How the airline industry got wise to seat belts | Hacker News Reader

How the airline industry got wise to seat belts

airspacemag.com

54 pointsNotSwift76 comments

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.

> confiscate shoes

???

It’s for the slides, don’t want someone breaking an ankle and popping the slide in a high heel.

I thought it was that they don't one a high heel puncturing the slide

So you don't ruin the slide

It’s a slide rule

Some shoes (eg. soccer cleats, heels) can puncture the inflatable emergency slides.

What was it about the emergency landing that made you surprised that lap only belts are still the norm? (Apologies if I'm asking about something blindingly obvious but I've not been in an aircraft-damaging emergency landing and I'm really interested to hear more about your experience.)

Probably what was briefly discussed in the article. So long as your seat stays anchored, a multipoint harness will keep you in position better. The injuries in the one accident were from people being moved side-to-side, not forward or up and down. The seatbelts didn't injure them, but the armrests did. A multipoint harness could (if worn properly) reduce those kinds of injuries. Of course, in a total failure where the seats become detached from the floor and the aircraft is rolling, no seatbelt or harness will save you.

At an airline training session I attended, a man who survived a famous passenger aircraft crash advised that one should get as low as possible in their seat and put their knees up against the back of the seat in front of you, while still buckled. The passengers that died around him were killed by the heavy luggage exploding out of the overheads and breaking their necks, so it's important to have your head below the seat back. The people who sat upright also tended to break their noses/faces on the seat backs in front of them. The speaker walked away from the crash with only a knee injury by bracing himself in the reclined position.

Interesting; this was the position they had us all adopt.

They also moved the "old"* people in the exit rows and asked a couple of us young men to take their places. Back then there was no pre-questioning to see if you're willing and able to open the exit windows. Interestingly, they gave us special instruction which was: "Don't open the window unless I [flight attendant] am disabled. I might not be opening it for a reason."

* probably around the age I am now, or younger, and I don't feel old. But I am a lot fitter today than people my age tended to be 30 years ago.

That instruction is standard procedure. Same for the cabin crew, they're instructed not to evacuate unless told to by the cockpit crew or unable to communicate with the cockpit after an incident.

The main reason is knowing which engine is on fire vs shutdown. So in almost all cases you want to captain to decide the moment of evacuation, not the cabin crew and certainly not a passenger.

Interesting, the last time I paid attention to a safety briefing, they had us put our arms folded in front of us on the seatback in front of us and then our heads against the arms.

Supposedly the call for this on the plane would be “Brace! Brace!” Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong before the world shut down.

This is what most people seem to get wrong about airplane seat belts—they are not there for the same reason as in cars: crashes. They are there to keep people from flying around and getting injured during turbulence.

Crashes in commercial planes are so rare that any single one almost always makes the news, while turbulence is extremely common. Let’s be fair and say that a seatbelt is not going to make a whit of difference when colliding with the ground at 200 MPH, so a 2 or 5 point harness are essentially the same in that regard. But a belt is plenty to help with turbulence.

Will there be a few instances, such as yours, where the extra protection would have been good? Of course, but there’s also a trade-off of weight, cost, and public resistance to strapping in like a race car driver. The other mitigations seem to work well enough when there is a situation.

Turbulence that results in people flying out of their seats is exceedingly rare, like a once in a lifetime experience for a commercial pilot. Airplanes will go to great lengths to avoid bad weather to avoid stressing the airframe and making passengers uncomfortable.

Anecdotally, I've been on more planes with lots of turbulence (that without the seat belt would have been potentially damaging) than I can count on two hands. I've never been in a plane crash. :)

I imagine part of the reason people don't fly out of their seats today is, well, seatbelts, but also likely depends on the airline/pilots as well.

I was reading a recent article on the NSTB's increased focus on reducing injuries from airplane turbulence and was surprised how low the baseline currently is.

"Accidents on U.S. airlines have become increasingly rare except for one category of in-flight mishap that has remained stubbornly prevalent: turbulence that leads to serious injuries.

More than 65% of severe injuries — or 28 of 43 — logged by U.S. accident investigators from 2017 through 2020 on airliners resulted from planes encountering bumpy skies, triggered by atmospheric conditions that could be worsening due to climate change."

Sure, let's reduce injuries. But 7 serious injuries per year seems quite good already compared to injuries from other forms of transportation. I wonder how many people are injured on shuttle buses to airports that lack seat belts. I'd have to guess it's more than that.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/turbulence-continues-t...

This is a good point: the number of such incidents is so low the cost (including social resistance) doesn't make it worth it.

I would like it because I mostly sleep on the plane. Also I take a lot of transoceanic flights (or did pre covid) which seem to have more turbulence than transcontinental ones (perhaps less discretion for rerouting, especially ETOPS flights?).

I miss the back-facing seats which I always chose when I had the option, as they are much safer (except for the risk of flying debris).

Many business-class airline seats do now have three point seatbelts.

They seem to have started adding shoulder belts in some of the newer fully-lie-flat business/first seats on some airlines.

> There's a reason the crew has four point restraints, and I'd like to have it too.

Isnt it because their seats are facing the other way?

No; that helps. Planes tend to crash into things, not get rear ended. Facing backwards means they aren’t flung forwards into things.

Regardless of orientation they have four point. As I noted in a different comment, I miss the rear facing seats; I used to choose them by preference and on trains or other vehicles with rear facing seats I always select them.

What I find funny is that this year I got to fly newer first class (places I fly to are $1k+ economy and close to $10k first class, so normally I avoid the latter), the type where you get to sit diagonally in your own little "bunk". Despite the whole seat obviously designed for more comfort, the belt had the lap and the shoulder parts, and many times they were much more anal about having both parts buckled up. Guess that's the tradeoff! Typical economy is miserably cramped so they get less restraints to feel a bit better.

It depends on the position of the chair, direction and hard surfaces you could hit. A shoulder strap is common on seats that don't face straight forward.

"Confiscate shoes"?

I'd think they'd want to make sure your shoes were on, so that you could walk safely over whatever debris was produced.

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/

That does not change the fact that seat belts save lives, however: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/occupant-protectio...

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.

Yup. The "fatalities per mile" chart is pretty astounding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#/media/File:Fa...

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.

Those seem like odd metrics to go by.

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?

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.

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.

Remember that takeoffs and landings are the most dangerous part of the trip.

I usually hear it stated that it's the first two and last 8 minutes of any flight.

Surely the danger is almost always right after the flight ends :-)

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.

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.

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.

Considering that ~half of collisions involve multiple vehicles, I suspect your feeling of being in control is a bit of an illusion.

My father always said that accidents tend to happen when two people make mistakes. Even when fault technically lies with a single party, it's often the case that both parties had a chance to prevent the mistake from becoming a collision.

For example, if a turning vehicle cuts off oncoming traffic, it could get hit. An attentive driver in the oncoming lane might see the problem and hit the brakes, while an inattentive or speeding driver might not react in time. The turning vehicle is at fault, but that doesn't mean they were the only one that could have prevented the collision.

There are sometimes events you cannot control, but a lot of those multi-vehicle collisions were preventable by either party.

When you are in a plane there is a 100% probability that the driver will be a trained professional, while according to your stats there is less than a 2% chance that your driver will be a trained professional when you are in a car.

While I have no hard stats I would also assume that a plane is much safer when something goes wrong. Why?

1) Professional 'driver' who has trained for years to handle risks and failure scenarios and practices these on a regular basis.

2) Redundancy and graceful failure is designed into many of the components and systems on a plane, while cars tend towards the cheapest component or system possible unless mandated by law.

3) Space (both altitude and the fact that the sky is basically empty) provides time to solve some problems before they become catastrophic failures and makes other classes of problems very unlikely.

If you blow a tire, run into a deer, or have a transmission failure while you are cruising down the highway at 80mph you have seconds (at most) to react and respond. If a plane hits birds, has an engine fail, or loses some other system they usually have minutes to troubleshoot the problem and redundant systems that prevent the plane from just falling out of the sky.

>If you blow a tire, run into a deer, or have a transmission failure while you are cruising down the highway at 80mph you have seconds (at most) to react and respond

When they happen all you do it move over and come to a stop. Unless you go Full Redditor(TM) and start adding a bunch of extreme control inputs none of these things are that bad. They don't require much reaction at all even if you are paralyzed by indecision it can still turn out fine since all you have to do is stop.

Blowouts are a non-event, IMO, just a flat tire with an extra audio alert.

Automatic transmissions basically don't fail in unsafe ways. Worst case you'll find some extra neutrals and make an ass out of yourself failing to merge or something. Splitting the case on a manual (like you might do if you go for 4th and somehow find 2nd, or jump a vehicle and don't mash the clutch before hitting the ground) is surprisingly uneventful from a maintaining control perspective.

Deer suck, mostly because they tend to break a bunch of expensive cosmetic bits.

Having a hood fly up on you is worse than any of the above events because you can't see. Brake failure kinda sucks too, especially with an automatic trans.

Things “go wrong” fairly “frequently” on airplanes but they are hardened for this with redundant systems and manual (as well as computer) overrides. You don’t hear about most of them but they are all logged and used for improvements.

The main difference is when a car has a catastrophic failure there’s a good chance the people involved survive.

I suppose by wrong I mean something more than the redundant, robust, and various protection systems can handle. For example, on a car, I wouldn't consider the anti-lock brake system kicking in as something going wrong.

I've had an engine failure in my car while driving it. I simply was able to slow to a crawl until I got home. I don't think engine failure on an airplane is such an anti-climatic event, on average.

> I don't think engine failure on an airplane is such an anti-climatic event, on average.

It often is, actually. They have more than one engine precisely for that scenario, and can fly quite well with one down. Flights over water are also carefully planned based on distance to the nearest airport with an engine out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS

Even if you lose all four on a 747, there’s surprisingly large amounts of time to troubleshoot if you’re at cruise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

Engine failure on a modern airplane is quite anti-climatic. We train for it regularly, and there are standard procedures to follow after the failure. Basically secure the failed engine, if it's just after takeoff climb to a safe altitude (sometimes following a predetermined route) using the other engine, then select a runway for landing and land almost normally.

Sort of interesting how the edge of catastrophic failure has moved out in both cars and commercial aircraft.

Well what counts as a trip? Surely a trip down the street to a Bodega would be safer than flying across an ocean.

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.

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..).

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.

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.

This is a nice summary. VFR into IMC and pilot task saturation/distraction are such killers in the broad GA space. Literally forgetting the fly/operate the plane.

Eh? It's absolutely an option, from a technical weather forecasting perspective, to see that a storm exists, and to abort a particular plane flight before it takes off, or reroute to another airport. This happens all the time in extreme weather conditions (eg winter anywhere it snowstorms). That airlines choose not to more proactively cancel flights in moderately inclement weather is a business decision, not a shortcoming of our weather forecasting abilities. Flights often get delayed by weather at the other end - it's jarring to hear the pilot say the flight you're on is delayed due to heavy rain at your destination, when it's a gorgeous sunny day in your current location, but it happens quite frequently!

The comment you're responding to is talking about general aviation, small propeller planes. Those have a relatively high incident count for flying into bad weather. When the pilot is only trained to fly visually (VFR) and enters low visibility or clouds they're very likely to crash.

This isn't a problem in airline flights. There are very specific rules about when you can and cannot depart and when an alternate airport and fuel for it is required. No airline takes off without satisfying all the rules and almost no airline cancels a flight for weather while the rules say it could go.

> small propeller planes

General Aviation is a category that covers a circumstance of flying rather than of aircraft. I think if you've got the necessary time and money to buy your own personal jetliner, insure it, get all the paperwork signed off for it and for you to fly it as a hobby, that's still GA, although where somebody with that much time on their hands gets that kind of money escapes me.

Some mere millionaires own jets with decent performance, aircraft that in capable hands could fly well in most weather but they're still GA and too many of them still die in bad weather.

Not always within your control (pandemic notwithstanding). Sometimes you have to catch a train, commute into work, etc., and "the weather is bad" is not always a valid excuse.

The stat is doubly misleading because it is skewed by the proliferation of long direct flights as turbofan widebody jets proliferated and air travel became more affordable which both happened in the same time period as that chart.

I don't think flying is particularly dangerous but the person you're replying to is being highly naive or misleading by taking that chart at face value.

I’m neither naive nor misleading. By any measure, airline travel - particularly in the US - is remarkably safe.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/13/colgan-air-crash-10-years-ag...

I remember hearing with the rise of regional airlines starting in the 90s the number of flight cycles (takeoffs/landings) went way up for some types of planes...and I assume for the "average flight." An increase in the number of short trips would make lowing the per-mile rating more impressive.

In many years the US commercial airlines have literally zero fatalities. You're more likely to die by falling in the shower.

https://www.airlines.org/dataset/safety-record-of-u-s-air-ca...

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.

Data for transport modes excluding motorcycles: 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-motorcyc...

Eyeballing, it looks like motorcycles have roughly ~50x as many fatalities per mile as passenger autos.

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.

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/

I don't know why this was downvoted. It's true, and an important correction to the GP's NSC link and the claim that "airplanes are zero most years". Notice that that page compares "scheduled airlines" to "passenger vehicles" (I think they mean cars? Since airplanes, trains and buses are also passenger vehicles...) but importantly does not include GA.

It makes sense. Motorcycles are unforgiving in terms of safety features and attract disorganized and reckless people like flies to light.

Successful pilots are the opposite personality. They tend to be adventurous in terms of seeking experiences but are able to embrace following strict rules.

Per unscientific survey cited in https://www.rideapart.com/news/254972/why-your-next-motorcyc... 85% of pilots have motorcycle licenses.

There are many breeds of motorcycle rider, as I'm sure there are different breeds of pilot. The pipe and slippers brigade very much embrace following strict rules. In the UK, you'll frequently find them in RoSPA, where they follow the System of Motorcycle Control.

I don't know how true to life the Top Gun cliche of fighter pilot / sportsbike rider is, but anecdotally riding a sportsbike is the closest experience a civilian can get to a fighter plane on the ground.

Motorcycle racers are usually pretty exacting about the mechanical state and safety of their bike, and many top ranked competitive riders never ride on the road, only on track. The hazards on track vs on road are almost completely different.

Amateur stunters, weekend warriors and young squids are more likely matches to the cliche I think you have in mind: thrill-seekers who dabble but not particularly serious about it.

Exactly, better said! I didn’t mean to imply that riders are reckless, just that the reckless are attracted to bikes.

I'm actually a rider (or was).

They don't attract reckless people. But what happens, you get used to the speed, the risk, the cornering - and so yes, you start going faster and faster. Problem is - hitting something at 100 on a bike, even just a little something on road - can be seriously game over. I stopped riding (kid / wife etc).

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#Accide...

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

Business class? Haven't seen anything other than lap belts in economy.

Yes. (International flights, before covid.)

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