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Inventor Presents ‘Detachable Cabin’ Concept to Minimize Deaths in Airplane Crashes
01-19-2016, 06:33 AM
The question is, how will such a system work? Will it be a sort of "eject" button like system that the pilots have to press?
How high does it need to be for the chutes to deploy and land properly?
If this system is dependent on pilot intervention I doubt it will do any good. Most flight accidents happen suddenly with very little time to act on anything.
The pilot might be thinking, "i'll be able to fix this, just hold out a little longer..." and boom everyone's dead.
I'm all for safety systems but not something that will work 10% of the time. Ounce of prevention better than a pound of cure.
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Inventor Presents ‘Detachable Cabin’ Concept to Minimize Deaths in Airplane Crashes
01-19-2016, 11:49 AM
^Due to pilot error yes, but there's usually a precious few minutes between the unrecoverable error and the actual crash landing. Presumably that's when the detachable cabin... detaches.
I'm not sure this is viable for commercial airlines, cost-benefit wise. However this might be a cool upsell for smaller charter planes or private jets or whatnot with rich customers with fear of flying. Could see this being a diffferentiator to 1.5x the price of a private jet.
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Inventor Presents ‘Detachable Cabin’ Concept to Minimize Deaths in Airplane Crashes
01-22-2016, 12:32 AM
Interesting concept, but not sure if feasible. Maybe they could do a proof of concept on a remotely controlled plane, or just eject the cabin with a pilot controlled plane (with no failure on a controlled flight).
But I have a hard time imagining how the parachutes can deploy properly without getting ripped right off the cabin given it's momentum when it had been going through the air at 500+ mph. I don't think people realize how fast planes go at cruise altitude as opposed to low altitude on takeoffs and landings, where speeds are only 1/4 to 1/3 of cruise speed.
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Inventor Presents ‘Detachable Cabin’ Concept to Minimize Deaths in Airplane Crashes
01-22-2016, 02:12 AM
Something like this will 100% eventually be added to airplanes, no doubt. I'll guesstimate that it's still at least 15-20+ years out, but it will come.
The fear of flying is really irrational, but it still amazes me that there's still not a single solution like this available just in case something insanely rare were to happen...
Just the reassurance of knowing that there is a way out in case the inevitable were to happen is comforting enough to help a lot of people with flight anxiety etc. The invention is something that would be super beneficial to the overall traveling experience.