U.S. Airline May Fit Airbags In Aircraft Seats

[HALFPINT]

http://www.flightglobal.com/assets/getAsset.aspx?ItemID=28110

[flugholm]

More information here:
US airline may fit airbags in all aircraft seats (http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2009/03/19/324057/us-airline-may-fit-airbags-in-all-aircraft-seats.html)

[Rainboe]

Not really a great help when the seats come off the mounts!

[captjns]

Great... more explosive squibs in the airplane. How many seats have come off the mounts versus not?

[Evanelpus]

Just one more thing to ground an aircraft when they go off accidentally on the ground.....magic!

[Ancient Mariner]

Evanelpus:

Just one more thing to ground an aircraft when they go off accidentally on the ground.....magic!


You're saying that aviation gadgets are less reliable than automotive gadgets? Fascinating.
Per

[captjns]

You will find that alot of gadgets in aircraft are found in cars too. Just alot more expensive in airplanes.

So how reliable is your car today?

[Evanelpus]

AM

You're saying that aviation gadgets are less reliable than automotive gadgets? Fascinating.
Per

Can only speak from 'experience' (well, friends experiences) but I personally know of three incidents of this, in three different models of car.

[Busbert]

Several airlines already have amsafe airbags in seatbelts (particularly in 16G cabins).

[Cyclone733]

You're saying that aviation gadgets are less reliable than automotive gadgets? Fascinating.


Depends what sets off the airbag, if it's g sensitive there are a couple of aircraft types where every landing would be a candidate for the bags going off.
Also 120+ bags per aircraft leads to far higher chance of the buggers going off due to the occasional fault. Probably more wear and tear due to the seating configuration from people getting in and out with luggage etc.

[David Horn]

Depends what sets off the airbag, if it's g sensitive there are a couple of aircraft types where every landing would be a candidate for the bags going off.

Which aircraft do you know that pull 40-odd G during a landing? ;-)

[student88]

Already in service on some Virgin Atlantic aircraft I believe.

[PAXboy]

As a marketing tool - this would be a winner. It is something that people understand, they have them in their cars and they will like it a lot. Yes, there will be some that go wrong but, whoever had the marketing idea for this, will win.

[Cyclone733]

Which aircraft do you know that pull 40-odd G during a landing? ;-)

Never seen one of my landings then...:E

[fullforward]

SOMEBODY GOTTA BE KIDDING!
WITH 99% OF THE AIRLNES BLEEDING MONEY AND ON TOOTHPICK SAVINGS POLICIES!....LOL:ugh:

[West Coast]

Bet there was every bit as many nay sayers when other now proven safety advancement came about. A whole thread about why something won't work rather than how it can be made to work.

[Frangible]

Come back, rear-facing seats. All is forgiven.

[offa]

I believe the airbag will be for bulkhead seats so they can squeeze in another row without your head impacting too far into the galley area during a crash ....:eek:

[deltayankee]

I believe the airbag will be for bulkhead seats

I have seen this done already, on an Embraer 145 I think. Makes sense up front. Bit expensive to equip 300 seats.

[Pugilistic Animus]

Oh yeah, those will help:hmm:


http://tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:LZHiQhkgKjH9wM:http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2006/01/06/TWA800_060104015753807_wideweb__300x456.jpg (http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2006/01/06/TWA800_060104015753807_wideweb__300x456.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.smh.com.au/news/tv-reviews/seconds-from-disaster-twa-flight-800/2006/01/06/1136387602682.html&usg=__QHnH_iZyVg17aqxM7B8PeDhFgfo=&h=456&w=300&sz=36&hl=en&start=7&um=1&tbnid=LZHiQhkgKjH9wM:&tbnh=128&tbnw=84&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dflight%2B800%2Bpictures%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1T4AD BF_enUS305US305%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1)

[lomapaseo]

How many seats have come off the mounts versus not?

most of mine had stayed mounted when I landed

OTOH most of others have come off their mounts when they were involved in a non-survivable crash. Do those facts help?


I'm not exactly sure what senses the airbag to inflate. Would it be the brat kid sitting behind me that keeps kicking the back of my seat?

[john_tullamarine]

Not a new idea at all. FAA's CAMI has been at the forefront of researching the use of airbags in aircraft for a long time.

Not really a great help when the seats come off the mounts!

Static design standard seats (the old 9g and earlier 6g seats) generally had comparatively rigid track mounting provisions and presented retention problems in a dynamic crash situation. Many of the 9g seats, for convenience, were tested to 12g for the attachment test without any additional reinforcing and it was a case of crash floor buckling leading to track twisting and lip departure which was the problem.

The case of crash loads being far above the design requirements in a severe impact is a case which is not considered as suggested by lomapaseo.

Interestingly, CAMI did some full scale sled tests a long time ago with static standard seats and, as I recall, the results were not too bad.

However, the dynamic seats have requirements which are better related to the real world of floor deformation with the result that we would expect dynamic seats to perform far better in crashes.

In addition, the requirements vary according to the class of aircraft for which the seats are intended. This reflects the observation that the "real" load experienced by the seat in a crash is very dependent on the vehicle in which it is located .. a widebody airliner imposes the lowest expected seat crash loads while, in general, a helicopter imposes the highest .. the helicopter dynamic seat generally requires a seat frame stroking mechanism to provide enough distance over which the impact is absorbed to achieve the maximum permitted test dummy loads on the certification tests.

Depends what sets off the airbag

I'm a bit out of touch with seat design these days but, presuming that things haven't moved too far in the bang department, we probably are still looking at sodium azide as the propellant (solid explosive with an electrical initiation from a g-switch and moderately nasty sort of stuff).

Which aircraft do you know that pull 40-odd G during a landing?

Whether we are talking cars or planes, the initiation is matched to the impulse signature .. the bag goes off a long way before the accelerations get to 40g. Keep in mind the idea is to time things so the bag is fully inflated well before the head impacts it .. and then is deflating so that the head impact into the bag surface is lessened. "Bag slap", which is the term usually given to a mistimed firing in which the bag is still inflating as the head impacts it .. is not a good thing at all.

This need for initiation to be matched closely to the impact pulse signature (which is very much related to the structure and its deformation characteristics) is why one ought not modify a car's structure by, eg, putting a non-OEM authorised bullbar on a vehicle with airbags .. good way to get an unsatisfactory result when the bag is most needed. Even sticking on after-market bits and pieces to the approved bullbar might have minor effects on the pulse characteristics.

The marketing desire to represent bags as nice, soft, fluffy headrests is not helpful .. the thing is an explosive device and goes off with an almighty bang. If you get a chance to see the very early CAMI films of their sled test unit fitted with bags it is worth the interest to see how even the experts can get some aspects very wrong if the research is not rigorous (in this case the folk got a big surprise to find themselves surrounded with nasty combustion byproducts which should have been captured by filters, such as are incorporated into an auto bag installation... lots of sodium hydroxide and like nasties, as I recall .. resulting in a rapid exit, stage left.

I believe the airbag will be for bulkhead seats

CAMI's earlier research (I haven't kept up with recent papers so things may have changed a bit) suggested that the best way to approach the bulkhead problem was by the use of a fixed installation of Hexcel. This proprietary honeycomb structure of very lightweight aluminium provided an appropriate force-deflection characteristic for head impact .. many may not be aware that simple foam (and the like) cushions are quite inappropriate for impact cushioning as the force-deflection characteristics are very rate dependent .. what this means is that a fast moving head might just as well be hitting a brick wall as a medium to high density foam cushion .. Hexcel, on the other hand, deformed nicely with little, if any, impact rate dependence.

Come back, rear-facing seats

Introduces a lot of other problems and not necessarily the better option.

HIC

It is worth noting that a high, but "acceptable" value for HIC is not something that you or I would enjoy experiencing. While we will see an improvement in survivability, we will also see, as with auto crashes, an increase in severe injuries and ongoing debility in cases which would have been fatal with earlier technology ..

.. and, if you really want to improve your survival chances, opt for a full harness (the TARC harness, such as is fitted to most F/A seats is the way to go) with bags to provide a supplementary protection. .. just having upper body restraint gives a notional reduction in head impact velocity of around 50 percent (note that it doesn't necessarily prevent your impacting surrouding structure due to the normal stretch characteristics of belting .. but that reduction in impact velocity has a mighty effect on the HIC outcomes.

... hence the preference for lapsash installations in motor vehicles rather than lapbelt only.

[strake]

VS have had "airbags" on the lapstraps of Upper Class suites since they were launched some years ago. The image below shows the strap which is thicker than a normal belt but quite soft and not really noticable in normal use. Don't think any have gone off in error..

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2254/2034589952_26ebda051b.jpg

[mumbo jumbo]

Virgin Atlantic and Air New Zealand already have airbags fitted into the seatbelts of their J class seats. These are the herringbone layout J class where the pax can have the seat in any of the reclined positions for take-off or landing.

Nothing new here. Get out of those moist knickers and have a lie down kiddies! :rolleyes:

[PAXboy]

Thank you john_tullamarine, a most interesting and constructive post on all counts.

A prang that is not survivable is just that, but a bad runway excursion, or a touchdown that is not fully controlled (for whatever reason)? My guess is that you will start to see these fitted in some cases to a new a/c - firstly in J + C but it will be seen as a competitive advantage. When the world recession ends, the cost of adding these to a new machine will not be that great.

[HeadingSouth]

...produce a pretty loud bang :ok: So apart from being thrown across the plane strapped to your - now loose - seat you'd be left deaf for sure.

200 deaf folks after every malfunction - me as a hearing aid engineer would certainly be happy about this idea :D

Safe flying !

[BEA 71]

I wouldn´t be surprised if the old idea of supplying
parachutes come up again. Probably rear facing
seats would be the only solution to improve safety
in the cabin. But passengers have always opposed
it and they in the end have the saying.

[Donkey497]

200 odd airbags going off at once...
...produce a pretty loud bang http://static.pprune.org/images/smilies/thumbs.gif

It's not the bang that worries me, having had the good fortune to test drive an airbag for real at 60 mph into the back of a truck. what does worry me significantly is the effect of the pressure pulse of said 200 airbags firing simultaneously, or potentially even worse in some sort of front to back ripple pattern. Instead of nice padding breaking your impact, the first this you'd notice would be the tail or roof getting blown off prior to skidding to a halt with no external protection.:(

Alternatively, it would save Al Quaida the trouble of getting explosives on board an aircraft, all they need to do is "hack" through the computer firewall on a 787 and trigger all the passenger airbags simultaneously :eek::eek:- or maybe it's a cunning anti-hijacking self-destruct mechanism........:uhoh:

[Pugilistic Animus]

Yep J_T still AFAIK using azides or nitrides

and I'm also a pyrotechnics expert:8

PA

[strake]

I wonder if my previous post is invisible to those who write "..airbags on aircraft are coming" or ..they might be dangerous.."
Virgin Atlantic have been using them since 2006.

Here's more on the subject from 2006..with diagrams and videos:8

Putting Air Bags in the Air - WSJ.com (http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116363703266924532-fbAu94MHDp0pHVgCe6DeZkLsJoE_20061123.html?mod=blogs)

[redED]

Oh yeah, those will helphttp://static.pprune.org/images/smilies/yeees.gif

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2006/01/06/TWA800_060104015753807_wideweb__300x456.jpg

Could aid flotation mind! ;)

[The Wraith]

Cathay Pacific are fitting them throughout all cabins.:ok:

[spannersatcx]

We had them on the 346 as does VS, although ours have gone back, it was/is a regulatory requirement. Fitted in bulkhead rows in EY, and now in the herringbone config (which I hate), been around a good few years now. And yes they have gone off accidently.