Engineers have revealed a radical new way to save plane passengers in the event of an emergency.
The design shows an aircraft with a detachable cabin that releases in emergency situations.
During take-off, landing or flight, the redesigned cabin detaches from the plane and safely lands on the ground or water– saving everyone’s lives on board.
‘Surviving in a plane crash is possible,’ Vladimir Tatarenko, aviation engineer, told LiveLeak.
‘While aircraft engineers all over the world are trying to make planes safer, they can do nothing about the human factor.’
Tatarenko is that mastermind behind the design and has been working on this project for the past three years, according to Independent.
Parachutes are attached to the roof of the cabin that are instantly released when the cabin is detached from the plane.
There are also rubber tubes that inflate to cushion the impact to the ground or water, and the inflatable devices seem strong enough to keep the cabin afloat.
‘The existing technology of using of Kevlar and carbon composites for fuselage, wings, flaps, spoilers, ailerons, tail will be used during the design,’ Tatarenko explained.
‘It allows to partly compensate the weight of parachute system.’
The design includes a storage space that holds passengers’ luggage underneath the cabin, so there won’t be any lost luggage during the flight if it has to detach.
Independent explained viewers of the demonstration video have mixed reactions to the innovation
Some are all for the cutting-edge design, while others are skeptical and feel it’s impractical.
A few reservations pertain to the potential impact on the rest of the plane, the possibility of the detached cabin smashing into mountains or buildings and the escape plan for the pilots.
One person commented: ‘Of the millions of flights a year, less than 500 people die worldwide a year from plane crashes.’
NUMBERS SHOW IT’S STILL SAFER TO FLY
You have a greater chance of dying in an automobile accident, which is one in 5,000.
There are 12.25 fatalities per million flight deaths.
A plane crashes one out of 1.2 million flights.
There is a 24% survival rate of passengers on a fatal crash.
There were 111 plane crashes in 2014, which went down from 138 in 2013.
‘It Seems not terribly cost effective’
While another had concerns too: ‘This whole concept dramatically weakens the airframe because now you have joints and fittings to connect a fuselage and a body together where once you had a whole fuselage to reinforce the airframe.’
However, a questionnaire conducted by the inventor found that 95% of people would be willing to buy a more expensive ticket in order to use such a safety system.
This isn’t the first design the Ukrainian engineer has produced.
Last year, Tatarenko received patents for an invention with an escape capsule system that would rescue passengers on board.