lot by just marking sitting positions on the bare floor in economy. And you could provide hand-hold straps every so often for turbulent bits (we're acknowledging those, right?). Strangely, there are relatively few opportunities to shift transport modes for intercontinental travel, other than trivial cases like crossing from Europe to Asia across the Bosporus, which some people do as part of their daily commute. Claiming that you're going to reduce deaths by moving people in aircraft versus cars? Even if aircraft were 100% safe, you couldn't move enough people through the current commercial aviation system to make a noticeable dent. (Fermi estimate: 800 million passenger tickets in the US (2015), 350 million people make an average of 2 ground vehicle trips per day, that's 700 million * 365 = 255 billion. If airplanes can carry 25% more people (and they can't) by perfect substitution for automobile trips, that would reduce it from 255 to 254 billion trips. 1/255 fewer deaths. That's best case, because the US already makes more plane trips per capita than any other country.)
tzs 8y ago
The relevant number for this discussion is not how often planes crash, but rather how often they need an evacuation. That is much more frequent than crashes [1]. [1] http://avherald.com/h?search_term=evacuation&opt=0&dosearch=1&search.x=51&search.y=15 http://avherald.com/h?search_term=evacuation&opt=0&dosearch=...

frankchn 8y ago

The evacuation test configuration is be the densest possible configuration - the aircraft will be certified to carry that many passengers based off this test. For instance, the A380 evacuation test had 873 people get out in 90 seconds (https://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2006/03/a380-successfully-completes-evacuation-test.html https://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2006/03/a3...), and I don’t think anyone flies a 800+ seat A380 today. I believe the densest A380 is the Emirates Regional configuration with 600 seats.