Interesting food for thought.

It seems you should always try to strike the planet at the shallowest possible angle?

River rat wrote:It seems you should always try to strike the planet at the shallowest possible angle?

Except with the twin they showed in a steeper angle but hitting left wing low. They barely felt that inside. I was not expecting that.

CW

- Contacting the ground as parallel to the ground as possible of course seems to have better outcomes.

- Contacting the ground tail low seemed to have a surprisingly large effect. This fact may have saved a local pilot's life a few years ago. The tail was wadded up into a tight ball, while the cabin maintained containment and cabin environment safety.

- The low wing designs seemed to fare much better...this seems logical.

- Cessnas don't seem to fare well overall even for the best conditions.

- Contacting with the wing first seemed to reduce a lot of the damage. The saw about putting a plane between two trees has been said to save lives (and written about by Helmericks, Wien, and the like). Side loads in automobile wrecks tend to cause more trauma than similar frontal injuries, though.

- The examples excluded a lot of things- lots of gas in the wings, to name one, or a header tank near the engine for another.

- The seat attachment integrity was pretty moot. They all broke. The seat belt integrity was important.

I've never read anything on certification standards for crashworthiness from the FAA aside from guidelines on reducing the lethality of things inside the cabin- flammability, restraints, energy absorbing characteristincs of seats, aisle lighting, etc. I cannot find any FAA guidance on gross structural requirements. There are some other resources, however:

http://www.niar.wichita.edu/agate/Documents/Crashworthiness/WP3.4-034043-036.pdf

This one has some interesting notes about efforts (and the lack thereof) in the design of specific aircraft. But the rest is really interesting too, and it seems even recent (<20 years old designs) are mostly or entirely lacking in the suggestions. It doesn't seem to be used as the sort of thing that plane manufacturers like to tout to sell airplanes- sort of like where automobile manufacturers were in the post WW2 days.

There are other design issues that reduce lethality. Parachutes are proven to reduce lethality when a planned descent is possible. Given that unplanned CFIT has 10x or so the lethality of other crashes, it can only go so far. If a chute install weighs 85 lbs, what impact would the cost and weight have if invested in crash structural integrity instead? It might reduce lethality in CFIT conditions, but it might increase lethality where a planned descent with a chute was possible. In addition, structural improvements may not provide a large improvement regardless. In the case of the Ford Pinto, it was likely that the safety of the vehicle was similar to other vehicles, being safer in many respects and only more dangerous in one famous respect. In addition, the remedy had zero impact on actual safety outcomes even though the safety metrics (the average speed needed to impinge on the fuel tank) were improved by the remedy to meet fleet averages:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/04/the-engineers-lament

I'm not a big Gladwell fan, but the biggest TL;DR of all this is that how the vehicle is driven is more important than the safety engineering that goes into the design at times.

Given all this, I wonder what people's thoughts are on planned crashing techniques to improve the odds are, and whether design, chutes, or modifications for crashworthiness is a consideration for them to improve the outcomes of both planned or unplanned crashes.

I've always been a big fan of route planning as a crash survival plan. If I need to fly a big detour around rugged terrain in order to follow a road I'll generally do it. The area around Lassen and Shasta for instance has large, seemingly flat, emergency landing areas viewed from above but is in fact is a volcanic debris mine-field when viewed up close. I doubt that even the most careful emergency landing in that area is gong to turn out well. This preference, or technique if you will, has limited usefulness during most of the activities this bunch engages in; but knowing what sort of surface is below you is just another part of situational awareness. As I learned when running airshows, loss of situational awareness IS loss of control.

Low wing much better than high wing, would be interesting to see how well the Mooney cage will do in this cases in comparisson.
Kind of dissapointed with high wing but makes sense.

Best advice I was ever given regarding crashes: DON'T!

Cary

Friend of mine has crashed plenty of them. He said the best course of action is to cross your arms across your chest after ground impact as you are a passenger from then on.

Crop dusters are designed to crash. They put the wing low for visibility in the turn and to absorb energy in a crash. They put the pilot up high for visibility and on the wing's trailing edge to be as far away from the engine as possible. Helmets are worn and the inertia reel locked.

I hit a stump with the left wing and crashed a Pawnee. Not hurt but helmet pranged right cockpit tubing. I cartwheeled a Callair, broke right wing spar twice and knocked the engine off. Not hurt but helmet pranged tubing on both sides. Shot down and turned a Cobra on it's side. Knocked out even with helmet. Hit ground in turn with Ultraflight Challenger II. No helmet. Knocked out, broke back, crushed leg, spinal damage.

Man, I feel a lot better about wanting a Cherokee after watching this! I was lamenting the (relative) lack of back-country performance and looking at that stupid wing when I'm trying to look down, but it may be worth it.

My biggest take away is that I really want a good shoulder harness for as many seats as I can get it!

contactflying wrote:I hit a stump with the left wing and crashed a Pawnee.

I cartwheeled a Callair, broke right wing spar twice and knocked the engine off.

Shot down and turned a Cobra on it's side.

Hit ground in turn with Ultraflight Challenger II.

Now I see where "contactflying" came from.

tom

motoadve,

Mooney's continuous wing is one of the best to crash on, except slick airplanes touch down a little faster without power to control sink when slow.

hpux735,

A cheap David Clark helmet is as safe as any. Get a military inerta reel that locks with the slightest pull or one that has a lock or just a fixed cable with the shoulder straps so tight they hurt a bit. Also the belt should be very tight. If you move, the seat rails will probably fail, belt may fail. If the shoulder harness lets you bend forward you stretch the gangula in your lower spinal cord. No more sex. If you are knocked out, Nomex will keep you alive in any fire for five minutes while someone else pulls you out.

With any airplane, cushion up until your helmet almost touches the headliner for the best visibility. Older airplanes have lower panels. Look over the left cowl in front of the wing. To see things lower than your altitude to the right, energy management turn to the right to take a look over the right cowl. If a left crosswind forces you into a significant left crab, land and switch to the right seat. When low enough to hit things sticking up, you can't afford to look very much out the side window anyway. Using an observer is awkward for him because he is not flying. The stuff you could hit is out front. The stuff out the side, you have already missed.

Tom,

I try to teach the safest techniques for maneuvering flight. Contact, however is possible. Instruments, including glass stuff, are inside the cockpit and totally useless for missing stuff just there. It works for long range planning stuff, say a quarter mile distant, but things are happening too fast for that to be relevant when we actually get there. A quarter mile out, we have to be deciding whether we are going around (best), under (next best), or over the obstacle.

Contact Crasher

Plan to crash in as flat an attitude as possible, on the hardest, flattest surface. Have shoulder harnesses and a helmet if you can.

It was interesting to see the incredible way all of the dirt landings almost completely absorbed the forward motion of the aircraft! I wonder if rocky riverbeds and sandbars away from the water might be a lot better than dirt, if not as good as concrete. The concrete crashes transferred almost all of the energy into forward motion, redirecting the forces on the occupants, rather than concentrating the forces on the occupants.

Great find! This was really eye-opening! Makes me want a helmet even more...

A quote from the great Bob Hoover who has crashed more than one airplane in his test piloting career. "Fly the airplane as far into the crash as possible".

Very interesting. How many pilots on here ever wear a helmet?

I realize it might seem a bit dorky and/or uncomfortable but I'm thinking it is a cheap insurance policy.

I've had my bell rung a few times and am admittedly pretty averse to head injury danger.

Savannah-Tom wrote:Now I see where "contactflying" came from. tom

Good one!!

albravo wrote:Very interesting. How many pilots on here ever wear a helmet?

Just put in 10 hours flying over the last 3 days and wore a helmet for all of that. Make it a habit and keep it in the aircraft and it becomes part of your program.

You can always get a 'self styled' helmet if you feel a bit dorky [emoji15]

Reminds me of the hair helmet on Flight of the Conchords!

About 16,500 of the last 17,000 hours. I can't afford not to wear one.