The animation in the tweet at the end of the article is something. Based on that, the deceleration looked remarkably fast. I imagine that was quite the ride for the folks in the Delta jet.
Something I realized growing up, and perhaps this is a bias for others too: I always perceived of airline accidents as being crashes where everyone dies. Hence all the conspiracy silliness of “they just want to know what seat you were in to identify the body.”
But my goodness there’s so many ways to be badly hurt without a big crash.
In a way this feels akin to the highway bias: highways are far safer than city streets but a lot of people perceive them as being so dangerous.
I remember an incident involving a private jet about a decade ago. The jet was at cruising altitude when suddenly it hit an air pocket and precipitously lost altitude. This being a private jet the occupants (some Greek businessmen) were drinking champagne or whatever, fact is they weren't wearing their seatbelts. A few of them died right on the spot as the result of them violently hitting the plane's roof.
The carriers don't make this easy: they have conflicting rules on carseats for in-cabin use, especially if you're flying between the US and Europe, both of which have stringent carseat regulations, but absolutely no models that are approved for use in both. In practice, United allowed the EU carseat (used, bought specifically for the trip) and Lufthansa allowed a US carseat (more compact, bought for car use in the US), but both of their sites stated that they only allowed carseated approved by the airlines' local authorities: NHTSA (United) or TÜV (Lufthansa).
In case anyone is curious, this source does claim that "lap infants" are more likely to be injured than other passengers. But the article defines "lap infant" as anyone under 2 years old, regardless of whether they were in fact in someone's lap. (In particular, some of these "lap infants" fell from the cot!)
Potentially worth quoting as well: "Scalding burns from hot beverages or soups spilled over a child during hot meal service were the most commonly identified mechanism of injury".
> For the purpose of this study, the term in-flight injury was used to denote medical events caused by injuries (ie, trauma or burns) that occurred or manifested themselves during flight. Lap infants were defined as passengers younger than 24 months, the age until which a child is allowed to travel while sharing a seat with an adult passenger.
If you're seated in an airplane please make sure you've got your seatbelt on. You can have it a bit loose and it'll still protect you from this sort of nonsense much better than no seatbelt at all.
Many passengers (including me) instinctively put their hands on the seat in front to steady themselves. You could easily slide around if the seat belt were loose.
It was it worst for children whose legs didn't reach the floor, but there were none seated near me.
Good video of the test conditions for a 747-8 here https://youtube.com/watch?v=qc_v6tXsv6g
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qew09gao3S8
In short, the whole brake assembly catches fire- and continues to operate.
I do think it even though it’s a better brake mechanism video it’s not quite as visually impressive as watching a 747-8 just about to nose up suddenly nosing down as it slams on the brakes and they come to a stop in a dissipating cloud of smoking revealing the red hot brakes glowing in the wheels.
[1] https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2011/february/0...
> Captain Mark Radloff was thus faced with an almost unprecedented situation: having already accelerated well past V1, he suddenly realized that his airplane would not become airborne. At that point he faced a choice — keep trying to force it into the air and risk failing, running off the runway at well beyond takeoff speed, or try to stop, and guarantee a lower-speed overrun?
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/lesser-of-two-evils-the-...
Basically you'd be unlikely to get the airplane to stop before the end of the runway because brakes are not designed to handle breaking at such speed (keep in mind that an airplane lands at a slower speed than it takes off thanks to the flaps).
It meets these constraints:
1. Low enough such that if you try to stop from that speed you will stop before the end of the runway
2. High enough such that if you have an engine failure at that speed, you will make it airborne on the other engine before the end of the runway
3. Not higher than rotation speed (you can't decide to abort after pitching the nose up and getting the aircraft airborne)
4. Not lower then minimum control speed (you can't keep directional control in case of an engine failure below minimum control speed, so your only option is to abort)
If there is no speed that meets all conditions, then your runway is too short and you can't go. Reducing weight helps, since you'll accelerate faster, stop easier, and take-off at a lower speed. So that's usually the solution if your runway isn't long enough.
Constraint 1 is why you're committed to takeoff above V1. If you would try to stop above V1 there is no guarantee that you'll stop before the end of the runway. While you are guaranteed to be able to take-off above that speed, even after an engine failure. So you take the problem into the air, run checks, and return.
There aren’t a ton of reasons one might think that but a few come to mind like total engine failure or lack of elevator control or similar.
This was the case with Ameristar Charters 9363, which aborted after V1:
> [T]he jammed elevator could only be detected once aerodynamic forces came into play — something which would only happen once the plane was already speeding down the runway. The NTSB was forced to come to an incredible conclusion: that there was no way for the pilots to have detected the problem until they attempted to rotate for takeoff.
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/lesser-of-two-evils-the-...
But it is technically possible to take a child on a plane in a car seat, if you can find a suitable plane, suitable car seat, and suitable child.
People really don't like it when you do that, by the way.
I never found out the reason. I thought they would have to report it and I could read it in av herald.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster