Ejection seats for airliners?

lots of roof holes gonna be needed:confused:

You have to be medically super fit for ejections.

Plus all the above points mentioned

Gosh, you can also blow it away. I didn’t see a modern military aircraft where the seats “go through the roof”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ6bwylElsw&feature=related

canopies tend to be ejected in there entirety or have a detcord blow out panel (for want of abetter description) Both of these choices would have massive structural integrity and or safety implications.

As another poster has pointed out aft facing seats would be the biggest practical lifesaver.
Incidently having flown backwards it bothers me not at all -of course all the customers objections could be smoke and mirrors because its estimated that you would lose a row of seats on each aircraft (why the airlines dont want it)

What a ridiculous suggestion. The whole roof of the aircraft would have to be glass, for the seats to go through.
DUH!

Gosh, you can also blow it away. I didn’t see a modern military aircraft where the seats “go through the roof”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ6bwylElsw&feature=related

Its pretty much a non starter for all the reasons listed above but there are other safety options that are cheap, effective and could save lives that have not been adopted for industry reasons.

The most effective being facing the passengers seats backwards. Air crash investigators have found that flight stewards in rear-facing seats have suffered less severe injuries in accidents than forward-facing passengers. This is because the energy from the body as it decelerates rapidly in a crash is dispersed evenly through the seatback, rather than concentrated on the seatbelt, which cuts into a person facing forward. It makes safety briefings far easier as you tell the pasengers to sit back in their seats with their heads firmly against the headrests. The airlines won’t adopt it as they say passengers don’t like the idea of travelling backwards. It is done with RAF transport aircraft like the VC10 without complaint of service passengers.

The other question will be, who controls the ejections, you would want anyone going off too early !

Also consider the risk of a mid flight accident and the catastrophic decompression, hell you would not need the ejector seats then !!!!!

The force of several hundred synchronised ejection seats alone would probably blast the aircraft out of the sky. Probably not gonna work!

Burned carpets, spilled drinks….:eek:

You would also have to have all the seats synchronized otherwise there would be massive burns to other passengers.

The force of several hundred synchronised ejection seats alone would probably blast the aircraft out of the sky. Probably not gonna work!

With all due respect, I can’t believe anyone legitimately belonging to this forum would even ask the question.

Efficacy, weight, structure, to say nothing of all passengers being securely (and professionally) strapped in at all times make it a real non-starter.
Going to issue everyone helmets, visors, emergency oxygen masks and the rest of the kit?
The few times I’ve been strapped into a ejection seat for flights were less than comfortable…I wouldn’t wish it on the average traveler.

What a ridiculous suggestion. The whole roof of the aircraft would have to be glass, for the seats to go through.
DUH!

You would also have to have all the seats synchronized otherwise there would be massive burns to other passengers.

After all the weight and complication, just how many accidents would they have saved any lives? The JAL 747 and Souix City DC-10 incidents spring to mind but other than them very few would have provided the right set of circumstances for mass ejection.

Rgds Cking

Nice idea but there must be a zillion reasons why they would never do it. The first would be money. There are already a lot of things they could do to make accidents more survivable but they don’t because it would result in a weight penalty = loss of money.

As I said to Tall Tower, keep the dreams going, but maybe each person’s dreams for aircraft and airliner design and safety enhancements should be recorded (maybe even here).
I come from a research background working closely with advanced scientists and every item of research/good idea is indexed and catalogued even if not immediately useful.

e.g. some of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings and notes were on his versions of flying machines. http://www.lairweb.org.nz/leonardo/ornithopters.html

There was no money or knowledge in Leonardo’s time either to see devleopment of his work then but we have a made a million strides ahead since.

Hence your dreams Tall Tower and any of you others that wish to record them may seem a Zillions reasons away from a ‘spend’ now but who knows may be a ‘spend’ in the future.

Nice idea but there must be a zillion reasons why they would never do it. The first would be money. There are already a lot of things they could do to make accidents more survivable but they don’t because it would result in a weight penalty = loss of money.

Ejection seats have been traditionally fitted in military aircraft from the late 1940s and onward.

But what if ejection seats were fitted to commercial aircraft?

What advantages could it bring?

Safe, rapid ejection of the endangered passengers.

But what about the disadvantages?

Please feel free to list me any disadvantages.

Would you want to be boarding an airliner designed with ejection escape systems?

Some of many disadvantages and improbables –
– Military pilots would be wearing suitable atire and a helmet which can be an advantage/life saver if ejection has to effected at high altitudes, Airline passengers as yet do not wear special atire. Imagine the delay in dressing up, checking viability/operation of atire and then actually boarding an A380 or 787 Dreamliner. It could take all day.
– For effective ejection of all passengers in a large civillian aircraft it would have to be built to disintegrate into pre-defined parts permitting everyone inside a fair chance of getting out safely and clear of each other. Defeats the purpose in a way as once the fuselage is broken up intentionally or in an accident the occupants have very poor chances of survival
– Having said the above, there could be some sort of escape pod/s concept of segments of the aircraft, where the inner pod/s with occupants seperated in a pre-set pattern/manner, dropped very rapidly under multiple parachutes. There are ofcourse huge increases in weight, problems of de presurisation (requiring heavy inter pod equipment systems to sustain life, pressure and oxygen systems), internal lighting,automatic floatation capabilities and emergency transmitter beacons.
-Take off weight would become an almost impossibility to cope with under present fossil fuel saving plans.
-Cost of such airliners would be simply astronomic for average airline operation
-Maybe Airforce 1 some day will be similar (I think there was a film – fiction ofcourse, some time back on this theme)

Who knows though maybe someday, but like Detroit ignored the alternatives to fossil fuel burning internal combustion engines for decades (through convenience), aircraft manufacturers and engine designers (have stayed on similar early conceptual designs) must rapidly ramp up advanced R&D.
Who will pay for all this?
Ideally someone should be thinking and paying but it simply isn’t happening.
It could happen if the DOD and MOD decided that transport of highly trained forces or units was of absolute importance and safety, e.g. SAS, SEALS and they could have special aircraft with escape pods, but again take off weight, the necessity to operate out of unconventional take off and landing strips make this again sci fi.

Although ‘Dreams are what all ideas stem from’.

This comes from a man who has as a child with his father or uncle (if dad was abroad) sat in the Colombo Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research and listened to lectures by the late Arthur C. Clarke along with diagrams and sketches of his dreams for space and interplanetary travel.
Arthur C. Clarke’s dreams came true.

So Talltower keep the dreams going they may come to fruition some day.

Are compensation pay outs to the families of the deceased cheaper for the airline than the cost of aircraft, maintenance, training involved with an escapable airliner ?

Yes, easily.
It would cost billions to have them. A full 380’s worth of compensation would be only a tiny fraction of that.
Any way how many accidents would they ahave been of any use any way?

Rgds Cking

Are compensation pay outs to the families of the deceased cheaper for the airline than the cost of aircraft, maintenance, training involved with an escapable airliner ?

Would certainly make flying safer LOL
The aircraft would not be able to get off the ground 😀

– weight
– passenger acceptance
– usefullness: most crashes don’t happen with a 30 seconds prior notice.

In most cases the ejection would either be too late or unnecessary, causing huge number of fatalities. 1-5% of all ejections are not successful (pilot dead), makes one granted kill per 100 people.

I want to be able to eject the child that inevitably sits directly behind me and practices drumming for a heavy metal band on the seatback table.

I’d pay extra for that facility

Moggy