Rule For New Planes Means More Airbags

NPR:

AmSafe is supplying the product to most major U.S. airlines to help comply with a new government crash standard. The rule has been phased in slowly over the past 21 years and takes full effect this week, when the seats in newly manufactured planes will have to protect passengers from a crash 16 times the force of gravity.

Read the whole story: NPR

Comments

[escobar]

If only the force were but 16 times gravity.In a real crash, the airbag becomes a decoration.
How many lives did any study declare could be saved in airplane crashes with airbags?
Sounds like some manufacturer is dreaming of profit, not safety.
Most likely people will benifit mostly being able to sue the airlines if one goes off in error, reaping millions for lawers...the people who make regulations.
After a crash willl they investigate every bag that isn't burnt to a crisp or scattered over twenty miles of ocean? Will they be able to sue China for making the junk, or the importer? No, the airline.
Flying is the safest way to travel but the most picked upon.
Why not put airbags into tour buses first, they don't even have seat belts. Oh, because the bus company doesn't have the cash flow....
Seems like a waste of money.

[RightWingMarine]

more expensive seatbelts and pointless govt regulation requiring them means more expensive planes which translates into more expensive airfare for something that in most planes will never be used.

[SimJack]

Won't it interfere with my oxygen mask?

[ThankGodforAtheists]

Remember when you actually had enough leg room to put your head down to your lap? Not that it did any good.

[FZliveson]

Great point. With the seat-backs so close as they are today if you go into that hilarious "brace position" you'd certainly snap your back on impact.
Where's Captain Sullenberger on this subject?
Major Kong?

[David Fruits]

Or, just turn the seats around. Then the lap belt can do its job with its limited capabilities, and any impact worthy of an airbag would be moot. duh.
http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2005/06/mythbusters_killer_brace_posit.html

[aspelling]

5-point seat belts with pretensioners would be much more efficient than airbags. Plus automatic buckle release that can be activated by the crew.
Otherwise if a plane hits something at high (250 knots+) paxes are gonna be torn into pieces. The kinetic energy is proportional to the speed square and the difference in energy between 50mph and 500mph is 1000 times. Nothing would help with this kind of impact energies bodies would disintegrate into small pieces.

[Rog49Thomas]

Of course, unless you're willing to blow up the airbag yourself on impact, there will be slight charge ($500) for automatic inflation.

[jws2346]

I gots an ideer, just fly crash dummies, give the pilots lots of no sleeping pills and bingo!, no more people getting killed or injured, no more expensive aerioplanes making holes in the ground and no more nasty letter from Greenspeace about destroying the environment with crashed aerioplanes.

[FZliveson]

What a farse!
How about updating the FAA computer system to the 21st century?
How about seeing to it that pilots are well compensated and managed?
How about developing a real-time "black box" that cannot be lost because the information is transmitted rather than stored?
ALL of the above will cost far less and will be far more effective in ensuring air safety than the one in a million airbag use opportunities.
Smells as though someone is making a lot of money for lobbying here.

[Rog49Thomas]

But isn't government provided air traffic control like public roads or public health?

Besides, if we're going to have socialism in this country, shouldn't we be using Soviet era equipment?

[lastep]

this is the most moronic idea I have seen yet when it comes to airline safety

[fcsakes]

So tell us, all you people who scrape up bodies after an airplane crashes, how many of those scrapped up pieces (the ones you could find that were big enough to scrape up) do you think would have been saved by an airbag?

This is perhaps one of the dumbest ideas of the 21st century...

[ramper]

It will harm more people by employing accidentally than it will ever help. Some things are just cost prohibitive and are not rational. This is one.
It would be more helpful if the FAA promoted rules that kept passengers from treating an aircraft like a movie theater. The debris (papers, cans, water bottles, etc. etc) that are tossed on the floor can, and have, interfered with quick evacuations.

[gulfofmexico1]

Look for a giant price increase.

[godzthor1]

Couldn't they save money by having people sit behind Rush Limbaugh?

[gulfofmexico1]

Dah, NO! He weighs 180 pounds.

[FZliveson]

His FACE weighs 180 pounds, second only to his 2-ton ego.

[KIVPossum]

It might help if two planes collide on a runway or if a plane overshoots and slides off the runway. Otherwise it seems only more debris to shift through to find the bodies.