What would victims of a plane crash experience?

Rapid deceleration.

common wrote:

Rapid deceleration.

Followed by rapid acceleration for much of your body as it evaporated.

The AP reported last week that they've recovered 400-600 body parts from the recent crash, not a single intact body. So yeah, at least you'd go quick.

In a split second all that is behind you smashes you flat, and all that was behind you in each row of seats smashes everything in front of them flat. At the same time all of the jet fuel instantly expands in volume by a factor of 1443x. 1 gallon of liquid jet fuel becomes 1443 gallons of CO2 gas.

For people at the very back, wouldn't the rows in front act as a kind of air bag?

saw bourne do it wrote:

For people at the very back, wouldn't the rows in front act as a kind of air bag?

There's nothing that would cushion decelerating from 450mph to zero in a tenth of a second. It's like jumping out of a plane without a chute and landing on water, it's as good as concrete at terminal velocity. And with an airplane, you can triple that.

That's got to hurt.

This is one of those threads that I don't really want to think about too hard.

So is the consensus that it would be quick and painless?

Dolomite wrote:

So is the consensus that it would be quick and painless?

Yes. But the time before you crash when you get to think about what's coming would feel like an eternity. That's why I'd grab my seat cushion, pop the emergency door and bail. Chances of survival go from zero to 0.1%.

What gripes me is the guy had no creativity at all. I mean why not do a flip. The ground control would have been..like the plane is doing flips! What a boring way to go slow down into a wall.

whats the last thing to go through your mind during a plane crash?

All he did was tell the autopilot to fly down to 100m altitude. Why didn't autopilot check the map and say, nope, not gonna do that in mountains. In this age of computer-controlled airplanes that would be a simple safeguard.

If my pilot is gonna deliberately crash my plane, at least he should have to switch it to manual control. Not sit there reading a magazine and eating a hamburger as it crashes automatically.

Bad Wigins wrote:

All he did was tell the autopilot to fly down to 100m altitude. Why didn't autopilot check the map and say, nope, not gonna do that in mountains. In this age of computer-controlled airplanes that would be a simple safeguard.

If my pilot is gonna deliberately crash my plane, at least he should have to switch it to manual control. Not sit there reading a magazine and eating a hamburger as it crashes automatically.

Good point one would think some type of auto pilot lockout or take over would be possible. What do I know though. I wonder what the copilot plan B was. He had to wonder about them getting through the door.

Bad Wigins wrote:

All he did was tell the autopilot to fly down to 100m altitude. Why didn't autopilot check the map and say, nope, not gonna do that in mountains. In this age of computer-controlled airplanes that would be a simple safeguard.

If my pilot is gonna deliberately crash my plane, at least he should have to switch it to manual control. Not sit there reading a magazine and eating a hamburger as it crashes automatically.

The thought of having a pilot locked out of control of an airplane scares me more than a pilot deliberately crashing a plane.

Can't they put the pot in the cockpit? Might be stinky but pilot stays inside the cockpit. Guess the copilot would have had another plan for that though.

I also wonder why they don't include video in the flight data recorder as well as audio. Then they could see what the copilot was doing.

I was told that before Swissair Flight 111 went down, the pilots had retreated from the smoke filled cockpit and were standing in First Class. At that point the passengers must have had some idea about what was going to happen next.

Cratman wrote:

What gripes me is the guy had no creativity at all. I mean why not do a flip. The ground control would have been..like the plane is doing flips! What a boring way to go slow down into a wall.

It is good to know there are other sick minds that also thought this. TheAirBus probably can't do a flip, or maybe if you try some extremely stupid move like that the auto pilot takes over. Maybe a full throttle nose dive?