Jun 21 2006New emergency landing patent is crazy
An inventor from Bangkok is trying to patent an emergency landing system for aircrafts which throws it into a horizontal spin. The current procedure for crash landings is to make a controlled belly flop so as to avoid nearby buildings and distribute force across the body. The new idea, however, is to fit planes with explosive charges so when a crash is inevitable the charges will go off and blow off one of the wings from the fuselage, causing the plane to enter a horizontal spin. The idea is for the spinning motion to mimic a helicopter blade and produce lift while the centrifugal force keeps the plane level.
It sounds good in theory, but a plane spinning at a rate fast enough to produce lift seems like it'd kill all the passengers inside anyways. Or at least mash them up against the windows real good.
Reader Comments
1. Sam - January 16, 2011 4:36 PM
This is totally unrealistic. Assuming the aircraft is a medium size airliner like the Boeing 737. Given its wingspan, length, and wing stall speed, the passengers at the front and back of the airplane would experience 75G's of centripetal acceleration. Not only would they be dead, the whole plane would be ripped apart. Even if the plane did not disintegrate, only the 2 to 4 rows of the plane near the center of the plane would experience a low enough acceleration for humans to survive.