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Old 6th Apr 2010, 18:54
  #297 (permalink)  
FCeng84
 
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Seattle
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Certification and Failures

A significant part of certification of a commercial airplane is analysis and testing to show that the impact of failures is acceptable given the probability of those failures. This is true for equipment as well as the crew. There is a sliding scale of impact severity vs. failure probability. At the top of this scale are failures that would result in a catastrophic outcome. For commercial aircraft certification the manufacturer must demonstrate that there are no single failures nor any combination of failures with probability greater than 10^-9 per flight hour that will result in a catastrophic condition.

I don't know what the probablility of the incapacitation of a pilot is, but it is certainly much more probable than 10^-9 per flight hour. The probability of pilot incapacitation coupled with another event requiring pilot action (such as a runway incursion for instance) is likely also to be more probable that 10^-9 per flight hour.

Keep in mind that one benefit of having the two crew located side-by-side with a couple of feet of lateral separation is that a bird through the wind screen or through the relatively soft struction just below the forward windows only takes out one of the at least two flight deck crew.
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