How can you prevent/reduce aircraft from crash landings.

Question: How can you prevent/reduce aircraft from crash landings.
- Keywords:
  airplane,
  crash
Asked by anon-74270 on 13 May 2020.
- Katie Sparks answered on 13 May 2020:
  
  There have been huge changes made to aeroplanes over the years with the aim of reducing the number of crashes.
  I don’t think we can ever get rid of that, because it depends on a lot of different things, especially the weather, which can change quickly.
  There are other situations, such as people trying to take over a plane, that we can put things in place for, but you can never fully design this out.
  A lot of aeroplanes now have very complicated computer systems that take care of a lot of the different ways they can be used. They still have a pilot and that pilot still has a lot to do in their job and can override a lot of things.
- Rob Hudd answered on 13 May 2020: last edited 22 May 2020 12:28 pm
  
  When developing a part for aerospace we perform computer simulations, verification tests and validations tests and these include tests to destruction and HALT (Highly Accelerated Life Tests) which subjects the part to a life-time of testing in a short time. Basically, LOTS of testing. All of this gives us great confidence that the part will do what it should.
  The part is then sold to an aircraft manufacturer who will repeat a lot of our tests and perform even more tests to ‘qualify’ the part – meaning it’s suitable for flight.
  This process makes aircraft tremendously safe. On the very rare occasion that there’s a crash or near miss it’s thoroughly investigated to see what can be learnt so it never happens again.

Comments

Juan Carlos commented on 13 May 2020:

There are indeed lots of safety equipment, regulations and training involved. When there is an event, or damage is detected in a component, engineers rapidly study the root cause to improve it and make it safer.
Planes have also very sophisticated computer systems and can do “auto-landings” when weather conditions are poor.
Kevin commented on 13 May 2020:

Safety (often called ‘airworthiness’) is absolutely critical in aircraft design and operation – as there is no ‘hard shoulder’ to pull into if things go wrong. So all aircraft and their systems undergo extensive ground and air tests and trials to conform to international standards – and often have multiple back-up systems built in, and even fail-safe mechanisms to avoid critical incidents. And remember, air travel is still the safest form of transport.
Matthew commented on 13 May 2020:

Engineers take safety incredibly seriously in everything we do. Specifically, there are four areas we are interested in that cover the life-cycle of an aircraft: Design, Build, Maintenance & Operation. We conduct a huge amount of testing over all four of these areas to give us confidence that whatever we are creating is going to work as desired.

To give just a few examples: 1) we use computer simulations to test if our designs will work, then 2) we build these designs in real life and test them again to make sure they match the simulations, 3) we make sure that all the materials we are using are strong enough (more testing), 4) we go to a lot of effort to make sure everyone involved in making or maintaining an aircraft is very well trained, and on top of all of this 5) we build in a lot of redundancy into the aircraft. This means we put a lot of parts in that aren’t required for it to fly, but will come in handy and keep it safe if something goes wrong.

Here’s a cool video of some of the tests aircraft engines go through before being allowed to fly:

Question: How can you prevent/reduce aircraft from crash landings.