• @_lilith
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    52221 days ago

    It straps you to the seat so when the plane suddenly drops 50 feet due to turbulence your dumbass doesn’t launch into the ceiling.

    • AFK BRB Chocolate
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      20421 days ago

      Yeah, and this is a much more frequent thing than crashes. I’ve been on planes multiple times when there was sudden turbulence and people without seatbelts lifted out of their seats. I don’t think any of my personal experiences resulted in someone hitting their head, but that happens. There was just video of one earlier this year.

    • SSTF
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      7521 days ago

      I have observed that “very clever” people on the internet have a tendency to disregard solutions that are only partial, even if there is little to no downside to them.

      • TheTechnician27
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        5121 days ago

        “Oh yeah? Why should I be wearing a seatbelt in a car when it won’t even save me if we crash head-on into a semi truck at 100 kph?”

        • @SlopppyEngineer
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          1121 days ago

          So you don’t get launched out the window and then crushed by your own car for the non-semi accidents.

          • TheTechnician27
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            721 days ago

            Correct me if I’m wrong too, but if you’re coming in on a parachute and somehow hit your head during the landing, that could hurt a lot, right?

        • @[email protected]
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          1021 days ago

          These days it might actually save you. Cars have gotten stupid safe in the last decade or so. I’ve seen a car smashed between two semis and the driver only had minor injuries (after they cut them out).

          Crumpel zones ftw!

      • MudMan
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        2621 days ago

        Not even partial in this case. I mean, the “turbulence sending you into the ceiling” event is fully resolved here.

        Anyway, just here looking for the common sense pedantic clarification, found it, so now here just to say good job.

      • @Lost_My_Mind
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        1421 days ago

        If you play the SNES version of Monopoly, you can play against CPU opponents. Mind you, this is artificial intelligence coded in 1992, on a cartridge with about 16mb of storage space for the entire game. Only a fraction of that is dedicated to the AI decision process.

        If you propose a trade, I’ll give CPU $5 in exchange for $0, the CPU will respond with NO DEAL!!!

        But if you propose "I’ll give you $100 in exchange for $0, the CPU replies “IT’S A DEAL!!!”

        The CPU was holding out for a bigger handout!

        Unrelated, but if you hold the B button, and don’t release, you’ll keep looping the shaking the dice animation. They use digital photo scans of a real hand/arm…if it were disembodied. And the animation looks like he’s just jacking off.

        • @CarbonatedPastaSauce
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          21 days ago

          You weren’t kidding.

          Edit: I see now you said SNES, can’t find a good animation of that one though. But I can see in the screenshots that it’s a pseudo-mocap human hand and yeah, that would be worse.

          • @[email protected]
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            721 days ago

            Old-school Monopoly jerkoff is how I discovered we can upload gifs now w/o using third-party hosters.

            There’s something to that animation…


            SNES is worse huh?:

            • @CarbonatedPastaSauce
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              421 days ago

              Oh man I haven’t seen that classic in a while. Thanks for the smile!

        • @[email protected]
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          721 days ago

          Wow, talking about NES Monopoly on a post about airplane seatbelts.

          I went down a bit of a rabbit hole on NES Monopoly because I used to play the game and wanted to see if I held the B button. Probably did, but I’m not sure.

          Anyway, the world record speedrun of Monopoly takes advantage of the trade mechanics. Trade the CPU mortgaged properties for all of their money and they’ll lose the game because you have to pay a 10% fee on any properties traded that were mortgaged. And if you take all their money in the trade they don’t have any to pay the penalty.

      • @shalafi
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        421 days ago

        I often see that in political arguments. There’s much to be said about wasting political capital on a poor and partial solution, but as you said, people bitch even if there’s no real downside.

    • Kalkaline
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      6021 days ago

      Yeah, it’s a similar reason your wear a helmet on a bicycle/motorcycle, if a car hits you doing 50+ MPH you’re probably done for regardless of whether you’re wearing a helmet. If you go over your handle bars face first into the pavement doing 10 MPH it keeps that injury from being catastrophic.

      • @CarbonatedPastaSauce
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        1621 days ago

        Amen. Both sides of my head would be just scar tissue if not for motorcycle helmets. And that’s just from sliding on the road, not hitting anything or being hit.

          • @CarbonatedPastaSauce
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            21 days ago

            Yes! It’s pretty nice! 20 years since my last crash and still riding. I guess I learned something.

            Most of those were on the racetrack back when I used to do that sort of thing, though. Occupational (hobbypational?) hazard.

            • @[email protected]
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              420 days ago

              Yes! It’s pretty nice!

              I’ve been giggling for three minutes now. Thanks for making my morning a little sweeter <3

      • snooggums
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        421 days ago

        Juat like in a car!

    • bjorney
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      721 days ago

      Or if you are on a Boeing plane and a side panel/door spontaneously flies off off you don’t get sucked out

      /s, but not really /s

    • @stupidcasey
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      521 days ago

      Never been on a flight never assumed I would be afraid of flying however that sounds horrific, so thanks for giving me a new fear of flying.

      • ✺roguetrick✺
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        20 days ago

        Can’t really let random stuff like that with a low injury profile bother you. You’d end up fearing and respecting escalators in that case.

        Reminds me of the time the brakes gave out on the L’enfant Plaza escalator for the DC Metro after the Rally to Restore Sanity (a lot good that did). Everyone was piled on going down and it just gave up the ghost and accelerated at full speed to bring them all down in a pile.

        https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W5MbQaInrjc

        For reference, the DC Metro is quite deep underground.

      • @[email protected]
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        621 days ago

        Don’t worry, some turbulence is par for the course but dangerous turbulence is pretty rare. Also 50 feet is an exaggeration, turbulence usually feels worse than it is. Plane rides are usually smoother than driving in a car, but flying can make you sensitive to lateral motion.

    • @marcos
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      521 days ago

      And when there’s a collision on ground. And when the pilot just breaks too hard after landing.

  • Todd Bonzalez
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    14120 days ago

    The actual answer is that the seatbelt is there to keep your ragdoll ass from bouncing off the ceiling during heavy turbulence.

    • @[email protected]
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      2820 days ago

      For sure, anyone who has seen some of the videos of drink carts and luggage bouncing off the cabin ceilings during crazy turbulence shouldn’t have any questions about the utility of seatbelts in less than catastrophic events… Which of course is the goal even in ‘crash’ landings. There are crashes where seatbelts would obviously be worthless, but in anything short of that, you’ll be happy that you weren’t in a box with 300 human shaped dice being shaken up.

    • @[email protected]
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      2420 days ago

      I read this horrible post a few years ago where a PoS passenger didn’t buckle up. So the car drove off a cliff, her body flew and killed people in the back seat who were buckled up. The driver survived since he was buckled in.

    • @SocialMediaRefugee
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      1220 days ago

      I was watching one air accident documentary where the plane dropped so hard that people who were unbuckled were launched into the ceiling and people found their phones and laptops in the back of the plane.

  • @[email protected]
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    11221 days ago

    That factoid is from a decade or two ago, when clear air turbulence was a lot rarer. Nowadays, due to global warming, turbulence coming out of nowhere is more common, and on occasion results in unbelted passengers being thrown into the ceiling and severely injured.

  • @[email protected]
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    7020 days ago

    If you follow avherald.com for any length of time, you’ll learn that 1) the vast majority of aviation incidents are completely benign, and 2) the vast majority of injuries aboard airliners are caused by passengers not wearing their seatbelts. The seatbelts aren’t there for the once-a-decade crash; they’re there for the once-a-month strong turbulence event, which the airplane itself will barely even notice.

  • @Etterra
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    5620 days ago

    In the event of catastrophic damage leading to explosive decompression it should keep you from being sucked out into thin air. Like if the roof tears off like that one time. Or that Boeing thing. Or that other Boeing thing. Or that other other Boeing thing.

      • @Etterra
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        219 days ago

        Of course it was, how could I forget.

    • @ripcord
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      1720 days ago

      Or keep you from bouncing and hitting the ceiling in cases of extreme turbulence. Or yo help on cases of lower-speed crashes (cases where the plane goes into some nosedive are less likely), etc.

    • @potpotato
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      219 days ago

      Hope you’re also wearing a parka.

  • Troy
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    5021 days ago

    Crash survival statistics are actually quite surprising. Like, you have higher survivability odds in the back of the plane – cause everyone in front of you is your crumple zone.

    • @RegalPotoo
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      3721 days ago

      Planes rarely reverse into mountains.

      And the survival statistics have a lot to do with the amount of work that has been put into making the worst case “controlled descent into terrain” scenario exceptionally rare.

      • @Viking_Hippie
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        620 days ago

        Planes rarely reverse into mountains.

        And when they do, everyone acts all shocked and bewildered and ask me how I did it

    • ArtieShaw
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      2121 days ago

      About 20 years ago I read a grim book about plane crashes. They claimed that the number 1 predictor of crash survivability on commercial craft was being a male between the ages of 20 and 50. They’re apparently much better equipped to claw and climb over the other passengers on the way out.

      Grim. I fly a lot and think about it at least every other trip.

      • @[email protected]
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        221 days ago

        Well, also that being bigger means you’re less vulnerable to smoke or toxic has inhalation, which is what kills most people.

    • @[email protected]
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      2021 days ago

      The stats of surviving in a plane are quite high.

      The stats of surviving in a plane with at least one death are very low.

      Usually, if anyone dies, everyone dies.

      • @Frozengyro
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        1721 days ago

        No, people die on planes all the time. Almost 3 million people fly daily, I’m guessing people die in flight almost every day due to natural causes.

        However, I’m sure the stats with 2+ people dying, survival odds are quite low.

        • @[email protected]
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          1121 days ago

          Honestly I wasn’t going to bother specifying this but yes obviously you’re correct. Alternatively it can be thought of as, “in a plane accident, if anyone dies, usually everyone dies”

          • @Frozengyro
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            321 days ago

            Fair enough, I just figured since we were being particular, better specify lol

      • Troy
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        21 days ago

        Almost certainly true of ocean landings. But I’ve spent a lot of time in bush planes (no crashes, knock on wood). I’ve had colleagues survive crashes where others have died. Perhaps it is sample bias, or something particularly about remote crashes.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Air_Flight_6560 – two of the survivors were in the back, both working for our company. After the crash: one never returned, one just quiet quit over the next year or two.

        https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/yellowknife-plane-crash-kills-2-people-1.987369 – this plane crashed into our office building, killing the pilots, but the passengers all survived. I wasn’t there, but coworkers would often describe the experience inside the building.

        It happens often enough that I have two examples where I’m only one degree of separation.

        I had two colleagues survive a helicopter crash into a lake at full speed (calm day, no waves, pilot lost track of where the surface was) – one of my coworked was ejected out the front window of the helicopter (seatbelt was on). Didn’t even warrant a news story. But everyone survived this one, which may be a data point in your favour.

        I don’t have an actual source for stats. Got anything?

        • @[email protected]
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          21 days ago

          Jesus Christ what kind of work do you do

          As far as source, my ass. I heard it somewhere else (talking about commercial airliners) and it passed the smell test

          • Troy
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            921 days ago

            At the time, arctic mineral exploration. However I blew out my knee and started a business with lower personal risk (equipment targeting the same market) ;)

            Free photo – me doing science in the arctic in winter (February, so the sun is up) with curious caribou checking it out

              • Troy
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                321 days ago

                Kind of. My own business will probably needs to hire a tech sometime in the next six months. Ideally someone technically inclined with a steady hand (who can be trained to solder connectors onto cables, etc.)

                Oh, the arctic exploration stuff? My old employer is Aurora Geoscience – they have a careers page. There are others like them, depending on your citizenship and location. Many of these companies will hire labourers and semi-skilled technicians who want the lifestyle. You won’t get paid a lot – but it’s kind of like the military experience without the guns and you come out knowing how to do a lot of shit. A good life experience. :)

                • @TexasDrunk
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                  221 days ago

                  I wish I had known about that when I was younger. I would have done that instead of the military.

          • @TexasDrunk
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            321 days ago

            Test pilot for planes put together by drunks.

    • @[email protected]
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      1321 days ago

      Like, you have higher survivability odds in the back of the plane

      But when you’re sitting in the front during a crash the snack cart comes by one more time.

    • @someguy3
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      421 days ago

      I think this every time I’m the back which is loud because of the engines.

      • ArtieShaw
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        521 days ago

        I’m sensitive to noise, and usually book late enough that the only seats available are in back. And fly at least once a month.

        Absolutely decent noise cancelling headphones are available for under $70 US last time I bought some. Mine were called Q30 or something, and they were better than my Sennheisers from 2016-ish. Worth every bit. If one can afford a ticket, one can afford this one thing to make it less awful.

        • @someguy3
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          221 days ago

          Yeah I rarely fly so I don’t bother.

        • Troy
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          221 days ago

          I concur. I went high end though with Sennhauser cause I’m a nerd. Great investment.

    • @HappycamperNZ
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      421 days ago

      Jump seat behind pilot for helicopters, I assume due to the supporting framework from the engines and not in blade range.

      Middle of planes over the wing root - easy access to exits, crumple zone infront, not going with the tail if it hits, and strongest part of aircraft. Also right over a fuel tanks, so results vary.

    • @Siethron
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      221 days ago

      You also have hugely increased survival odds with backwards seats.

      • Rhaedas
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        121 days ago

        Actually…nah, I’m not going there. But if you watched Lost, you know what I’m going to say.

  • @RampantParanoia2365
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    4920 days ago

    …what? Obviously. It’s for turbulence, which is common. This comic is a joke, but not how it’s intended to be.

    • @realitistaOP
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      3420 days ago

      No, comics are the primary legitimate source of facts so I’m sure it’s true.

      • @Buddahriffic
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        1020 days ago

        That sounds a bit sketchy… Now if you had presented that statement in comic form, I might believe it.

        • @[email protected]
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          220 days ago

          Don’t feel bad about it. It’s common.

          People who shout, “It’s just a joke!” Forget that sometimes, memes is the only time a person thought about that problem and now it’s what they believe.

          We’re not going to stop Shitposting any time soon.

        • @GreenKnight23
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          220 days ago

          Here it is from the 1947 issue of, “Всегда лжец”

          Screenshot_20241101-121438_Firefox

    • @finestnothing
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      3721 days ago

      Yep - the seatbelt and the crash position are extremely effective at preventing death and lessening injuries

    • @[email protected]
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      1221 days ago

      I thought he’d be unclicking it by context, but with the hand position it must be clicking it together.

  • slingstone
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    20 days ago

    Stupid question here, I guess, but why isn’t there a system to potentially deliver commercial passengers and crew to the ground in case of a crash? Military jets have ejection seats and parachutes, so why don’t we have at least something required for commercial aircraft in the same vein?

    Is it the money that it would undoubtedly require?

    Edit: misspelling

    • @[email protected]
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      2220 days ago

      Not a stupid question.

      Between the training required for a solo parachute jump, and the cost (and more importantly) weight of the equipment, plus the relative safety of commercial flights, it’s simply not justified.

      In more than a few cases we’ve seen airliners make emergency landings that are gnarly, but the majority survive. In more cases than I can count, there’s checks and balances that ground flights because of safety concerns either at the departure point or at the destination (icing, high winds, etc), or due to mechanical concerns.

      It’s rare that a fully inspected and functional aeroplane will fall out of the sky, and we do everything in our power to ensure that all planes that leave the ground are fully inspected and functional. Short of a freak occurrence, like a fast forming weather phenomenon, there’s so many checks and balances that airliner crashes are exceedingly rare.

      So not only is a crash rare, there’s no guarantee that a crash will be fatal, usually the pilot can at least get the plane on the ground without killing everyone aboard, and the fact that it’s a massive amount of extra weight that requires training that the average person doesn’t have, there’s little point and nearly nothing to gain from doing something like that, while it would have significant downsides on flight efficiency and increase the costs of fuel per flight due to the extra weight.

      Then there’s the consideration of, even if they were able to successfully parachute to the ground, what then? It’s pretty much a guarantee that nobody has a radio, and that you’re far enough away from civilization that your cellphone doesn’t work, so now you have hundreds of people spread out over potentially thousands of miles of terrain/water/whatever that you now need weeks to search and rescue everyone. Taking weeks on search and rescue, pretty much guarantees that you’ll find people who landed safely, then died from exposure to the environment.

      On the flip side, if everyone is in the plane when it crashes then all you need to do is find the plane; everyone will be in that general area, whether alive or dead.

      There’s just too many downsides to having parachutes on board to make it feasible.

      • slingstone
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        420 days ago

        Honestly, I do understand that ejector seats are not a good idea, but I was thinking something more like this. It’s more like a lifeboat and would be equipped as such to address the same sort of concerns a disaster at sea would require to allow folks to survive and be tracked.

        I get that the expense and weight appear prohibitive, but it’s insane to me that we put people 30,000 feet in the air with no plan other than prevention and measures that don’t completely address all dangers.

        I know nothing will likely ever be done in this vein, and probably rightfully so, but it sure feels like airlines are the ultimate “you pays your money and you takes your chance” experience. Given my own limited experience with flying, it increasingly scares the hell out of me personally. I didn’t have occasion to fly until I was in late middle age, and I found the experience thoroughly terrifying.

        • @[email protected]
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          320 days ago

          That’s a very normal reaction. You’re putting your life in the hands of technicians and engineers, to build, maintain and service the aircraft so it functions, qualified inspectors to certify that the plane is safe to fly, and pilots to fly the aircraft, and you, safely to your destination. Pretty much everyone you’re putting your life in the hands of, you’ve never met, never will, and it’s unlikely you’ll even know their names.

          It’s a lot of trust to put into people you don’t even know, to keep you alive in your chair in the sky.

          If that reality doesn’t at least give you pause, or some concern, then I’d be worried there’s something seriously wrong with you.

          Rest assured that statistics are on your side. It’s far more likely for you to get to your destination without any significant complications then it is for any complications to happen, including any that might lead to a crash or a fatality. Statistically, it’s comfortably one of the safest, if not the safest, method of travel.

          There’s nothing wrong with having some apprehension, fear, or worry, over placing your life in the hands of complete strangers; despite how qualified each and every one of them might be, they’re still strangers.

          All I can say is, if you’re bothered by it, learn how to parachute solo. It’ll take a while, but learn it. Then just pack your own parachute any time you fly. Problem solved. If you lose confidence in the pilots to keep you alive, bail.

          • slingstone
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            420 days ago

            You gonna bail me out when I get arrested for trying to open the door mid-flight? 😂

            Seriously, though, all you guys here are right about everything you’ve said. I’ll undoubtedly be forced to fly again, and I’ll remind myself of these things when I do.

            Of course, if I’m on the one flight that does disintegrate in midair, well…my last thoughts of y’all might not be terribly charitable. 😉

    • @AlotOfReading
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      1420 days ago

      Throwing untrained people out of a commercial airliner at high speed in the middle of a emergency is a good way to ensure no one survives. The equipment would add a significant amount of space, fuel and maintenance burden too, and require major compromises to the aircraft design itself. All to resolve a problem that effectively never happens.

    • @[email protected]
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      520 days ago

      An explosive release canopy for an ejection seat system on an airliner would just release the entire top half of the plane, and don’t forget that fighter pilots are both wearing flightsuits and get specific training for the event.

      Even beyond the material and engineering costs it’s a difficult ask, probably better to just focus on reliability in the first place.

      • @[email protected]
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        820 days ago

        Ok but what about instead of an explosive release canopy, the crew just sorta loosen some of the bolts holding the top of the plane on, then the pilot flies upside-down to gently tip everyone out of their seats

    • @[email protected]
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      420 days ago

      I remember seeing an article back in the 90s or maybe even 80s that was exploring the possibility of the entire passenger compartment separating from the wings and rest of the fuselage and parachuting down in the event of a major failure. The thing is, it would be ridiculously expensive to implement, and there are very few situations where such a system would be any better than keeping the plane in one piece.

      • @grandkaiser
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        219 days ago

        Iirc, when experimented on, these ‘escape pods’ would enter a spin so violent it would turn the whole thing into a lethal centrifuge.

      • slingstone
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        220 days ago

        Yeah, escape pods have been implemented in some aircraft in the past, but the idea has always ended without wide scale adoption for the reasons so many have stated here.

    • @[email protected]
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      20 days ago

      Parachuting isn’t as easy as pulling a wire and gently floating to the ground. Those who parachute professionally take hundreds of hours of training. If you’re brand new, you’re required to strap yourself to a professional.

    • Todd Bonzalez
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      320 days ago

      Rigging a commercial airline with that many ejection seats would add significant weight to the plane. You’d probably triple the cost of commercial airflight if you did this just from reduced seating capacity, and even assuming that it could be implemented without that overhead I still don’t think this would actually help much.

      Imagine you’re on Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in a 737 Max nosediving towards the ground and the roof just opens up and launches you and all 148 of your fellow passengers out of the plane at 400MPH. Somehow I imagine that you just end up scattering the mangled corpses over a wider area.

      • Captain Aggravated
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        120 days ago

        Just carrying a few hundred escape chutes would add significant weight to the plane. Have you ever worn an emergency escape chute? I have. It’s like having a chair strapped to your back and ass.

    • @mistermanko
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      220 days ago

      Some valid answers are already given by other commentators. Just want to highlight that commercial airlines are operating barely cost positive. Every extra bit of cost added has to be at least covered by some other stream of revenue. How much more money can a seat in these crammed airliners make to cover the cost of R&Ding and maintaining additional safety measures?

        • LordWarfire
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          520 days ago

          That’s revenue, their profit was closer to $4.6bn which, whilst a big number, is a margin of under 8%.

          • @LowtierComputer
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            117 days ago

            Just like so many other businesses the money never makes it to the rich CEO, board members, affiliate’s pockets, and is definitely being paid to the pilots, flight attendants, and ground crew.

            That’s why they have so little profit and tax payments!

  • @someguy3
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    921 days ago

    I think it really does help in crashes though.

    • @[email protected]
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      621 days ago

      Similar to a car crash, you are generally safer in your padded engineered metal box than being thrown out of it, or thrown around inside it.

      It’s like the difference between dropping a carton of eggs vs a bunch of loose eggs in a box.