Airbus Industrie and Latest Idea to Kill You

[Nessie]

Wow...I was just starting to soften up about maybe flying somewhere again...I stopped over the high cost...but really, I live in a lovely place and have a fine life here...interrupting all this with a fireball would really be a bummer.

[Mynock]

It comes down to simple math. You're far safer in the air in a machine operated by a professional surrounded by other machines being operated by other professionals than on the in a machines operated by an amateur surrounded by other machines also being operated by amateurs. The number of people killed in car crashes in the US hovers around 40,000 annually. The number of people killed in plane crashes varies wildly from year to year but I don't think it's ever even approached a thousand.

[Nessie]

You have a point about the relative safety of the plane, but I sure can drive to a local mud site a lot of times for the price of a plane ride!

Nessie

[nachtjaeger]

I think the first flight in a plane with no windows was before 1930. It was done as a test of brand-new flight instruments like the artificial horizon, pitch & roll indicators, altimeter, etc. Ground control had to talk the pilot down on the runway, but once he was airborne he could sort of navigate by map. Like the line from the Russky helmsman from "Hunt for Red October": "Give me a compass and a map, and I'll fly the Alps in a plane with no windows." To which another sailor responded "If the map is accurate enough."

Anyway, I would file this one under "Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do it." Personally, I would be nervous operating any vehicle only by camera view. It's a psychological thing; that's why they put a window in the Apollo command modules (and a hatch that opened from inside.) There are things that the Mark 1 Mod 0 eyeball can detect that a camera misses. And (pilots correct me if I'm wrong) wouldn't having the cameras on the nose of the aircraft and the pilot in the tail make it difficult or impossible to "fly by the seat of your pants"?

[kham]

Which is why despite having autoland capability in zero viz and proven many, many times, rules still require minimums for visual sighting of the runway before landing. Just because you have the capability to use, doesn't take away the need for a pilot setting the things down. Unless y'all like carrier-type landings

[Mynock]

You have a point about the relative safety of the plane, but I sure can drive to a local mud site a lot of times for the price of a plane ride!

Nessie

The time savings are what's really awesome. I have a lot of family and friends in FL, so once every two or three months I take off a little early from work on Friday afternoon, drive right to the airport and hop a flight to Orlando. 3 1/2 hour nap later somebody picks me up and we spend the weekend partying and visiting everybody, catch a flight back Sunday night. Costs maybe $400 if you buy the tickets in advance, definitely no more than what I'd pay to drive that far.

[Tim Kelly]

Evidently the designer's favourite TV programme as a child was "Thunderbirds", because this configuration was used for the fictitious "Fireflash" airliner: he doesn't seem to have got the point, because the airliner was plagued with problems; every time it appeared in the programme, it had to be rescued; once, from the bottom of the Atlantic! Eventually the aerospace engineers of the future get the message; they scrap the Fireflash, and return to more conventional designs, and more sensible safety features, like the jettisonable fuel pod in "Alias Mr Hackenbacker".

[Duncan Edwards]

It comes down to simple math. You're far safer in the air in a machine operated by a professional surrounded by other machines being operated by other professionals than on the in a machines operated by an amateur surrounded by other machines also being operated by amateurs. The number of people killed in car crashes in the US hovers around 40,000 annually. The number of people killed in plane crashes varies wildly from year to year but I don't think it's ever even approached a thousand.

My mother always wants to know why I have to fly everywhere. I like to point out that 32,000 people died in automobile accidents last year in the USA while exactly zero have died while flying on a regularly scheduled US carrier jetliner since November of 2001. Statistically that means you are far more likely to be killed on the way to the airport than on your flight. I have nearly been killed quite a few times in a car and that's just the occasions I'm aware of. I've never even had a bad flight in an airplane.