As an Assistant Director of Operations at Tampa International Airport, I have a unique opportunity to work with emergency response planning along with all the responsibility of maintaining FAA airport certification requirements. Its challenging work at times and when things get busy, they really get busy.
My emergency response planning includes keeping our manual updated and developing emergency response training exercises. Every 3 years we do a full scale mass casualty exercise that requires an enormous amount of planning with many outside agencies along with many departments within the airport.
With planning our table top exercise coming up next month, I was fortunate enough to recieve some detailed pictures of a real aircraft disaster. In this real accident an aircraft attempted to land during a storm and ended up hydroplaning off the end of the runway, breaking into 3 sections and bursting into a fireball. Amazingly enough, many passengers survived this crash. After reviewing the pictures of the passenger cabin and looking at the damage, it made me think about how effective car seats are during an aircraft accident. Considering the airplane was likely traveling well over 150mph when it slid off the runway, much faster than your typical automobile crash, it seems to me there's not a car seat in the world that could support that kind of impact.
I've attached a picture from this accident showing what was left of the passenger cabin. I've studied many accident reports and photos over the last several years in my efforts to recreate accidents that would provide meaningful training experiences and nothing stands out more to me than the child who survived another disasterous crash similar to this one because he was cradled on his parent's lap and not left to be catapulted out of control in their own seat!
Of course this is just all my opinion and I'll leave you with the photo to help you decide!
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