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How To Crash A Plane

NASA Flies A Plane Into The Ground, For Safety?

If you were fortunate enough to survive a plane crash you would hope that your Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) would be sturdy enough to follow suit.

The ELT is a distress beacon designed to send off a signal upon impact to local rescue crews, and it is precisely the situation when this doesn't occur that NASA is trying to remedy.

In short, NASA are flipping planes for your safety.

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In the trial tests, a Cessna 172 (the world's most popular airframe) was sacrificed for NASA to work out why some ELT's fail.

Cessna 172 variants such as the T-41 Mescalero are still used in militaries around the world, including the US Air Force for training purposes, despite the aircraft being introduced 60 years ago.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre simulated a severe but survivable plane accident to test five emergency locator transmitters (ELTs) on board.

The video below shows the last of three crash tests of three different Cessna 172 aircraft. Each of the three tests simulated different, but common, crash conditions.

Here's a moment from one of the earlier crash simulations:

According to some results, just one of the four devices transmitted within 50 seconds of the crash, although the other three did send an emergency signal a short time after the event.

NASA will now determine why some of the ELTs performed that way.

Below is the fourth and final safety demonstration in full: