Questions tagged [safety]
Safety includes all aspects of protecting aircraft, passengers and crew from accidents, mistakes and other potentially dangerous situations.
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1answer
89 views
Does anyone know what type of hand held radios can communicate with the ATC? [closed]
I'm Wondering where I can get and what handheld radio to communicate with the ATC
in case of electronic failure.
2
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1answer
698 views
Why is there always a fire truck present before refuelling?
Whenever I fly within Europe, I notice there is always a fire truck present for refuelling before takeoff.
Is this standard procedure for every flight in commercial aviation? If yes, is this a global ...
5
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1answer
307 views
Are there any safety hazards when testing the F-16's fire control radar on the ground?
What are the procedures for ground testing an aircraft's fire control radar - for the F-16 or any other aircraft - and are there safety hazards associated with exposures to humans? Most importantly, ...
3
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1answer
297 views
Why did this pilot have his single-engine license revoked?
5 minutes into this video, a commercial Indonesian pilot is shown performing a very tame version of a parabolic flight path as performed by zero-gravity flights, in a Cessna 172.
This video has over ...
-3
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3answers
93 views
Is this safety ranking of different aviation methods accurate? [closed]
I'm compiling a list of essentially "Different ways a human can fly" and then ranking them in order of safest to most dangerous.
This is my final list, is it statistically (and practically) accurate?
...
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1answer
92 views
Can I fly a paramotor after learning on a paraglider?
This video has inspired me to spend next week doing a 6 day paragliding course. The only downside is the school near me don't teach paramotoring.
Could I buy (and safely use/self-teach) a paramotor ...
5
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1answer
212 views
Is it normal for a Boeing 757 engine to bounce under its fairing?
Earlier this week I was on a 757 flight from SFO to JFK and the right engine was bouncing under the fairing under mild turbulence, and really moving 2+ cm under moderate turbulence. Is that in any way ...
7
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2answers
1k views
Will dual-learning in a glider make my airplane learning safer?
This question got me thinking, would attending gliding lessons at the same time as my airplane training make me safer in a small plane or microlight?
28
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3answers
4k views
Are grass strips more dangerous than tarmac?
There are a couple of flight schools near me. One is at a large airport, they use Piper Tomahawks primarily to teach. Naturally, they use well maintained, tarmac runways to takeoff and land. This ...
12
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3answers
3k views
Does Nitrogen inside commercial airliner wheels prevent blowouts on touchdown?
I just watched the first episode of Inside Mighty Machine where civil engineer-turned-host, Chad Zdenek, discussed innovations of the 747. One innovation he discussed was the increased number of ...
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1answer
134 views
What are the requirements for aircraft marker cones?
What are the requirements on aircraft marker cones (a.k.a. safety cones) according to IATA IGOM-96, i.e. size & weight?
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0answers
53 views
what are some of the effects of breaking the sound barrier? [duplicate]
I have tried googling it, and nothing came up, please help! I am trying to figure out what happens after a jet/aircraft breaks the sound barrier.
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1answer
146 views
Why are inflatable pillows not allowed on board? [closed]
Inflatable cushions designed to ensure extra space that children sleep comfortably between the passenger seats are not accepted aboard by most of the airline companies for they can obstruct evacuation ...
3
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1answer
162 views
Why is it appropriate to announce ‘stable’ on final approach?
I have recently discovered that a budget airlines flight deck in the UK (Airbus 320) announce ‘Stable’ on the final approach. Both the Captain and F.O, just after 500 ft is called out by the computer. ...
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0answers
47 views
How are the weights of sumo wrestlers shown on the load&trimsheet form? [duplicate]
Under normal circumstances most airlines use standard weights to calculate passenger weights. Sometimes, passenger groups with different weight than the normal passenger profile can also travel.
How ...
0
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1answer
33 views
How is the load & trimsheet form sent to ACARS?
After the last passengers and baggage are loaded onto the aircraft, the pilot in command is given a form called load & trimsheet which shows the passenger/baggage distributions, total weights and ...
2
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1answer
89 views
Is there a Risk of Tail Tipping during Push-back of a passenger aircraft?
I remember that there were countless incidents occurred in which the aircraft sits on the tail as the aircraft was heavily loaded at the back of the cargo and/or cabin compartments or the cargo ...
2
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1answer
257 views
Does a no-touch policy really work?
In Boeing 787 and Airbus 350 aircrafts, more than half of the aircraft body is made of composite material. The composite structure of the fuselage does not indicate the damage when the body is ...
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2answers
231 views
How are insects and arachnids kept out of commercial passenger airliners?
If a commercial passenger airliner were to land in a place infested with insects or arachnids, wouldn't it be dangerous to have those animals enter the aircraft?
For example, suppose if mosquitoes, ...
7
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1answer
141 views
How can I find out if the FAA has ever sanctioned a pilot?
Is there any easy way to check to see if a CFI or commercial pilot has had past problems with the FAA? The question came to me after an old thread in one of the aviation forums pointed me to this ...
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2answers
623 views
How was this airline (statistically) never had a fatal incident? [closed]
Ryanair make around 725,044 flights per year. This They have been operating for 35 years, so have accrued around 25,376,540 flights.
They have also never had any fatal incidents or even major ...
39
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5answers
7k views
Is the seat-belt sign activation when a pilot goes to the lavatory standard procedure?
Yesterday, I took an inter-European commercial flight with a popular budget airline. Before take-off, the captain announced that the First Officer would be taking the entire flight today.
During the ...
3
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0answers
100 views
How should ground crews act to safely extinguish an airliner's brake unit fire?
When the brake unit was overheated and had just begun to catch fire due to excessive braking because of long taxi distance upon arrival, the ground personnel (not firefighters) made the first ...
2
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0answers
72 views
Can a protective mesh protect engines from bird strikes? [duplicate]
Can a protective mesh be installed on the front of the engines to stop birds from entering the engine and causing damage?
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1answer
179 views
Is there a correlation between airport capacity and accident rates?
This question about the new Heathrow runway increasing flights per day by 700 mentions that this airport (and many others around the world) runs at over 98% capacity.
This got me thinking, is there a ...
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1answer
143 views
What can I do if my aircraft type changes last minute? [closed]
I have a flight scheduled for June with a popular, European commercial budget-operator on a 737. I'm sure everyone knows about the groundings of the MAX. However, I'm concerned that the MAX may be ...
16
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4answers
7k views
Are Boeing 737-800s grounded? [duplicate]
I’m flying on a WestJet Boeing 737-800 from Honolulu to Vancouver and then on to Toronto in July, returning on the same type of aircraft in August. Are these aircraft still grounded and are they ...
22
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4answers
5k views
Don’t seats that recline flat defeat the purpose of having seatbelts?
Virtually all first-class airline seats, and many to most business-class seats, recline all the way down, either as lie-flat seats (where the seat reclines to a 180º seatback-seatpan angle, but the ...
4
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1answer
219 views
Why is a small amount of smooth ice over the top of the wing more dangerous than an accumulation on the leading edge?
According to a Gleim study guide,
"Generally speaking, smooth ice on top of the wing is more dangerous than heavy accumulated icing on the leading edge."
Is this true? If this is true, why?
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2answers
138 views
Why was the Electra uniquely vulnerable to whirl-mode flutter?
The Lockheed L-188 Electra, notoriously, suffered from early problems with whirl-mode flutter, which caused two Electras to break apart in flight in 1959 and 1960, forcing an expensive redesign of the ...
6
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4answers
351 views
Why do aircraft stall warning systems use angle-of-attack vanes rather than detecting airflow separation directly?
Stall warning and protection systems on essentially all aircraft work by using several hinged vanes on the side of the fuselage (usually at least three, and preferably more), which align themselves ...
6
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2answers
436 views
Does the person directing the plane to parking not risk getting ingested by a jet engine?
According to answers in this post, a jet engine can suck a human into its engines, even on idle power. Aircraft use their engines post landing taxi and into their parking space, and I notice people ...
3
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1answer
139 views
Do aircraft engineers take into consideration engine placement to avoid ground strikes in a cross-wind landing?
On a multi-engine airplane with wing-mounted engines, do aircraft designers have a standard way of ensuring that the banked landings associated with cross-wind's do not cause a prop or engine-housing ...
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1answer
204 views
What safety issues led the FAA to ban Constellation flights into/out of the U.S.?
Although the Lockheed Constellation (like the other late, large piston airliners) was superseded in the 1960s and 1970s by newer jets (plus turboprops for shorter/lighter routes), it hung on into the ...
3
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0answers
56 views
Is it possible to selectively deactivate alarms? [duplicate]
My question is restricted to Airbus an Boeing's best sellers, namely the A320 and the B737. If relevant, answer can be extended to other types.
In those aircraft, there are multiple possible alarms (...
0
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0answers
37 views
Does anyone know of any Boeing 737 Max-8 MCAS usage statistics? [duplicate]
How often has the 737 MAX-8 MCAS stall-averting software been successfully activated? Is this a rarely used safety item? Or is it in play in many, even a majority, of take-offs?
34
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3answers
7k views
How long to clear the 'suck zone' of a turbofan after start is initiated?
I recently found this (IMO funny) picture. All funny and all. But let's make this a real situation.
Let's suppose I see my crush and his BF doing this, and I come with this 'genius' idea (alright, it'...
29
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3answers
7k views
Why are on-board computers allowed to change controls without notifying the pilots?
Recently we've had the 737-MAX debacle, where it increasingly appears that the MAX on-board MCAS system repeatedly would issue nose-down events, leading to the Lion Air crash, and possibly another
...
2
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0answers
105 views
Can 7 AKE containers adjacent to each other be securely locked in a 777-300ER's aft cargo bin?
Is it possible to securely lock 7 AKE (LD3) containers adjacent to each other in a Boeing 777-300ER's aft cargo bin from position 31 to 41 (41 included)?
According to my experience it's impossible to ...
5
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1answer
199 views
Why not separate out the two definitions of V-1 into two separate Vspeeds?
V1, officially the takeoff decision speed, has, somewhat infamously, two separate definitions:
It is defined as the minimum speed at which, if one engine fails, the pilots can press to liftoff and ...
4
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3answers
1k views
Is the Boeing 737 MAX 8 MCAS exceptional in operating when autopilot is off?
To the uneducated reader it seems strange the Boeing 737 MAX 8 MCAS system only operates when autopilot is off. I understand the reasoning behind why it was implemented to operate when autopilot is ...
4
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0answers
129 views
Has any jurisdiction mandated passenger training?
A chunk of pre-departure time for each flight is dedicated to a safety briefing for passengers that few passengers seem to pay attention to. In the aftermath of accidents, it has been revealed at ...
14
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1answer
496 views
Who decided that the Boeing 737 MAX planes that were airborne when the grounding was issued cannot enter and land in EU air space?
On March 12th, 2019, EASA grounded the Boeing 737 MAX series by publishing their Emergency Airworthiness Directive 2019-0051-E (AD):
Effective Date: 12 March 2019, 19:00 UTC
[...]
...
44
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3answers
22k views
How difficult is it to simply disable/disengage the MCAS on Boeing 737 Max 8 & 9 Aircraft? [closed]
With regard to the recent crashes involving the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft, where according to preliminary reports, it appears to be related to the MCAS, which is a safety system that pushes the nose ...
15
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2answers
2k views
Why is not every airplane equipped with 3 angle-of-attack sensors?
For critical systems, redundancy is built into the system. It is common knowledge among designers/architects to have three different inputs so in case one is faulty, input from the remaining two can ...
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2answers
231 views
What is the longest period of time an aircraft type has been grounded due to safety concerns?
Obviously inspired by the current 737 Max situation, what is the longest period of time that any individual type of airliner has been grounded for safety concerns (excluding those that never returned ...
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4answers
444 views
Are pilot YouTubers breaking any rules?
Recently, I've been watching a few YouTubers (mostly FOs) who make great videos like this:
Then I realized... They must spend a lot of time setting up cameras, ...
2
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1answer
181 views
Why don't all pilots receive at least basic instrument training?
Given the frequency with which non-instrument-rated pilots get themselves killed attempting to continue VFR flights into instrument conditions, why don't all pilots receive at least basic instrument ...
1
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1answer
55 views
What is the most critical data to measure for a predictive maintenance model for a drone?
I'm looking at making a predictive maintenance model for a drone (quadcopter mainly but can include others)
I'm wondering what is the most common causes of failure due to "overflying". (not including ...
3
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1answer
273 views
What happens to an airborne plane when its type is grounded by an authority?
Many countries have (temporarily I think) banned 737 Max 8s from taking off or landing. What happened to the ones in the air? Do they get special permissions or are they forced to divert to a ...
