Intentional crash for TV documentary

[Richard]

England's Channel 4, Nat Geo, and Germany's ProSieben TV station are teaming up to intentionally crash a widebody airliner. Two pilots will take the jet up next year, fly it out over a vast, empty desert, set it on course, and bail out by parachute.

The plane will be loaded with cameras and sensors, as well as crash test dummies positioned throughout the aircraft. The crash site will be filmed from every possible angle, a Channel 4 spokesman said.

It is speculated the plane will be a B-747 or a 300 series Airbus.

Geoff Deehan, producer at UK independant DragonFly Studios, i making the documentar for Channel 4. The working title of the documentary is "Plane Crash".

 

[Skip Miller]

Sounds a bit like the NASA crash of a Boeing 720 to determine the effectiveness of flashproof fuel. The test worked, the fuel proved to be.... flammible!

-Skip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg1Bo-s6PmA&feature=related

 

[Richard]

The part I left out was that apparently the predictive crash modeling they use is incomplete. Basically, the cost of full scale crashes is understandably prohibitively high so they use select bits and pieces to extrapolate the effects of a crash. This is the basis of current modeling and it was proven woefully insufficient when a BA 777 crashed at Heathrow on 17JAN 2008.


But yeah, I was thinking of the NASA series of full scale destructive testing when I learned of this upcoming documentary. I hope it is made. I also hope they don't get all buggy and sensationialize it to a gullible public.