rotorpower
Nick is right about the costs so long as the dollar remains weak.
You are muddying things by using "crashworthiness" and "safety" synonymously. Crashworthiness is all about minimising injury when you crash. Safety is about minimising injury, but the best way to do that is not to crash in the first place. Thus crashworthiness is a small subset of safety.
I stick to my point about comfort v crashworthiness. I was not saying that I am happy with the way things are - I thought my point about the cockpit environment made that quite clear, and anything done to improve crashworthiness has to be a good idea provided something else is not compromised excessively.
But take the case of crashworthy pilot seats. At the moment, these compromise pilot comfort.
Lets say you are the boss who is trying to decide what to do for the best regarding new aircraft/equipment. You know that your pilots are always having problems with bad backs, this is unpleasant for them, bad for you (they are always sick) and some even lose their licences/livelihoods as a result. They are getting more litigious and will sue you under HSE rules because you failed to provide the seating designed to the best orthopaedic standards under the duty of care to your employees.
So are you really going to go out and buy less comfortable seats when you know that will exaccerbate the problem, given that no pilots have been killed/badly injured in accidents where crashworthy seating would have made any difference in your company's living memory.
Personally, as I said before, I would rather spend 700 hrs a year in the best comfort available and take the chance that I don't need the seat in a crash. There is even a flight safety issue here - pilots in discomfort get more fatigued and so make more mistakes than their comfortable counterparts (provided they stay awake!)
HC
Last edited by HeliComparator; 13th April 2005 at 11:08.