8 ms·

How the airline industry got wise to seat belts

54 points by NotSwift 5y ago

sklargh 5y ago
Recent failures by Boeing aside, the amount of thought that goes into the holistic safety of commercial aircraft is astounding. It kind of blows my mind how hardened a typical passenger cabin is to fire, not to mention other hazards.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  Yup. The "fatalities per mile" chart is pretty astounding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#/media/File:Fatalities_per_revenue_passenger_kilometre_in_air_transport_since_1970.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#/media/File:Fa...
  - mpalczewski 5y ago
    Hmm, after looking at that, and always being told that airlines are the safest. I was surprised they are only safest by that one metric (fatalities / distance) and not fatalities per trip or fatalities per hour.
    - worker767424 5y ago
      Remember that takeoffs and landings are the most dangerous part of the trip.
      - hansthehorse 5y ago
        I usually hear it stated that it's the first two and last 8 minutes of any flight.
        bittercynic 5y ago
        Surely the danger is almost always right after the flight ends :-)
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      Those seem like odd metrics to go by.
      - namdnay 5y ago
        Fatalities per hour seems like a reasonable statistic if you want to talk about fear - how likely am I to die in the next 5mn?
        ceejayoz 5y ago
        If my goal is "I wish to spend X hours in a form of transit", sure. If I need to get from LA to NYC, though... there's a lot more of those 5 minute periods if I'm driving.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        What you probably really want to compare flying and driving is fatalities per trip--for the same trip. As others have noted, a longer trip in a plane is almost certainly safer per mile than a shorter trip given where accidents happen. (And the effect may or may not be further magnified by the fact that I assume the accident rate is higher on small regional jets. Though, on the other hand, they carry fewer people.) On the other hand, driving is probably much more proportional to distance.
    - bmitc 5y ago
      I have personally never liked being blankly told that flying is safer than driving, because I’d like to understand how safe flying is versus driving when something goes wrong.
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        Two seconds of inattention in a car is a lot more likely to kill you than it is in a plane. It’s fairly constant risk - going off the shoulder is just a few dozen feet at most. They also tend to be less well maintained, and the other participants less trained.
        bmitc 5y ago
        That makes sense at first glance, but it's something I'm in control of. I was even thinking of this before, because the comparison is a little mismatched. I'm 100% likely to be a passenger when I'm in any plane, whereas I'm probably >98% likely to be a driver when I'm in a car. I'm not sure why I was downvoted, because I'm just stating I'd like to understand (data/studies) instead of people's anecdotes and opinions, including my own. My intuition is that car travel has a constant level of risk, whereas plane travel has a level of risk much below that when everything is good but (I'm guessing here) that risk goes much higher than the constant risk of car travel when something goes wrong (failure, human mistake, crash, birds, weather, etc.). I've searched for it before and didn't find anything, but it'd be nice to see any studies that confirm or deny this.
        naniwaduni 5y ago
        Considering that ~half of collisions involve multiple vehicles, I suspect your feeling of being in control is a bit of an illusion.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        slavik81 5y ago
    - JCharante 5y ago
      Well what counts as a trip? Surely a trip down the street to a Bodega would be safer than flying across an ocean.
  - zipiridu 5y ago
    IIRC takeoff and landing are the most dangerous parts, so I'd be more interested fatalities per trip. An intercontinental plane ride would cover more miles than I drive in a year which makes the per mile stat meaningless to me. I think it would still be in the plane's favor but probably not as significantly. And in that case if you're a safe driver (healthy adult, doesn't drink or do drugs, doesn't speed, etc) it might skew in favor of driving since I'm sure some groups are much higher risk.
    - mertd 5y ago
      If you are a terrible driver, you can certainly make your individual odds of accident a lot worse than the average case, but I'm not sure being a good driver improves your odds by that much. A lot of the risks are totally out of the driver's control (e.g., other road users, equipment, weather etc..).
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        Choice of weather conditions is within your control, just don't drive in terrible weather. Being a good driver does a ton to insulate you from the shenanigans of Equipment failure is basically a rounding errors but also within the driver's control since "flat tire at speed" is probably lion's share of crashes in that category.
        tialaramex 5y ago
        Bad weather is certainly a factor in a lot of General Aviation accidents. VFR into IMC (Visual Flight Rules, ie you fly by looking where you're going; into Instrument Meteorological Conditions, ie you can't see very far due to low cloud or nightfall) kills a bunch of people every year. Some of those killed are IFR rated. In theory they know how to fly a plane when you can't see where you're going, but theory and practice are different. One thing that's different between GA and driving is that you could stop driving. An hour from home, realising that the road really is too treacherous, you could pull over and walk. Up in the sky they don't have that option at a moment's notice. But one thing that's exactly the same is mission mindset - people fixate on what they intended to do until after it's far too late rather than have contingency plans.
- slownews45 5y ago
  And despite the complaints, US pax travel (scheduled) is INSANELY safe relative to most other forms of transport. They fly us around in tin cans at 30,000 feet without killing that many folks per year. I'd love to get status of fatalities per motorcycle mile vs airline mile. Got to be remarkably different.
  - runako 5y ago
    Data for transport modes excluding motorcycles: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/deaths-by-transportation-mode/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics... (airplanes are zero most years) Data for motorcycles: https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-motorcycle-crashes https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-motorcyc... Eyeballing, it looks like motorcycles have roughly ~50x as many fatalities per mile as passenger autos.
    - trangus_1985 5y ago
      I've been riding for a long time. I definitely spent effort understanding risks and safety. Motorcycle fatalities are mostly similar to factors that cause car fatalities, but extremely exacerbated. For example, about 40% of motorcycle fatalities involve alcohol. One drink before riding a motorcycle is about equivalent to 4 before you drive. Riding at night accounts for a significant amount of fatalities, as does unprotected left turns. Oversteering is another major factor, usually because you went too fast through a turn. Also, motorcycle fatalities are currently rising. This is largely due to older people who have wanted to ride but couldn't or were afraid to. A 65 year old man on a 800lb 1.5L engine bike who's a new rider is going to take a bad situation a lot harder than a younger person on a smaller bike. Motorcycles are more dangerous than cars, but if you understand the risks and employ constant self-improvement in your skills, you really begin to reduce your exposure to risk. Unfortunately, it does somewhat select for a group that likes to take risks.
    - opwieurposiu 5y ago
      Commercial aircraft are very safe, GA aircraft (your uncle with a cessna), are about as safe as motorcycles. https://inspire.eaa.org/2017/05/11/how-safe-is-it/ https://inspire.eaa.org/2017/05/11/how-safe-is-it/
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  > It kind of blows my mind how hardened a typical passenger cabin is to fire That's far from true for the interior. Things have improved over the years, but the interior is mostly plastic. This became a major concern after the investigation of the London ground fire where half the passengers died of smoke inhalation, and the 1998 JFK Swissair accident where the entertainment system wiring burned through. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111 In the 2013 SFO Asiana accident the interior fiercely burned, for example (see pics in W): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214
- walrus01 5y ago
  If you look at the gory history of all the jet aviation disasters of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and read the wikipedia pages for the major events, all of those have contributed to the design decisions that resulted in a modern airliner like a 787 or A350. The DC-10 for instance... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-10#Accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-10#Accide...
gumby 5y ago
Having been once in a aircraft-damaging emergency landing* decades ago I am surprised lap only belts are still the norm. There's a reason the crew has four point restraints, and I'd like to have it too. * I won't call it a crash since the aircraft made it to an airport and to a runway. We had equipment failure in flight so there was plenty of time for the flight attendants to review our crash positions, confiscate shoes, move people around etc. Everybody survived and I think everybody survived the emergency slides intact. Very exciting to mid-20s me.
- Teever 5y ago
  > confiscate shoes ???
  - diebeforei485 5y ago
    Some shoes (eg. soccer cleats, heels) can puncture the inflatable emergency slides.
  - tannedNerd 5y ago
    It’s for the slides, don’t want someone breaking an ankle and popping the slide in a high heel.
    - worker767424 5y ago
      I thought it was that they don't one a high heel puncturing the slide
  - clon 5y ago
    So you don't ruin the slide
    - labster 5y ago
      It’s a slide rule
- chris_j 5y ago
IdontRememberIt 5y ago
During my last flights, I always got 3 points seatbelts. Surprisingly, my 4yo was not allowed to buckle it during landing and takeoff.
- mertd 5y ago
  Business class? Haven't seen anything other than lap belts in economy.
  - IdontRememberIt 5y ago
    Yes. (International flights, before covid.)
actually_a_dog 5y ago
Here's a not so fun fact: seat belts do cause internal injuries, though infrequently. Here is a case study of two instances: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4818312/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4818312/ That does not change the fact that seat belts save lives, however: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/occupant-protection/seat-belts/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/occupant-protectio...

54 points by NotSwift 5y ago

Recent failures by Boeing aside, the amount of thought that goes into the holistic safety of commercial aircraft is astounding. It kind of blows my mind how hardened a typical passenger cabin is to fire, not to mention other hazards.

ceejayoz 5y ago
Yup. The "fatalities per mile" chart is pretty astounding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#/media/File:Fatalities_per_revenue_passenger_kilometre_in_air_transport_since_1970.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#/media/File:Fa...
- mpalczewski 5y ago
  Hmm, after looking at that, and always being told that airlines are the safest. I was surprised they are only safest by that one metric (fatalities / distance) and not fatalities per trip or fatalities per hour.
  - worker767424 5y ago
    Remember that takeoffs and landings are the most dangerous part of the trip.
    - hansthehorse 5y ago
      I usually hear it stated that it's the first two and last 8 minutes of any flight.
      - bittercynic 5y ago
        Surely the danger is almost always right after the flight ends :-)
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    Those seem like odd metrics to go by.
    - namdnay 5y ago
      Fatalities per hour seems like a reasonable statistic if you want to talk about fear - how likely am I to die in the next 5mn?
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        If my goal is "I wish to spend X hours in a form of transit", sure. If I need to get from LA to NYC, though... there's a lot more of those 5 minute periods if I'm driving.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      What you probably really want to compare flying and driving is fatalities per trip--for the same trip. As others have noted, a longer trip in a plane is almost certainly safer per mile than a shorter trip given where accidents happen. (And the effect may or may not be further magnified by the fact that I assume the accident rate is higher on small regional jets. Though, on the other hand, they carry fewer people.) On the other hand, driving is probably much more proportional to distance.
  - bmitc 5y ago
    I have personally never liked being blankly told that flying is safer than driving, because I’d like to understand how safe flying is versus driving when something goes wrong.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      Two seconds of inattention in a car is a lot more likely to kill you than it is in a plane. It’s fairly constant risk - going off the shoulder is just a few dozen feet at most. They also tend to be less well maintained, and the other participants less trained.
      - bmitc 5y ago
        That makes sense at first glance, but it's something I'm in control of. I was even thinking of this before, because the comparison is a little mismatched. I'm 100% likely to be a passenger when I'm in any plane, whereas I'm probably >98% likely to be a driver when I'm in a car. I'm not sure why I was downvoted, because I'm just stating I'd like to understand (data/studies) instead of people's anecdotes and opinions, including my own. My intuition is that car travel has a constant level of risk, whereas plane travel has a level of risk much below that when everything is good but (I'm guessing here) that risk goes much higher than the constant risk of car travel when something goes wrong (failure, human mistake, crash, birds, weather, etc.). I've searched for it before and didn't find anything, but it'd be nice to see any studies that confirm or deny this.
        naniwaduni 5y ago
        Considering that ~half of collisions involve multiple vehicles, I suspect your feeling of being in control is a bit of an illusion.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        slavik81 5y ago
  - JCharante 5y ago
    Well what counts as a trip? Surely a trip down the street to a Bodega would be safer than flying across an ocean.
- zipiridu 5y ago
  IIRC takeoff and landing are the most dangerous parts, so I'd be more interested fatalities per trip. An intercontinental plane ride would cover more miles than I drive in a year which makes the per mile stat meaningless to me. I think it would still be in the plane's favor but probably not as significantly. And in that case if you're a safe driver (healthy adult, doesn't drink or do drugs, doesn't speed, etc) it might skew in favor of driving since I'm sure some groups are much higher risk.
  - mertd 5y ago
    If you are a terrible driver, you can certainly make your individual odds of accident a lot worse than the average case, but I'm not sure being a good driver improves your odds by that much. A lot of the risks are totally out of the driver's control (e.g., other road users, equipment, weather etc..).
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Choice of weather conditions is within your control, just don't drive in terrible weather. Being a good driver does a ton to insulate you from the shenanigans of Equipment failure is basically a rounding errors but also within the driver's control since "flat tire at speed" is probably lion's share of crashes in that category.
      - tialaramex 5y ago
        Bad weather is certainly a factor in a lot of General Aviation accidents. VFR into IMC (Visual Flight Rules, ie you fly by looking where you're going; into Instrument Meteorological Conditions, ie you can't see very far due to low cloud or nightfall) kills a bunch of people every year. Some of those killed are IFR rated. In theory they know how to fly a plane when you can't see where you're going, but theory and practice are different. One thing that's different between GA and driving is that you could stop driving. An hour from home, realising that the road really is too treacherous, you could pull over and walk. Up in the sky they don't have that option at a moment's notice. But one thing that's exactly the same is mission mindset - people fixate on what they intended to do until after it's far too late rather than have contingency plans.
slownews45 5y ago
And despite the complaints, US pax travel (scheduled) is INSANELY safe relative to most other forms of transport. They fly us around in tin cans at 30,000 feet without killing that many folks per year. I'd love to get status of fatalities per motorcycle mile vs airline mile. Got to be remarkably different.
- runako 5y ago
  Data for transport modes excluding motorcycles: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/deaths-by-transportation-mode/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics... (airplanes are zero most years) Data for motorcycles: https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-motorcycle-crashes https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-motorcyc... Eyeballing, it looks like motorcycles have roughly ~50x as many fatalities per mile as passenger autos.
  - trangus_1985 5y ago
    I've been riding for a long time. I definitely spent effort understanding risks and safety. Motorcycle fatalities are mostly similar to factors that cause car fatalities, but extremely exacerbated. For example, about 40% of motorcycle fatalities involve alcohol. One drink before riding a motorcycle is about equivalent to 4 before you drive. Riding at night accounts for a significant amount of fatalities, as does unprotected left turns. Oversteering is another major factor, usually because you went too fast through a turn. Also, motorcycle fatalities are currently rising. This is largely due to older people who have wanted to ride but couldn't or were afraid to. A 65 year old man on a 800lb 1.5L engine bike who's a new rider is going to take a bad situation a lot harder than a younger person on a smaller bike. Motorcycles are more dangerous than cars, but if you understand the risks and employ constant self-improvement in your skills, you really begin to reduce your exposure to risk. Unfortunately, it does somewhat select for a group that likes to take risks.
  - opwieurposiu 5y ago
    Commercial aircraft are very safe, GA aircraft (your uncle with a cessna), are about as safe as motorcycles. https://inspire.eaa.org/2017/05/11/how-safe-is-it/ https://inspire.eaa.org/2017/05/11/how-safe-is-it/
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
redis_mlc 5y ago
> It kind of blows my mind how hardened a typical passenger cabin is to fire That's far from true for the interior. Things have improved over the years, but the interior is mostly plastic. This became a major concern after the investigation of the London ground fire where half the passengers died of smoke inhalation, and the 1998 JFK Swissair accident where the entertainment system wiring burned through. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111 In the 2013 SFO Asiana accident the interior fiercely burned, for example (see pics in W): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214
walrus01 5y ago
If you look at the gory history of all the jet aviation disasters of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and read the wikipedia pages for the major events, all of those have contributed to the design decisions that resulted in a modern airliner like a 787 or A350. The DC-10 for instance... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-10#Accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-10#Accide...

gumby 5y ago

Having been once in a aircraft-damaging emergency landing* decades ago I am surprised lap only belts are still the norm. There's a reason the crew has four point restraints, and I'd like to have it too. * I won't call it a crash since the aircraft made it to an airport and to a runway. We had equipment failure in flight so there was plenty of time for the flight attendants to review our crash positions, confiscate shoes, move people around etc. Everybody survived and I think everybody survived the emergency slides intact. Very exciting to mid-20s me.

Teever 5y ago
> confiscate shoes ???
- diebeforei485 5y ago
  Some shoes (eg. soccer cleats, heels) can puncture the inflatable emergency slides.
- tannedNerd 5y ago
  It’s for the slides, don’t want someone breaking an ankle and popping the slide in a high heel.
  - worker767424 5y ago
    I thought it was that they don't one a high heel puncturing the slide
- clon 5y ago
  So you don't ruin the slide
  - labster 5y ago
    It’s a slide rule
chris_j 5y ago

IdontRememberIt 5y ago

During my last flights, I always got 3 points seatbelts. Surprisingly, my 4yo was not allowed to buckle it during landing and takeoff.

mertd 5y ago
Business class? Haven't seen anything other than lap belts in economy.
- IdontRememberIt 5y ago
  Yes. (International flights, before covid.)

actually_a_dog 5y ago

Here's a not so fun fact: seat belts do cause internal injuries, though infrequently. Here is a case study of two instances: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4818312/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4818312/ That does not change the fact that seat belts save lives, however: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/occupant-protection/seat-belts/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/occupant-protectio...