Airplane seatbelts
Airplane seatbelts
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.
Planes rarely reverse into mountains.
And when they do, everyone acts all shocked and bewildered and ask me how I did it
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.
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.
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.
cbc.ca/…/yellowknife-plane-crash-kills-2-people-1… – 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?
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
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
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. :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Exactly as you describe.
That scene in the pilot episode of Lost. That's why.
Are you ready for the terries to get froggy?
www.cnn.com/2024/05/21/world/…/index.html
This is the incident you are probably referring to.
One passenger died and 71 people were injured when their Singapore Airlines flight from London to Singapore encountered severe turbulence Tuesday, throwing passengers and crew around the cabin and forcing the plane to make an emergency landing in Bangkok.
No, though I get what you mean, I locked eyes with this woman as my ass came off the seat and she death gripped the cart, I think she might legitimately have been momentarily worried about hitting her head on the ceiling and breaking her neck (had a friend be a hostess and she said the training absolutely mentions that)
As soon as they were touching the floor again they moved as fast as they could to their area, locked it down, and strapped in hard, and the captain yelled in Japanese over the intercom for a couple minutes before finally translating in English that we were fine, clearly freaked out
I know planes are safe but that experience at 1am over the pitch black Pacific ocean occasionally flashes back to me when I’m on planes because holy shit what the FUCK happened
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.
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!
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.
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.
You weren’t kidding.
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?:
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 La Infant Plaza escalator for the D/C 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.