Turbulence hurts: leading cause of in-flight injury

by Tom Johansmeyer on

If you aren’t splattered in a fatal crash, you’re most likely to be injured by severe turbulence. Don’t get shaken up by this, though, odds are the biggest risk you’ll face is a middle seat sandwiched by garlic-eater and a heavy talker (choose which way you want to read that one). While you can’t be saved from the people around you, you can protect our body from a bouncing plane: put on your seatbelt.

The discussion of people getting smacked around in flight on a plane has arisen (again) because of the 21 people injured on United Flight 967 because of severe turbulence. According to USA Today:

Some passengers were tossed around the plane like dolls, passenger Kaoma Bechaz, 19, told The Denver Post. One woman’s head struck the side of the cabin, leaving a crack above the window, and a girl was flung against the ceiling, Bechaz said.

Last year, according to data from the NTSB, 15 of the 22 people seriously injured on flights in 2009 (e.g., broken bones) had turbulence to blame.

Flight attendants, of course, are at greater risk, given that they are more mobile in flight than passengers. Sixty-two percent of serious injuries were experienced by flight attendants, according to an FAA study.

Are you feeling sufficiently alarmed? Yeah, it’s not worth getting upset about. But if you’re wearing a helmet on your next flight, we’ll know why.

[photo by mockstar via Flickr]

Survival guide app

by Jason Heflin on
No one likes to think of the bad things that could happen on a trip. But what would you do if you survived a plane crash, were caught in a terrorist attack, or encountered a tsunami while on vacation? Well wonder no more iphone users. The SAS Survival Guide has been around in book form for over twenty years but now there’s an app.

John “Lofty” Wiseman spent years as a soldier and instructor for the SAS, an elite British fighting unit. In the app, Lofty guides the reader through a myriad of nightmare scenarios. Stranded atop an icy mountain? Covered. Need to know what local plants are edible? Check. Stuck in a forest fire with no obvious escape? No worries. The guide provides detailed information on all these would-be disasters. The app will cost $6.99 at itunes and is compatible with the ipad and ipod touch as well.

Although the guide is a great read, and the bulit-in survival quiz is fun for parties and around the campfire, the practicality of using it on-demand in some of these situations is questionable. For instance, if your plane were to crash land in the ocean your cell phone would be wet and useless. Then what? You are stranded on a mountaintop in the Himalaya and your phone runs out of battery. Tough luck. To get the most out of the guide read it before the disaster strikes.

The app holds interest by utilizing several interactive features including the survival quiz, an instructional video, and even a morse code feature that will turn your iphone into a beeping/flashing communicator. These make it fun for the user to learn a bit more about surviving if and when disaster strikes. That can’t be a bad thing when the shit hits the fan.

Indonesian 737 skids off runway, breaks in half

by Grant Martin on

An Indonesian 737 operated by Merpati Nusantara Airlines skidded off of a runway in the eastern Paupa province early yesterday, coming to rest over a canal and subsequently breaking in two right through the fuselage.

Initial reports indicate that the incident was weather related and had nothing to do with the aircraft or its operator.

Miraculously, nobody was killed during the incident although scores were injured. The crash does, however, bring the safety records for many Indonesian carriers back into the limelight, many of which have been recently scrutinized for being below international standard. MSNBC has footage from the crash site below:


%Gallery-76818%

%Gallery-85816%

“Miracle on the Hudson” plane up for auction

by Katie Hammel on

The plane that Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger landed safely in the Hudson River just over a year ago is going up for auction. Chartis Aerospace Insurance Services is accepting bids on the plane, which is described as “having severe water damage throughout the airframe and impact damage to its underside” according to USA Today, though March 27.

Unfortunately, as celeb-gossip site TMZ points out, the survivors of the harrowing water landing won’t be able to take home a memento from the plane. The plane is being auctioned off in its entirety so those hoping to snag just a small piece cannot do so. Looks like they’ll have only their memories. The survivors recently got together on the anniversary of the crash landing and toasted with champagne and Grey Goose vodka (a nod to the flock of birds that downed the plane) at the moment of impact.

Plane Answers: A pilot’s seatbelt sign philosophy and aircraft accident odds

by Kent Wien on

Welcome to Gadling’s feature, Plane Answers, where our resident airline pilot, Kent Wien, answers your questions about everything from takeoff to touchdown and beyond. Have a question of your own? Ask away!

Caroline asks:

Can someone tell me why the pilot sometimes turns on the seatbelt sign but it’s seemingly for no reason? I recently flew Dubai to London and he (or she) kept putting it on however nothing happened. Especially annoying as I needed the bathroom at the time?

Hi Caroline,

There are a couple of possible explanations for a seatbelt sign that turns on and off frequently.

Occasionally we’ll get reports from airplanes in front of us warning of turbulence ahead. It’s best to get the seatbelt sign on if we get a report like this to prevent any injuries to passengers standing in the aisle.

Deciding when to turn the sign on after experiencing some un-forecasted and unreported bumps can be a challenge. Some pilots don’t mind turning the sign on and off as the conditions permit and some will turn it on, only to forget about the sign when the ride improves, thus making every passenger feel like a criminal for using the lavatory for the rest of the trip.

There are some pilots who are concerned enough about the liability involved when turning the sign off that they’ll insist on keeping it lit for the duration of the flight. This actually creates a riskier situation since passengers will disregard the sign, even during periods of turbulence, completely eliminating the point in having a sign in the first place.

There’s another explanation that might surprise you. Pilots have been known to get calls from flight attendants asking for the sign to be turned on so they don’t have to deal with people becoming stuck in an aisle between their carts or otherwise getting in the way of the service.

And occasionally there can be a rather large group of people congregating around the galleys chatting it up. One of the ways to disperse this crowd had been to use the seatbelt sign. This isn’t exactly what the sign was intended for, of course.

Jen asks:

Hi Kent,

In light of the Air France crash, I am curious to know if it is indeed true that passengers pass out first, due to loss of cabin pressure, even before a plane hits the water (assuming it didn’t explode in the air)?

What are the odds of this happening to me? Are the odds of this happening greater or less than winning the lottery?

P.S. This is my take: when I get on the plane, my odds are 50 / 50 : 50% chance that I live and 50% chance I don’t. (haha, ok, joking…)

Hi Jen,

If the flight were to depressurize, and assuming the passengers couldn’t get to their oxygen masks during the descent, then there is a limited amount of time until they will pass out. This time of useful consciousness varies depending on the altitude.

At FL350 (35,000 feet) that time is only 30 to 60 seconds. However if the airplane is descending rapidly, the lower altitude will likely wake people up.

It’s a morbid thought, for sure, but since you brought up statistics, let’s look at the odds of dying in an airline accident a moment.

According to the Insurance Information Institute, the odds of losing your life in any given year is 1 in 502,544 and over an entire lifetime, it drops down to 1 in 6,460.

That’s much better than the 1 in 84 odds over a lifetime that a person could be killed in an automobile accident. It seems to me the most effective way to save lives on a large scale would be to improve auto safety.

The odds of winning the lottery are reported at between 1 in 18 million for a state lottery to as low as 1 in 120 million in a multi-state contest. So, in fact the odds of an airplane accident are greater than the average person’s odds of winning the lottery.

But the automobile odds show that driving is really the risky activity – 77 times riskier than flying, yet it’s unusual to hear of anyone afraid of driving.

Do you have a question about something related to the pointy end of an airplane? Ask Kent and maybe he’ll use it for the next Plane Answers. Check out his other blog, Cockpit Chronicles to travel along with him at work.