People are still burning to death in plane crashes this day and age.

[guy_liking_pretty_planes]

Incineration alive is probably the biggest killer in aircraft-related mishaps where people are killed. Other forms of transportation have a much lower likelihood of involving burning of humans to death. Have you ever burned a finger on a stove? I imagine that pain throughout your entire body! I'm not even allowed to carry a handgun on a commercial flight to put myself out of my misery expediently in case of inescapable fire as this one:

Aeroflot Fire: More Passengers Could Have Been Saved

simpleflying.com

Stupid idiots up front were collecting baggage from overhead compartments while people were cooking literally in back of the burning jet. I bet these people burned Nazi oven style. There perhaps should be a mechanism to LOCK overhead compartments in case of emergency. But I digress.

Does anybody here have any good ideas to make people on board airplanes less likely to burn to death? This is where aviation crash safety still severely seems to suffer. Advanced on-board fire suppression systems? Systems to deprive fire of oxygen? Chemicals that can be rapidly injected into fuel to make it non-flammable? Better fire shielding materials in cabin construction? Detachable fuel tanks that can be instantly jettisoned as upon impact or hard landing or manually to separate all that fuel from humans on board fast?

 

[belchfire]

The chemicals/gases like Halon that put out a fire rapidly extinguish life just as efficiently by starving both of 02.

There is no telling how much effort and money has gone into making cabin furnishings more fire resistant but it is substantial.

Heck, knock yourself out...

https://www.fire.tc.faa.gov/1998Conference/presentations/98-52.pdf

NASA and the FAA crashed a remotely controlled Boeing 720 with a bunch of crash test dummies on board back in the 1980's to test anti-misting fuel additives and it only sort-of worked. Not well enough to dictate use of the additive.

NASA Armstrong Fact Sheet: Controlled Impact Demonstration

A unique flight experiment called the Controlled Impact Demonstration to test a promising fuel additive for retarding or suppressing fire in a real-world aircraft crash-landing scenario.

www.nasa.gov

Now if you were to come up with a Zero Point Module that replaced kerosene as that power source, it would eliminate much of the problem but I'm not sure what issues could arise from the breach of the containment vessel for a point singularity but I suspect that being shredded at a molecular level and sucked into a miniature black hole would preclude any attempt at retrieving luggage.

And the Engineers and other wonks are going to really have an issue coming up with black boxes that will survive!

 

[guy_liking_pretty_planes]

The chemicals/gases like Halon that put out a fire rapidly extinguish life just as efficiently by starving both of 02.

There is no telling how much effort and money has gone into making cabin furnishings more fire resistant but it is substantial.

Heck, knock yourself out...

https://www.fire.tc.faa.gov/1998Conference/presentations/98-52.pdf

NASA and the FAA crashed a remotely controlled Boeing 720 with a bunch of crash test dummies on board back in the 1980's to test anti-misting fuel additives and it only sort-of worked. Not well enough to dictate use of the additive.

NASA Armstrong Fact Sheet: Controlled Impact Demonstration

A unique flight experiment called the Controlled Impact Demonstration to test a promising fuel additive for retarding or suppressing fire in a real-world aircraft crash-landing scenario.

www.nasa.gov

Now if you were to come up with a Zero Point Module that replaced kerosene as that power source, it would eliminate much of the problem but I'm not sure what issues could arise from the breach of the containment vessel for a point singularity but I suspect that being shredded at a molecular level and sucked into a miniature black hole would preclude any attempt at retrieving luggage.

And the Engineers and other wonks are going to really have an issue coming up with black boxes that will survive!

I don't care about black box survival, I'm a human, not a black box. I have not flown commercial since 2002. Southwest Airlines. I avoid commercial flights like the plague these days. I did hear that that idiot Russian pilot (captain?) failed to dump off fuel like he was supposed to. He survived. That son of a bitch. I have been on Lufthansa airlines in the 1990's and I feel pretty safe on them. Those Germans seem so strict in the professional manner in which they operate their planes like a tightly run ship. The western Europeans and Quantas of Australia have the best safety record in the world for commercial flying. Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, eastern Europe and Africa are probably among the worst.

Oxygen masks that are portable and that people can wear is an idea for having a Halon fire suppression system on board. The people need to don these masks immediately in an aircraft fire. Would a self-contained 15-minute oxygen supply be sufficient for escaping a ground fire incident? Of course, fire and smoke consume human life much more painfully. These evacuation masks also would protect lungs from smoke inhalation.

 

[belchfire]

The black boxes play an important role in determining causes and effecting change in the industry and they are a worthwhile investment. Too bad they never found the ones that disappeared on MH 370...

There are individual escape breathing devices that can be had at a not unreasonable price...crewmembers are typically prohibited from carrying one but outside of possible hazmat concerns there is no reason that individual passengers couldn't carry them!

As for the crew of that Russian aircraft-outside of the horribly botched attempt at landing-I am unwilling to offer any condemnation without complete access to all the data and I'll cut you some slack since you have no understanding of the interconnectedness of all things electronic in modern aircraft.

We know that they had experienced a lightening strike and at the very least had lost their ability to communicate. We have no idea what other systems may have been compromised or completely inoperative.

Also, smaller aircraft like that typically do not have the capability to dump fuel-flashback to the Jetblue Airbus that suffered the nose gear failure some years ago. The A-320 series and at least the earlier versions of the 737 and DC-9/MD-80 had no capability to dump fuel. To the best of my knowledge none of the regional jets (the "Superjet 100 looked to be in that class) have the ability to dump fuel. In an emergency the engineers have designed plenty of reserve capacity into the airframe to accept the loads of a well executed overweight landing.

In fact depending on the weight and the rate of descent, an overweight landing inspection may be a minor irritant costing a very few hours rather than a major maintenance event!

Porpoising down the runway (or across the water in a seaplane or flying boat for that matter) will destroy airframes every time...

You give the Europeans a lot of credit but it was Air France that had two pilots who seemingly could not fly in turbulence when faced with degraded systems and who held opposing control inputs, effectively keeping the wing of the airplane stalled (not producing lift, look it up) from thirty odd thousand feet until they pancaked a perfectly good (er, it was an Airbus...shall we say "airworthy"?) aircraft into the South Atlantic.

That's but one example...everyone and everywhere has issues.

Quantas does have an amazing record though and I'm not quite sure why. When faced with a balked landing the crew became absolutely human and worked at counter purposes resulting in a runway overrun in 1999...yes, even with their massive available thrust after initiating a go-around a 747-400 may touchdown briefly...you can't make 550-650 thousand pounds change directions instantly!

 

[guy_liking_pretty_planes]

If Halon fire systems ever become mandatory on planes, I think the air carriers would also have to be required to have portable breathing escape devices for each and every passenger. The current oxygen masks on jetliners that drop now are attached by hose and are not portable. They are for cabin depressurization. People need portable clean air to breathe while escaping fire and/or smoke and/or Halon gasses. Stewardesses should instruct passengers how to use these in case of an emergency. Smoke inhalation can kill people too. A "James Bond style mini breather" might be good to carry for protection against smoke inhalation.

 

[belchfire]

Halon wouldn't work in a lot of situations, like the incident you linked, if discharged in the cabin.

Why?

Because the fire was outside the cabin and when the Halon dissipated (which it does rapidly) the fire would have come back.

A better point is made by the question "Where the hell was the Soviet Ministry of Crash, Fire and Rescue?"

You've got a no radio jet coming you have to presume there is some kind of emergency going on and those airport fire trucks can put out a fuel fire quickly if they get on the scene soon enough!

 

[guy_liking_pretty_planes]

Halon wouldn't work in a lot of situations, like the incident you linked, if discharged in the cabin.

Why?

Because the fire was outside the cabin and when the Halon dissipated (which it does rapidly) the fire would have come back.

A better point is made by the question "Where the hell was the Soviet Ministry of Crash, Fire and Rescue?"

You've got a no radio jet coming you have to presume there is some kind of emergency going on and those airport fire trucks can put out a fuel fire quickly if they get on the scene soon enough!

I guess they will have to "try" to work on a more advanced aircraft fire suppression system. Maybe passengers could also be donned in burn suits with full face helmets while flying with breathing apparatus built in. Aircraft cabins might also benefit from better fire and heat insulation materials. Did people burn mainly or die of smoke inhalation? They definitely need to mechanically lock up overhead compartments in emergency situations. No loose backpacks should be allowed on board. The portable breathing masks are still a good idea to protect people on board from smoke inhalation as they try to evacuate a troubled plane on the ground. The pilot or captain in this case failed to dump fuel when he should have according to at least one report I read, and he faces felony charges.

 

[belchfire]

That report is likely made by someone utterly incompetent to comment on fuel dumping. Again, it is very for short haul, regional jet type aircraft to have the capacity to dump fuel. I do not know what certification standards the Soviets have but the FAA specifies performance requirements to be met if there is not fuel dump system...

14 CFR § 25.1001 - Fuel jettisoning system.

www.law.cornell.edu

The most likely reason for not dumping fuel is that it was not possible on that aircraft. There are two max take off weights for the Su-100 depending on versions, 101150 or 109019 pounds and a max landing weight of 90390 pounds. Given those weights and the performance of modern aircraft I am making the educated guess that a fuel dump system is not required.

Right now we have no idea of what aircraft systems were working and which were compromised by the lightning strike-of course given that it is the Russians we're talking about we may or may not even know the truth...

 

[guy_liking_pretty_planes]

That report is likely made by someone utterly incompetent to comment on fuel dumping. Again, it is very for short haul, regional jet type aircraft to have the capacity to dump fuel. I do not know what certification standards the Soviets have but the FAA specifies performance requirements to be met if there is not fuel dump system...

14 CFR § 25.1001 - Fuel jettisoning system.

www.law.cornell.edu

The most likely reason for not dumping fuel is that it was not possible on that aircraft. There are two max take off weights for the Su-100 depending on versions, 101150 or 109019 pounds and a max landing weight of 90390 pounds. Given those weights and the performance of modern aircraft I am making the educated guess that a fuel dump system is not required.

Right now we have no idea of what aircraft systems were working and which were compromised by the lightning strike-of course given that it is the Russians we're talking about we may or may not even know the truth...

By video accounts, that plane made a hell of a hard landing; did not even flare for touchdown. mechanical defects? Human brain defects? Both? I certainly will have no reason ever to fly on any airline headquartered in the eastern part of the world. The Russians make great AK-47's, great helicopter gunships, great MiG jets, great vodka, great beef stroganoff and great classical music but NO MORE than that! Mother Russia sure gave Nazi Germany a run for her money in World War Two but that was totally the fault of that idiot Dolfie boy with the bad mustache. Two fronts open at once? Hitty should have just let Rommel run the show. Germany drops her advanced assault weapons program while advancing on Moscow (or was it Leningrad??) in the Soviet Union with winter approaching? Come now!

 

[belchfire]

The AK is reliable and serviceable but it's only good for .30-30 energy or so-a cartridge that some modern gun writers and other so called "experts" claim is marginal for even deer (in spite of having put more venison on the table than any other single cartridge) and while you might be able to build one with not many more tools than a vice, hammer and file they do suffer in the accuracy area-of course most combat happens inside of 100 Meters so for the most part that doesn't become an issue.

The Soviets did manage to build a few quality sniping rifles and their Airforce started doing better after they stopped hand painting gunsights on the windscreens on their fighters and copied the electric sights from the P-39's we lend leased them!

They still lost between sixty and seventy thousand aircraft during WWII to all causes while there were never more than 500 operational Luftwaffe fighters on the Eastern Front...food for thought. Yep, Megalomania is a terrible disease-that is why almost anyone who would consider running for POTUS is automatically unqualified for the job...

A little more food for though-people burn to death in M-1 tanks and various APC's...

sometimes "crashproof" and "fireproof" aren't possible regardless of vehicle mass!