How can we make aviation/flying safer?

And this brings up the debate over whether it would be wise to have people capable of flying the plane on board. Let's just say that AF 447 is travelling over the ocean when the computer system makes a fatal error, and the plane enters a deep stall. While it is undeniable that the actual events were the result of pilot error, is it better to have a computer system which might make a mistake from which no one is capable of rescuing, or have a computer with this flaw, plus a human who also has the potential to make mistakes.

As I mentioned, until we can create computers that program themselves, these machines are powered by the knowledge that we, as the systems' designers, have. If the information held at the time is flawed and is programmed into the system, you're setting yourself up for disaster.

Although in another field, apparently a chemical plant that was fully automated very nearly suffered an explosion because when the system was programmed, an error was included that meant the computers used commas instead of decimal points while measuring chemicals.

Parachuting from the typical cruising altitude of airlines with only a parachute would kill everybody. It's too high and too cold and too lacking in oxygen. These aircraft typically fly 3x higher than aircraft that people parachute from.

I would pay more to go on a flight i know is by an experienced captian, by people not overworked, and people well paid, in addition to an aircraft that has been thoroughly checked, as well as an airline that won't even tolerate terror suspects onboard.

what's that?

Case and point. Time and time again, people on planes have been saved, not by the computer, but by the pilots themselves. When the Aloha plane had its roof torn off, its autopilot failed because the explosive decompression buckled the floor and damaged critical electronic wires that fed the AP. Had the pilots not known what to do, a lot more than just one person would have died that day.

Likewise, do you think a computer would have been able to fly a plane with both engines disabled by Canada geese and safely land it in the Hudson? No. The computer wouldn't be able to do anything, as it has been proven multiple times that computers are incapable of handling such a situation.

Perfectly true but the GermanWings and MH370 passengers would have lived if the planes had not had a pilot aboard.

In the last 15 years more people have died because of the presence of pilots than have been saved by their presence.

Think on this railway example. In 2000 following the Hatfield rail crash serious maintenance problems were discovered across the entire rail network. As a result the rail network was virtually shut down for weeks whilst emergency repairs were undertaken. Subsequent work has shown that more people were additionally killed and injured on the roads over that period than if trains had continued to operate over the substandard track.



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And that, my friend, is why you train people. So, more people died on the roads in the interim while they repaired the track. That's a simple correlation. Because no trains are running, more people use the roads. But, as any pilot would tell you, learning to fly commercial jets is nowhere near as comparatively easy as it is to drive. People get complacent on the roads, and that is where they make mistakes. However, if someone on the road makes a mistake, at worst three or four people die. If someone in the air makes a mistake, hundreds of people could die.

That is why you train people.

That is also why you train the person programming the computer. You seem to be missing the point I made about a computer having to be programmed by a human programmer. If that programmer makes a mistake and indirectly causes a plane crash, who's fault is that?

A large scale aircraft on the same scale as the Boeing 747 or the Airbus 380 that was manufactured by Douglas Company in the United States in the 70s or 80s. It rates lower on the safety scale than Boeing, BaE and Airbus.


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They renamed the later versions of DC-10 the MD-11

I've flown on one and I'm still here

I like the design of the DC-10 and MD-11. It's sad that there's not a single one in any museum anywhere...

I like the design of the DC-10 and MD-11. It's sad that there's not a single one in any museum anywhere...

Variants are still in service. Freight versions are still in use commercially and the KC10 is still active with both the US and Dutch air forces.

I really do hope they manage to put at least one in a museum before they're all either in storage or sold for scrap.

Why? It's just another wide body airliner. It doesn't have the popular appeal of the 747, it's not a particularly ground breaking design (3 engined aircraft had been around long before it) and nobody's mourning their loss.

They're also massive, so it would take up a lot of museum space.

Quite a bit of their notability comes from their notoriety, but also from how reliable they eventually became. Furthermore, one particular DC-10-30F owned by FedEx is especially famous for its role in FedEx Flight 705, in which in an attempt to shake off an attempted Hijacking, the pilot pushed the jet well beyond its designed limits and even carried out acrobatic feats with this airliner that you'd only expect smaller aircraft to be capable of doing.

Trijets are quite a rarity as a whole in museums, it seems. The similar L1011 TriStar also only has a handful of examples in museums, for example.

That makes that aircraft worthy of being in a museum, but not because of the type.

I don't really think any airliner should be in a museum, there's just nothing interesting about them, they're glorified buses. The only two exceptions are the B747 and Concorde.

If anything, if there's any other example of the type that will probably find its way into a museum, it'll either be a KC/KDC-10 (as most military heavies usually do end up somewhere once they've finished being used), or the Orbis Flying Hospital - Their old DC-8 airliner hospital is in a museum, and it isn't a far stretch to say that it might be put on display once it's finished its useful life.

But that's my point, they're not in museums because they're airliners, they're in because they became something afterwards and that something is of interest.