How to survive a plane crash

Stephen Furley wrote:


On 16/1/09 12:23, in article
, "Runge
enjoys crossdressing" wrote:

Contrary to popular statistical myth, however, air travel is not the
safest form of transport * rail travel is safer in terms of accidents
per journey and accidents per hour travelled (air travel wins only in
accidents per mile travelled).

But since the aim of travel is to get from one place to another, i.e. To
travel a certain distance, that is the thing that matters. People don't
generally decide that they want to make, say, a four hour journey, and then
look to see where they can go in that time, so accidents per hour travelled
is pretty meaningless.

While you are correct for some travel, in reality things can be a bit
more complex.

For instance, one probably wouldn't go away for the weekend to (say)
Venice if you couldn't fly, because it would take about a day to get
there and a day to get back by surface travel. On the other hand, with
cheap airline flights taking a couple of hours each way, you might do it
by air.

The same is true to some extent for business travel: travel arrangements
are influenced by the travel time. In fact, if it's not absolutely
essential to be at a particular meeting, then one might send one's
apologies if the travel would be too time-consuming.

Thus some travel is dependent to some extent on the time taken to
travel, and not just the distance.
--
Jeremy Double {real address, include nospam}
Rail and transport photos at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmdoubl...7603834894248/

In article ,
DaveM wrote:

On Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:29:35 +0000, Stephen Furley
wrote:

Since air travel is generally used for longer journeys than
rail, comparing accidents per journey isn't terribly meaningful either.

If air travel has less accidents per mile than rail travel, then it's
probably reasonable to say that it's safer, though you might also need to
consider how severe the accidents were.

Air accidents cluster around takeoff and landing, so short haul and longhaul
flights aren't dissimilar in risk. That makes "per journey" stats a better
assessment of risk for air travel. There's another reason why you might
prefer not to use to "mortality per mile" as the gold standard: Consider a
manned flight to Mars, @ 286 million miles round trip. If every 10th trip is
lost with 100% mortality, giving a 1 in 2860 million person-miles mortality,
would it really be true to say space flight was safer than flying (1 in
2,000 million person-miles)?

How do space shuttle flights compare?

Sam

On 17 Jan., 01:29, Stephen Furley wrote:

People don't
generally decide that they want to make, say, a four hour journey, and then
look to see where they can go in that time,

Err.... isn't that precisely what gricing is about?

On Jan 16, 6:53*pm, "Recliner" wrote:
So for a journey from London to Glasgow, air travel is safer than
train?

I would have thought so, and not just statistically. There have been
several fatal rail accidents on the west and east coast main lines to
Glasgow in recent years, but I can't think when the last fatal accident
occurred on a British airliner in Britain (eg, the British Midland
Kegworth crash). It was certainly many years earlier. Of course, I'm
excluding private flying, and in particular the recent crash on to the
west coast mainline.

....except that 47 people died at Kegworth, which is a lot higher than
any ECML or WCML accident. Indeed, it's more than twice as high than
Grayrigg + Great Heck + Potters Bar + Hatfield + Watford (1996) +
Morpeth (1992) + Colwich + Wembley (1984), which pretty much covers
the last 30 years of the ECML and WCML.

(and in terms of *your* chances of getting killed, the levels of
injury experienced in a modern train during a derailment like Grayrigg
are equivalent to the ones seen from evacuations, not from accidents -
if you're frail enough that you might die when a train rolls over,
you're frail enough that you might die jumping down an evacuation
chute...)

--
John Band
john at johnbnand dot org
www.johnband.org

... I can't think when the last fatal accident occurred on a
British airliner in Britain (eg, the British Midland Kegworth crash).

That was 1989. There's been nothing on that scale since then, and
only one crash of a big jet and that was with no passengers aboard.
After that it depends on what you count as an airliner. Here are
all the accidents I could find on www.planecrashinfo.com since
Kegworth in Britain with 5 or more deaths. Wording of details is
mine. Curiously, one of them had the same cause as the Kegworth
crash, which you would think would be rather unusual.

I present this table just for information and not to promote any
particular conclusion. As far as I'm concerned, air and rail travel
both have superb safety records and comparing them is pointless.

30 Apr 1990, Tarbert -- RAF military flight crashed into mountain.
All 10 killed.

21 Dec 1994, Coventry -- Phoenix Boeing 737 crashed into a
transmission tower. No passengers aboard; all 5 crew killed.

24 May 1995, near Leeds -- Knight Air Embraer 110. Artificial horizons
failed, pilot became disoriented and crashed. All 12 killed
(9 passengers, 3 crew).

03 Sep 1999, Glasgow -- Edinburgh Air Charter Cessna 404. Pilot shut
down the wrong engine after a failure of the other. 8 killed
(6 of 9 passengers, 2 of 2 crew).

14 Jun 2000, Liverpool -- ANT Air Taxi Piper PA-31-350 air ambulance
crashed into Mersey estuary. All 5 killed (4 passengers, 1 crew).

04 Jan 2002, Birmingham -- Agco Canadair CL-604. Multiple causes.
All 5 killed (3 passengers, 2 crew).

16 Jul 2002, off Cromer -- Bristow Helicopters Sikorsky S-76A crashed
into North Sea. All 11 killed (9 passengers, 2 crew).
--
Mark Brader | "...being permitted to propel a ton of steel through
Toronto | public places at speeds of up to 33 m/s is not a
| fundamental human right in my book" -- Paul Ciszek

My text in this article is in the public domain.

On Mon, 19 Jan 2009 12:11:13 +0000, Sam Wilson wrote:

In article ,
DaveM wrote:

On Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:29:35 +0000, Stephen Furley
wrote:

Since air travel is generally used for longer journeys than
rail, comparing accidents per journey isn't terribly meaningful either.

If air travel has less accidents per mile than rail travel, then it's
probably reasonable to say that it's safer, though you might also need to
consider how severe the accidents were.

Air accidents cluster around takeoff and landing, so short haul and longhaul
flights aren't dissimilar in risk. That makes "per journey" stats a better
assessment of risk for air travel. There's another reason why you might
prefer not to use to "mortality per mile" as the gold standard: Consider a
manned flight to Mars, @ 286 million miles round trip. If every 10th trip is
lost with 100% mortality, giving a 1 in 2860 million person-miles mortality,
would it really be true to say space flight was safer than flying (1 in
2,000 million person-miles)?

How do space shuttle flights compare?

Without bothering to check the facts: Very, very badly. I wasn't including
these in the calculations, but if that's a problem, substitute
"inter-planetary travel" for "space flight" in the last sentence.

DaveM

In article ,
DaveM wrote:

How do space shuttle flights compare?

Without bothering to check the facts: Very, very badly.


The late, unlamented Concorde also comes off very badly.

As best I understand it, on a deaths per passenger mile basis, or most
any other reasonable measure, the Concorde ranks far worse than any
other passenger airliner ever put into routine commercial service.

(Would take some further ruminating to decide whether the Shuttle or the
Concorde should count as the more totally useless waste of taxpayer
funding.)

Get the right pilot and crew.

--
Mary Loomer Oliver (aka Erilar)

You can't reason with someone whose first line of argument is
that reason doesn't count. --Isaac Asimov

Erilar's Cave Annex: http://www.chibardun.net/~erilarlo

In article ,
AES wrote:


(Would take some further ruminating to decide whether the Shuttle or the
Concorde should count as the more totally useless waste of taxpayer
funding.)

Personally, the Concorde would get the nod. At least the Shuttle
cleared up the astigmatism on the Hubble and gave us some absolutely
breathtaking pictures. As good a tie breaker as any.

In message , at
18:12:41 on Mon, 19 Jan 2009, AES remarked:
The late, unlamented Concorde also comes off very badly.

As best I understand it, on a deaths per passenger mile basis, or most
any other reasonable measure, the Concorde ranks far worse than any
other passenger airliner ever put into routine commercial service.

But only as a result of one accident. On that basis perhaps the IC225 is
the UK's most unsafe train (Hatfield and Great Heck).

(Would take some further ruminating to decide whether the Shuttle or the
Concorde should count as the more totally useless waste of taxpayer
funding.)

What's interesting to think about is that Concorde was designed and
built to service a boom in air travel and a need that never materialised
(because of an earlier economic downturn). I wonder what projects we are
gung-ho about today will be the white elephants of the 2030's? Crossrail
and HS2 are prime candidates.
--
Roland Perry