The "seat belt" indicator light should actually be changed to "dont get up and walk around"
I've seen aftermath videos and photos, I'm not taking my chances
The terrible UX doesn't help. There is a seatbelt icon on the sign, they announce it as "fasten seatbelt sign", which makes it sound like when it is off you don't have to have it fastened. But it really should be "remain seated" sign.
Also some people don't wear seatbelts in cars as some idiotic macho thing. I assume there is no helping those.
I think having a cable flying around would actually be dangerous in itself. Wouldn’t want to get it caught around your neck…
Most people in the backseats are very used to use their seatbelts, even more so in the front.
Intercity buses also have mandatory seatbelts.
I have noticed that it does seem to have gotten more common to just leave them on for the duration of the flight, in the last couple of decades.
That being said having the plane lose instruments from the turbulence is a major problem that needs to be fixed
Edit: Rereading the article I did notice a passenger comment about the plane going in a nosedive, which would match the scenarios the others below me have replied with that dont involve turbulence. Always thought the airframe couldn't survive actively maneuvering at such extremes on big jets like that, guess I was wrong.
Injuries from first crashing headfirst into the ceiling and then out of control falling back into your chair is a given when you have hundreds of passengers on board.
Especially on a Boeing which does not limit the flight envelope like an Airbus does.
That's how we can get the zero-G flights - by precisely flying the parabola.
>it came back all of the sudden
top quality writing there..
> Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner
(Boeing, but not the 737 Max that has been in the headlines the past few years)
Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2024/3/11/50-people-injur...
For example, would a pilot be able to manually fly the airplane and cause this kind of incident? Or would the control surfaces of the plane be able to cause this assuming that any safety limits that restrict movement were not working?
EDIT: I was also thinking about "well why should the airplane allow the pilot for such movements then?". And I think a good analogy is the brakes in your car - they do allow for maximum breaking, yet when was the last time you actually pushed it to the max?
(And note that this is 100% speculation, I just wanted to highlight that the pilot can cause such negative acceleration on their own)
Unless the aircraft was flying in a degraded state, these limits are supposed to prevent the aircraft from suffering damage during flight.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_data_inertial_reference_un...
As a parent and car pilot I used my brake once to teach my children the necessity of wearing seatbelts. You actually do not need to break hard to let them fly around I noticed.
https://www.cnn.com/2012/04/17/travel/canada-disoriented-pil...
... as to _how_ bright it can be - I was once in an area with dark skies, setting up my telescope just before sunset. After dark, I was taking in the beauty of the Cigar Galaxy and then looked up and behind from the scope. My eyes were assaulted by a bright light on the top of the hill behind, and I was cursing the idiot who had turned that light on, when I realized that it was Jupiter, freshly risen above the hill. Jupiter is not as bright as Venus.
On that night, Venus, had it been visible, would've been blindingly brilliant. Flying 10 Km above the ground, with no light pollution, I'm not surprised that the Pilot mistook Venus for an aircraft headlight.
Edit: clarity
If you have to get up, keep a hand on something. An airliner cannot pull serious negative gs. You aren't going to be "pinned" to the ceiling. But you should hold to something solid just in case things get a little floaty for a few seconds. Most longtime fliers have witnessed their drinks lift of their trays. The floating doesn't hurt. The issue is when things stop floating and come crashing down.
12 injured into the ceiling in this flight, kind of looks like a check of who was and wasn't wearing the belt
"Boeing: too big to be grounded"
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azimuthal_equidistant_projecti...