Originally Posted by
DaveReidUK
More than 40 C-135s of assorted variants were lost between service entry and the point in 2008 when crew stopped carrying parachutes.
Not a single crew member aboard any of those 40+ aircraft bailed out.
Each of those mishaps had its own context. Robbing Peter's chutes based on Paul's mishap was negligent.
Several logical fallacies aside, formation airspace breaches 10^-6th to 9th, so there should be a bailout procedure. We know it has scant chance, historically, but why remove all chance? In this case, call it the 41st, I assume the lost and their families will find a lost chance in no chutes.
Taking my wager of £100 to families of the lost implicitly then?
Originally Posted by
Tarnished
Try here:Flight Statistics EOY At least to start with
Aviation safety and design look at risk. That put parachutes in various aircraft in the 20th century Test, combat and non combat Airdrop, Air Refueling most common to the subject context. Test having its own risks, airdrop and air refueling are formations and special procedural airspace, combat or not. History shows training is nearly the same risk as combat. Humans err in aviation today more than machine. We will cause collisions and those, on paper have bailout chances. Airdrop also has payload risk that can damage the aircraft. That's why the chutes were there. If we had more human failures, they'd still be there, in a way. Ejection seats would not make sense. Wrong environment for risk vs. weight, complexity and cost. Would raise eyebrows of the passengers. Parachutes allow the designers to create a bailout procedure, as Rube Goldberg as it may appear. I thought the first P before Prune would make this go without saying. Engine Inflight shutdowns are far under 1 per 500,000 hours. The plane can handle it, we all train to it, some have had it. Check. I have one in under 20,000 hours, and the other two pilots on board have at least that one. Engine falling off? Should be a ten to the minus 9th or 10th. Can't happen, by design, but once per entire fleet history. But, I lost three coworkers to one. Somewhere between those extremes of our common flight histories sits the operational risk that put bailout into the design of some aircraft.