Sydney: A former RAF pilot has said that installing rear-facing seats in aircrafts will provide better support for the back, neck and head in the event of sudden deceleration.
David Learmount, operations and safety editor at the aviation news website flightGlobal.com and flight instructor, said that a rear-facing seats was safer in a plane crash, but he warned that airlines will not support such changes due to costs and customer preference, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
He said that lots of research has been done into and the RAF has rear-facing seats on its transport aircraft as it is safer.
Research into seat design includes a 1952 report by Naval Aviation News that suggests passengers in transport planes were ten times likelier to survive in a backward facing seat.
A 1983 paper entitled `Impact Protection in Air Transport Passenger Seat Design` by Richard Snyder, a scientist at the University of Michigan, concluded that the seated occupant can tolerate higher crash forces when they are oriented in the rearward-facing position.
ANI
