Detachable Cabin Technology Developed to Save Lives in a Plane Crash
Erica Berardi January 19, 2016
Plane in trouble? Flyers could soon be saved by a detachable cabin carried by parachutes.
A detachable cabin via ejection could be a way to save lives in on compromised aircraft, reported the U.K.’s Independent.
Inventor Tatarenko Vladimir Nikolaevich, who has worked on the project for the past three years, released designs for the technology as shown in this video.
The detachable cabin could be ejected at any time during an aircraft’s take-off, flight or landing.
Parachutes attached to the cabin would automatically open when the detached cabin separate from the airplane, hopefully allowing flyers to safely land on water or ground.
The Independent notes the design includes luggage storage space under the cabin so flyers would not lose any personal belongings.
[Photo: YouTube]
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I don't think this was very well thought out. What about people on the ground? A skilled pilot might be able to put the plane down in an unpopulated area, this pod will land wherever it lands whether its an empty field or a school full of kids.
Exactly, I've seen this floating around on social media for a week or so already. I love how the passenger compartment seems to perfectly slide away and float down, but what about us pilots? No big deal. We'll just crash and burn (also, I love how the rest of the plane veers off into a fireball in each scenario, great professional touch). There are many technical considerations, but let's also just consider this: this is just one more physical/mechanical thing that could potentially fail in flight. The pod seems like an interesting idea (especially if it was instead implemented as a way to board passengers, then tug the pod to the airplane, hook it up, and depart). But what I also pointed out to my friends and peers on facebook was the fact that, plain and simply, a lot of people don't even fasten their seatbelts. How many people are injured during turbulence each year? How many people actually wear their seat belt (whether the light is on or off)? How many people would be injured during this ejection? Then of course, my pilot side comes out and rationalizes that, with the exception of a few choice scenarios (such as problems during takeoff like AA 191 DC10, AF 4590 Concorde, etc; severe hull loss or explosion like Pan Am 103, etc), 9 times out of 10 it's beneficial to stick with the plane. Even a plane with no engines will be a glider, albeit a heavy and clunky one. If you have altitude, you have potential energy. We learn to trade altitude for airspeed or control airspeed to affect glide distance. So as long as you don't shut off the wrong engine and send your airplane careening into the ground like the ATR in Taiwan last year, or do the exact OPPOSITE power and control inputs to break a stall (like Colgan 3407), you can at least wrangle the airplane down. But that's just my two cents.
Not so sure whether this is such a good idea. Dividing a pressurized space in multiple compartments? How are you going to get from cockpit to cabin? What about connections to all the systems that need to be detachable (air, electricity, maybe even fuel lines)? What about the sudden center of gravity change? All looks like a source of problems to me aside from the dramatic increase in structural weight. Honestly, there aren't too many lives that are going to be saved with a system like this. Also, crashes that we've seen in the news the past year, i.e. accidents with missiles or controlled dive into terrain by a pilot, cannot be prevented with this 'technology'.
You know how you figure out whether something is a good idea or not? If you see it circulating among millions of idiots on Facebook before you discover that someone seriously spent time developing it, it's not a good idea.