Emergency Qantas landing?

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I am not sure what they could do either. However, given that they have identified a failure mode for a seatbelt, I would think that there would be some work going on to solve the problem.

I wonder which part of the safety announcement people don't understand? Looking at the results of the survey on what people thought the seatbelt recommendations are, I think Darwinism is alive and well in the general public.

You can make a seatbelt so it won't accidentally release, but how do you force people to wear it properly?
 
I am not sure what they could do either. However, given that they have identified a failure mode for a seatbelt, I would think that there would be some work going on to solve the problem.
Yeah, of course. What I forgot to add was that the obvious design is a 3 point harness lap and sash belt system with inertial belt retractor. i.e. typical car seat belt.

The problems with this is that aircraft typically don't stop suddenly in the manner of cars, so a belt designed to stop someone going through the windscreen is probably over kill. An issue would be the inertial belt retractor, the problem would be obvious to anyone who has experienced a retractor that refuses to release. Also would something that works ok for motion in 1D work for motion in 3D?
 
I'm not sure that you need to rethink the whole belt, just the release mechanism. For example, would your typical car seat belt release mechanism suffer the same problem?
 
I'm not sure that you need to rethink the whole belt, just the release mechanism. For example, would your typical car seat belt release mechanism suffer the same problem?
I thought that was what I said in Post #199. (I know what I meant)

There are other types of releases that are aircraft certified though possibly not RPT (Regular Public Transport) certified.
 
I'm not sure how they could change the design. The critical point is the need to have 25 cm of slack. There has to be the ability to have slack in the belt because people are all of different sizes. That slack also means that belt buckle has no force applied to it until the person has moved the full length of the slack, with the buckle held in place by the arm rest. Then at the point that the slack is taken up the full force of 80 kg or 100 kg is applied to the buckle. It is a sudden loading, that probably caused the belt to realise. IMO this is a different loading situation to ift eh belt was adjusted to length correctly where the force would be evenly and smoothly applied to the buckle. It is also due to people not using the belt as instructed.

BTW I've taken a frame of reference from inside the aircraft when saying that the people move up and away from the seat. That doesn't mean I don't realise that the aircraft actually moved down.
CX have installed "air bags" in some of their seatbelts. I wonder how that affects the force distributions?
 
CX have installed "air bags" in some of their seatbelts. I wonder how that affects the force distributions?
That is interesting, I can't even imagine how that works or what it's supposed to achieve. :confused: Thanks for something to think about :)
 
CX have installed "air bags" in some of their seatbelts. I wonder how that affects the force distributions?

It's the same in VS Upper Class on the A340, but in a herringbone formation. It looked like it was to protect the passenger in the event of a heavy deceleration for those who aren't facing the direction of travel (and deceleration).
Wouldn't really want to trust my life to it after it had had several drinks and liberally applied to it.
 
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CX have installed "air bags" in some of their seatbelts. I wonder how that affects the force distributions?

Seems (marginally) better in that youtube video.

I will say though that they're very uncomfortable as it means one "arm" of the belt is really quite fixed and uncomfortable. I wonder if there's abetter method with an airbag popping from the seat in front (in Y at least)?

Airbag seatbelt + hard shell = very uncomfortable (vs just uncomfortable!)flight for me (6'5") - no doubt less of an issue for those < 6')
 
Qantas A330 Incident - Computer Blamed

The ATSB have released their final report blaming the computer.

http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2008/aair/ao-2008-070.aspx

On 7 October 2008, an Airbus A330-303 aircraft, registered VH-QPA and operated as Qantas flight 72, departed Singapore on a scheduled passenger transport service to Perth, Western Australia. While the aircraft was in cruise at 37,000 ft, one of the aircraft's three air data inertial reference units (ADIRUs) started outputting intermittent, incorrect values (spikes) on all flight parameters to other aircraft systems. Two minutes later, in response to spikes in angle of attack (AOA) data, the aircraft's flight control primary computers (FCPCs) commanded the aircraft to pitch down. At least 110 of the 303 passengers and nine of the 12 crew members were injured; 12 of the occupants were seriously injured and another 39 received hospital medical treatment.
Although the FCPC algorithm for processing AOA data was generally very effective, it could not manage a scenario where there were multiple spikes in AOA from one ADIRU that were 1.2 seconds apart. The occurrence was the only known example where this design limitation led to a pitch-down command in over 28 million flight hours on A330/A340 aircraft, and the aircraft manufacturer subsequently redesigned the AOA algorithm to prevent the same type of accident from occurring again.
 
It's the lead story on SMH online at the moment.

The article was kind enough to note "Investigators say there was no correlation to the way the Qantas planes were set up, maintained or operated".
 
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