The "seat belt" indicator light should actually be changed to "dont get up and walk around"
I've seen aftermath videos and photos, I'm not taking my chances
The terrible UX doesn't help. There is a seatbelt icon on the sign, they announce it as "fasten seatbelt sign", which makes it sound like when it is off you don't have to have it fastened. But it really should be "remain seated" sign.
Also some people don't wear seatbelts in cars as some idiotic macho thing. I assume there is no helping those.
I think having a cable flying around would actually be dangerous in itself. Wouldn’t want to get it caught around your neck…
Most people in the backseats are very used to use their seatbelts, even more so in the front.
Intercity buses also have mandatory seatbelts.
I have noticed that it does seem to have gotten more common to just leave them on for the duration of the flight, in the last couple of decades.
That being said having the plane lose instruments from the turbulence is a major problem that needs to be fixed
Edit: Rereading the article I did notice a passenger comment about the plane going in a nosedive, which would match the scenarios the others below me have replied with that dont involve turbulence. Always thought the airframe couldn't survive actively maneuvering at such extremes on big jets like that, guess I was wrong.
Injuries from first crashing headfirst into the ceiling and then out of control falling back into your chair is a given when you have hundreds of passengers on board.
Especially on a Boeing which does not limit the flight envelope like an Airbus does.
That's how we can get the zero-G flights - by precisely flying the parabola.
> Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner
(Boeing, but not the 737 Max that has been in the headlines the past few years)
Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2024/3/11/50-people-injur...
For example, would a pilot be able to manually fly the airplane and cause this kind of incident? Or would the control surfaces of the plane be able to cause this assuming that any safety limits that restrict movement were not working?
EDIT: I was also thinking about "well why should the airplane allow the pilot for such movements then?". And I think a good analogy is the brakes in your car - they do allow for maximum breaking, yet when was the last time you actually pushed it to the max?
(And note that this is 100% speculation, I just wanted to highlight that the pilot can cause such negative acceleration on their own)
Unless the aircraft was flying in a degraded state, these limits are supposed to prevent the aircraft from suffering damage during flight.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_data_inertial_reference_un...
As a parent and car pilot I used my brake once to teach my children the necessity of wearing seatbelts. You actually do not need to break hard to let them fly around I noticed.
https://www.cnn.com/2012/04/17/travel/canada-disoriented-pil...
... as to _how_ bright it can be - I was once in an area with dark skies, setting up my telescope just before sunset. After dark, I was taking in the beauty of the Cigar Galaxy and then looked up and behind from the scope. My eyes were assaulted by a bright light on the top of the hill behind, and I was cursing the idiot who had turned that light on, when I realized that it was Jupiter, freshly risen above the hill. Jupiter is not as bright as Venus.
On that night, Venus, had it been visible, would've been blindingly brilliant. Flying 10 Km above the ground, with no light pollution, I'm not surprised that the Pilot mistook Venus for an aircraft headlight.
Edit: clarity
If you have to get up, keep a hand on something. An airliner cannot pull serious negative gs. You aren't going to be "pinned" to the ceiling. But you should hold to something solid just in case things get a little floaty for a few seconds. Most longtime fliers have witnessed their drinks lift of their trays. The floating doesn't hurt. The issue is when things stop floating and come crashing down.
12 injured into the ceiling in this flight, kind of looks like a check of who was and wasn't wearing the belt
"Boeing: too big to be grounded"
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azimuthal_equidistant_projecti...
>it came back all of the sudden
top quality writing there..
These: https://www.usabuscharter.com/uploads/4/3/6/1/43615417/setra...
It's technically mandatory, but I've traveled like 12 times in the last year, and only twice the assistant has done his nag-round checking that passengers are wearing their seatbelts.
It’s two cable lines, one on the ceiling and one on the floor. Each would be separately attached to the passengers harness so the freedom of movement is only up and down, limited to the amount of slack in the short length that connects the passenger to the plane.
> … and people getting hit by luggage falling out of the overhead storage.
We can give everyone a hard hat too.
Sounds like you and GP are just drawing the line at different places.
My point was the fact the "fasten seatbelt sign" was not lit in the middle of the flight makes people think it is OK to not have it fastened. Which isn't true.
Maybe they should play some in flight video of one of these events.
If the colloquial term "zero gravity" applies to someone in the ISS, then it also applies to someone in a suddenly dropping aircraft.
Only the obnoxiously hard headed folks would argue back and go "since it's a recommendation and not a requirement I will not sit with my seatbelt on, and there's nothing you can do about it."
Except as provided in this paragraph, each person on board an airplane operated under this part shall occupy an approved seat or berth with a separate safety belt properly secured about him or her during movement on the surface, takeoff, and landing.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/part-121/section-121.3...
I've never looked for stats on these incidents involving clear air turbulence. The impression I got as a European was that this was a transatlantic and transpacific problem. It's obviously not, but those were the incidents reported on.
According to the below, long haul flights get it more, due to the altitude they fly at.
This of course doesn't mean one shouldn't wear it as often as possible, but ie with small kids thats nigh impossible, or for some folks on 10 hour flights (I still used to put it on me when I slept, but mainly to not be woken up by crew when they switch it on and check everybody).
Very similar topic is bus seat belts. All intercity buses (at least in Europe) have them, nobody clips in (apart from driver). I think at this point everybody knows about some horrible bus tragedy which would be a set of minor scratches if all folks had seat belts on. Yet our subconsciousness keeps changing perceived risks and consequences to keep us happy/content instead of worried about everything all the time (makes some sense, cluttered mind ain't best performing in life & death scenarios of bygone era).
Additionally an Airworthiness Directive from 2020 requires, at least in europe, to reboot more often than 51 days due to stale data in common core system, with various network packets being dropped and system showing incorrect data to pilots.
Reading deeper, I'm more worried about how there's no patch for the Boeing issue still, at least I can't find one in FAA AD database, I assumed there would be one already... (the affected A350 had a software patch available at the time AD for "reboot before 148 hours" was issued)
A350 has avionics bug requiring regular reboots too. Arguably even more embarassing, because while 787 was Boeing's first AFDX plane, Airbus pretty much invented AFDX for A380
> Records of number plates read by each LPR shall not be recorded or transmitted anywhere and shall be purged from the system within 3 minutes of their capture in such a manner that they are destroyed and are not recoverable, unless an alarm resulted in an arrest, a citation, or protective custody, or identified a vehicle that was the subject of a missing person or wanted broadcast [...]
https://law.justia.com/codes/new-hampshire/2022/title-xxi/ti...
This should be the standard IMO.
... Wait, you don't need _liability insurance_?!
(Huh; I had no idea there was anywhere left in the developed world where they weren't mandatory.)
https://www.nh.gov/insurance/consumers/documents/nh_auto_gui...
