4 ms·
That thought is not very logical. Very large passenger fixed wings are also a very bad idea and fragile if the premise is someone is shooting at them. https:/
by loloquwowndueo 2y ago
That thought is not very logical. Very large passenger fixed wings are also a very bad idea and fragile if the premise is someone is
shooting at them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
- lvspiff 2y agoEven ground based large passenger non-winged transports are a bad idea if someone is shooting at them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_railway_station_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_railway_station_att... overall i prefer any mode of transport that is not being shot at
- medo-bear 2y agoWhat do you know, even sea based large passenger transport is a bad idea if someone is shooting at them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Lusitania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Lusitania Funny anecdote, my first air travel was in an Mi-8 as a 6 year old being airlifted out of a war zone
- _heimdall 2y agoMy grandfather flew in WWII and had many stories of both his planes and those in his group making it back with what mechanics would have thought was catastrophic damage. Shooting down any aircraft with a rocket is likely to take anything down. Planes can handle damage much better from what I understand.
- jordanb 2y agoAnti-aircraft weapons have gotten better. In WWII the Axis didn't have proximity fuses so the shells would explode at a predetermined range and throw shrapnel. Now anti-aircraft weapons explode at a very specific distance and create a rapidly expanding ring of metal which slices the aircraft in two.
- stouset 2y agoAnd they are actively guided onto their targets. Even bullets are aimed by radar and a computer plotting a solution involving the trajectories of the target, your own aircraft, and the bullets themselves.
- _heimdall 2y agoFor sure. I wasn't raising 80 year old flights as a direct analog to today's weapons, I'm just pointing out a direct example I have of planes landing safely after some really serious damage. Helicopters aren't nearly as likely to make it back with similar levels of damage.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoThe Bloody Hundredth (Masters of the Air was based on that) had the highest casualty percentage of any combat unit in the war.
- mysterydip 2y agoStill being used in training today: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
- _heimdall 2y agoSurvivorship bias is related to how you respond to the data though, in this case reinforcing the wrong parts of the plane based on where you saw holes in planes that returned. I do believe it is still true that planes can take more damage and still land safely compared to helicopters. I can't find any good data to support it now though, maybe someone going by here will have a good link to data that shows real world data either way.
- bell-cot 2y agoSize matters. Flight 17 was shot down with a Buk missile. Wikipedia says 150 lbs. warhead. Flight 655 was shot down with 2 SM-2MR missiles. Wikipedia is mum about warhead weight...but the missiles themselves would be over 3,000 lbs. (combined). Vs. the helicopter was shot down with a 24 lbs. missile, with a 2.6 lbs. warhead. One extremely clear lesson from WWII was that hitting a fixed-wing aircraft was very different from shooting it down. Size mattered. Once the combatants realized that, they replaced their start-of-war "you might get a hit in just the right spot" pea shooters with the heaviest AA weapons that they could use.
- lupusreal 2y agoSo you're saying that fixed wing airliners are better than helicopter airliners because shooting them down requires larger missiles? Either of these are such fringe scenarios, it doesn't make sense to judge either whole class of aircraft by this type of incident.
- frabert 2y agoI think what they're saying is that you can't easily target a fixed-wing aircraft flying miles above ground with hand-held equipment like you would a helicopter
- throwup238 2y ago> So you're saying that fixed wing airliners are better than helicopter airliners because shooting them down requires larger missiles? Yes, it not only increases the barrier to entry for attackers but airlines can install some defenses against MANPADS since they're easier to counteract than more advanced missiles. Some Israeli companies have developed and certified flare based anti-MANPADS systems like Flight Guard and laser based ones like C-MUSIC, though I don't think airlines have widely deployed them yet. Once they're at cruising altitude, man portable AA can't bring them down.
- lupusreal 2y agoThese shoot downs are such uncommon events that it makes no sense to judge passenger aircraft by them. You may as well say that helicopters are better because, not using runways, they avoid a repeat Tenerife scenario. Any consideration like this is completely washed out by practical/economic considerations; how much money can you make operating an airline with either kind of aircraft, and what kind of capabilities do they provide? This is why fixed wing aircraft are almost always better, except when the particular capabilities of helicopters invoke their use.
- indymike 2y agoI think the OP was saying, fixed wing aircraft are safer in general, and that is before the shooting starts.
- bell-cot 2y agoCorrect.
- TylerE 2y agoIt’s very logical. Rotor wings have a much higher accident rate per flight hour.
- HenryBemis 2y agoWould it make sense to add the 'height' factor? An airplane reaches and does most of its course at 3km, while a helicopter at a much lower heights and thus well within the firing range of far more weapons.
- loloquwowndueo 2y agoAirliners fly at 8000-10000m most of the time.
- HenryBemis 2y agoCorrect, feet vs m got me.. pilots say 30000f, not 3000m. That makes my point even stronger (planes vs helicopters and their reach-ability from the ground).