Fire Safety

[designrs]

This link is a report of a Cirrus accident on landing. Crash was survivable, fire was not. It is not the first Cirrus to catch fire. Critics blame composite construction, and say that newer aircraft shoud have better safety design. Yet Diamond Aircraft is also compsite and has never had a post cash fire. Reasons in comparison?

http://tinyurl.com/9kod9ht

[zaitcev]

Frankly I am sick of this meme. The only good part is to post in every thread of a Cirrus accident when it does not catch fire and say "neeener neeener".

The best part of the article is that the author does not even know about Diamond's two-spar wing with tanks being located between spars. So yeah no wonder they have fewer fires. Also, compromised endurance.

Whenever there's a discussion of accident rates in Cirrus vs. the rest of GA fleet, there's always a discussion of the hours flown and so on. Cirrii are working airplanes, not hangar queens. So it always ends nowhere. A few months ago, one guy at the Purple board compiled the numbers of all accidents and fatal accidents, by type, then divided them. That removed the hours flown neatly. And? The most dangerous airplane to crash is definitely the classic Mooney. I do not remember exact numbers, unfortunately. Next is V35, then C210, SR22T, then F33 and other conventional tail bonanzas. Diamond is pretty good indeed, but what's interesting, Cirrus is better than fleet average. You are less likely to die in a Cirrus than in a Cessna retract, if you crash. They are, however, closely bunched together, with Mooney and Diamond shooting outside.

Basically yeah... Good for Diamond drivers, I guess, but comparing Cirrus with Diamond is just another disingenious thing that Cirrus fire meme peddlers do.

[MrMorden]

I don't think the question is Cirrus accidents total, but more the incidence of fire when they do have mishaps. I recall somebody doing an analysis on this and finding fire involved in something like a third of Cirrus accidents, versus something like 10% for the rest of the GA fleet.

I'm not saying the Cirrus is a fire trap, just that they do *appear* to have a greater incidence of post-crash fires, and they have caused fatalities in otherwise survivable crashes. I'd be curious to know what's up with that.

[designrs]

Another Cirrus crash last night with post-impact fire. 5 inboard, 4-seat aircraft, 12:30 AM, reported sputtering motor, crash & burn.

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/ ... /Business/

No chute use reported yet, but I wonder, has there ever been a post-chute crash fire in Cirrus?

[toolman]

I am a flight school student but was a professional firefighter/paramedic for 15 years.
Seeing this old thread gave me an opening to introduce myself and hopefully contribute in a positive way.
Nomex and helmets may draw rolled eyes and snickers in most FBOs and on the street but so did seatbelts in automobiles. We now mount small bombs called airbags in cars to get results somewhat approaching wearing helmets while driving due to comfort and social pressure. In 1981 my father, who was also a firefighter and responded to auto accidents, was nearly killed in an ejected driver collision with a snowplow because even he was at the time too cool to wear a seatbelt. Automobiles are now designed with collision in mind and wearing seatbelts is normative, an aircraft being designed to get off of the ground for a reasonable fuel expenditure just can't have the crash and fire safety features that are added to a ground vehicle, especially protection for the fuel tanks.
Nomex flight suit, hood, gloves, and proper boots are the kind of thing, especially if wearing cheap surplus sage green that you can change into right before entering the aircraft and change out of immediately after a flight before anyone sees(or smells) you. I have had to rescue burn victims, they are the most terrible calls I have made, hand and head burns being the most disabling to return to useful work and life. Same with a helmet, probably even more so, just keep it in a backpack until you are inside the airplane, as I believe there is more issue with impact related fatality than fire on takeoff and landing, there is real danger even in a C-172 where most people consider blue jeans and a ball cap the acceptable uniform of the day.
I will admit to some paranoia having had several close calls some with my safety gear taken out of service and one of my engine company firefighters and a shift captain burned and requiring skin grafts while away at a training burn exercise, but thinking clearly a helmet and nomex can make an otherwise fatal or crippling incident into a happily survivable one.
I have met people who perhaps consider wearing safety gear only for over the top paranoid geeks, and especially wearing cheap mil-surplus green kind somehow dishonors the sacrifices, achievements, and kilo-hours of training of military pilots but I am not speaking here about the dorks showing up in Top-Gun costumes to Burger King.
The military, professional sports, and public safety organizations have long gotten past the social barrier to proper safety equipment and now make them mandatory thought many were at first opposed for various comfort, social, and appearance reasons. I hope civilian aviation culture can get past the wanna-be accusations I have heard and let those who wish take precautions without being laughed off of the airfield even if I am opposed to fines and mandatory wear laws for safety equipment not directly related to safely controlling the aircraft or rescue crew safety.
After teaching and working in a field that stresses universal application of the best possible safety training and equipment I hope this slightly off topic outsider input from a FNG can add something useful to the fire safety discussion.

[designrs]

Great comments. Always a trade-off between safety, comfort and social image.

It is interesting to compare to motorcycling. Helmet laws are mandatory in most states. Yet I wonder if helmets really save many lives. The last statistic I read said that in impacts over 30 mph and the helmet isn't going to help much, not to mention injury to other body parts. Most people are OK seeing a biker riding free with no helmet, yet have no problem with the guys that wear special equipment from head to toe.

CULTURE
The macho and tough-guy bikers will not wear anything but jeans and black. The crotch-rocket crowd will not get on unless they are dressed for the race track. Different culture.

HELMETS IN AVIATION
+1 on head injury being a higher risk than fire. I'll never forget as a fairly new student getting my head slammed so hard on the bubble canopy that my headset and sunglasses came off! My instructor took over the flight controls. I learned respect to keep that harness tight and would not mind wearing a helmet flying solo in turbulent air... and would be most greatful to be wearing one in an off-field landing! It wouldn't take much to be knocked-out and unconscious from a head injury.

LAWS
We have enough, thank you!
Logic over media sensationalism please.

WEIGH YOUR ODDS
Fire risk? Head injury risk? Comfort?
Make choices based on activity, environment and risk.

IMAGE AND ACCEPTANCE
I concur with toolman, safety equipment "not for show" should be accepted. If a guy wants to wear a modest helmet and flight suit in his 172 so be it. Keep it modest and if anyone doesn't like it it's their problem.

[rk911]

remember the days when pro hockey players wouldn't wear helmets? cultural changes occur slowly. i wear a ball cap most of the time while flying. my flight instructor never warned me or mentioned that the button on top of the hat could really cause some damage. I've since changed to a non-button cap. I like the idea of a helmet but wonder how to fit the headset over/under it???

[designrs]

I still think its dory and a bit odd seeing kids wearing bicycle helmets (most without the chin strap fastened). Would I want my kids to wear helmets? Not necessarily. It would depend on their environment and activity.

[designrs]

INCONSPICUOUS SAFETY
Quite a bit of safety can be added by choosing clothing and materials carefully. No one will be ridiculed for wearing gloves, non-polyester materials, a normal leather jacket, and whatever they want as undergarments.

What is best to wear inconspicously to increase safety?

[dstclair]

I still think its dory and a bit odd seeing kids wearing bicycle helmets (most without the chin strap fastened). Would I want my kids to wear helmets? Not necessarily. It would depend on their environment and activity.

:thread drift: I have to STRONGLY disagree here on kids wearing helmets. Accidents are not planned and, especially with inexperienced riders, occur at any speed. My 10 year old niece was riding her bike in the driveway, just going around in a circle. The tire of her bike went slightly off the pavement and caught slightly when she turned aggressively to return to the driveway. She was thrown OTB and landed headfirst on a garden paving stone. She was wearing a helmet that split in two. She was uninjured but would not be here today if not for the helmet.

Case 2. I'm an avid cyclist, riding thousands of miles a year and am pretty good at it. There isn't a year that goes by that I don't lay it down due to wet pavement, a sandy spot, failure to click out my pedals or just plain old pilot error. For example, a little over a year ago I was riding in my neighborhood and slowing down for a stop sign. A truck going the opposite direction turned left to go into a side street and broadsided me and sent me 10 feet or so in the air.

In short, no way to state when it is safe not to wear a helmet.

: thread drift over:

[drseti]

What is best to wear inconspicously to increase safety?

For us male aviators, a cast iron jockstrap, I should think.

[toolman]

Like I said above I am a low hour noob, until now other than a taste here and there the dream of flying has been a put off until when I have more money and time.
That said it would irritate me to see a civilian run around in branded fire-ems service gear.

If a person has the means there is plenty of functional nomex stuff made in other colors but this is not golf, a kid in flight school or towing banners toward his commercial shouldn be admired as acting in a professional manner for wearing something that could save his life or prevent horrible disability even if it is a castoff from a naval aviator who incidentally this kid gets taxed to equip. The benefit to the military surplus stuff is it is tested and designed for no gap flame protection in an aircraft environment, best of all it is dirt cheap.
I will say that while teaching classes in a college fire science program I got to play with different cloth flammability, nothing you can buy at a store even comes close to the protective ability of nomex, it only discolors the cloth dye where wool, cotton, and especially synthetics have burned completely away. A bit off topic, a flight jacket is more commonly accepted fashion at airfields, unfortunately many are 100% nylon copies of the excellent flame and abrasion resistant nomex models, they are nearly equivalent to wearing a shrink wrap jacket sprayed with kerosene as far as fire hazard is concerned.

A helmet is IMHO more important but burns are so terrible that anyone who has seen a serious case, especially a few months later, will have a bit of reasonable phobia. Brain damage is mostly drooling nursing home care, full veggie, or fatal; but mostly out of the public eye post injury and certainly not so cosmetically shocking or devastatingly painful.

To helmets I have seen a number of dead cyclists or ones who died within a few hours thanks almost entirely to not wearing a helmet, especially bad on horses where it is not cool for adults to wear helmets and the fall is 10 ft, where the helmet wearers have at most a broken collar bone or wrist. In NYC most three-quarters of fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury, nearly all bicyclists who died (97%) were not wearing a helmet, helmet use among those bicyclists with serious injuries was low (13%), but it was even lower among bicyclists killed (3%). http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/p ... report.pdf Having had to work with accident statistics I have to pass on the rule that not all correlation is causation (ie perhaps only the most reckless cyclists also refuse bike helmets) but still those are some very interesting numbers.

I don't have standing to address aviator fashion but have had to do some public safety PR. As a culture every newsworthy serious injury and especially fatality hurts the reputation and freedom of general and experimental aviation, it also encourages more regulation and pressure to close small suburban airfields. A story about a spectacular walk-away where responsible pilots and passengers used protective clothing and equipment successfully gives the impression of responsible users of the public airspace and helps mitigate the negative impression from an accident in the eyes of the non-flying public even if that gear is surplus sage green. The story of Capt Sully landing in the Hudson River even though most would call it a crash actually increased the public trust in commercial aviation because he used in this case his training and experience to turn a nearly tragic situation into a successful 100% rescue.

I imagine the worst irritation happens when an experienced pilot sees some idiot in public wearing a pilot costume making GA pilots all look like wannabees. Most civilians could care less that somebody is wearing what seems to be mechanics coveralls in burger king where only a dork would wear their nomex anyways. This is about wearing life saving equipment to mitigate risk in the cockpit not about playing big boy Halloween all year 'round. I think we all learned to change into appropriate clothing before and after gym class, I have never walked in to a Starbucks wearing fire helmet or even a bicycle helmet when ordering coffee.

[toolman]

What is best to wear inconspicously to increase safety?

Like I said above, I don't know of any fabric other than nomex or kevlar that have the flame resistant properties to make a difference, leather is better than natural fiber but it is pretty expensive for full grain and even then fire resistance varies.
A quick look on ebay shows desert khaki nomex aircrew trousers for a good deal as well as white nomex long underwear alongside miles of sage green and camo. One good stealthy combo I can see now is combat boots, a cheap surplus CWU-36 nomex jacket and those khaki "trouser aircrew combat tan", add a firefighters nomex hood and aircrew gloves tucked into the jacket once inside the aircraft and you have something that doesn't look too goofy in the FBO but gives real coverage. There is also nomex firefighter day uniform and wildland gear some of which might be mixed in but they both look too much like their intended uniform purpose. Another thing I see in all wrong sizes is the Coast Guard blue flight suit, you can pretend disco is back.

To be considered is wearing cotton or far worse flammable synthetics means even if wearing hot uncomfortable nomex long underwear you still have a layer of fuel on top that is not easily removed after egress from the aircraft.

Most important to protect are hands and face, they are extremely hard to repair. Thought after a little objective thought you realize that anyone probably would pay nearly any price after the fact to erase even a 5% skin area burn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_%28i ... #Prognosis

Worth serious consideration is that inhalation injury(inhaling superheated gases burning the airway) is even a greater threat than external burns, this is what kills most DOA fire fatalities.

There is a reason structural and wildland firefighters as well as military aviators go for as close to 100% protective skin coverage, head impact protection, and airway protection as possible, these are what kills the most and are also most easily preventable. This high level of protection is hard to disguise.

[toolman]

I've since changed to a non-button cap. I like the idea of a helmet but wonder how to fit the headset over/under it???

My first time up I had the button/headset collision, a pliers on top and a sidecutters or needle nose on the tack inside makes it easy to twist and remove leaving a nicer looking cap anyways. What is that nub for anyways, it used to terrorize me when spelunking as a kid.
I think I will stalk the surplus stores for a heli or tank crew helmet and get the 300ohm conversion parts, some flame resistant paint will fix the olive color. If I keep flying a new gentex seems reasonable. This guy has 300ohm parts cheap from ANR conversions http://www.anr-headsets.com/ just use the mic from your headset.
I don't know of a helmet that you can use with an intact headset thought in the fire engines we used David Clarks with an intercom; the headsets had a nylon strap on top and the metal headband spring on the back, I think these worked with fire helmets though it has been years now.

BTW great discussion, the 'net can be a jungle.

[Jack Tyler]

This reminds me of a related discussion on a topic with less serious consequences: flight suits. Much commentary about looking like a 'poser' but very little rationale offered for not wearing one. Are they practical? You only have to look at my shorts (I fly a fair bit in Florida) and pants (I fly elsewhere also) to see they are. They're made in many cloth weights, of many materials, to many price points - it would seem we would see at least a few on the flightline each time we fly. But of course we don't. As pilots, I guess we're still in denial like Gordy Howe and that hockey face mask.