Inventor designs airplane cabins that could detach in case of emergency

A Russian inventor has spent the past three years trying to design a safer airplane and, a thousand days later, Tatarenko Vladimir Nikolaevich has finally revealed his idea. In a YouTube video, Nikolaevich illustrates his concept for a plane with a detachable cabin that could be separated from the aircraft in case of an emergency. Under normal circumstances, the cabin would be otherwise unremarkable, with a passenger seating area and a cargo hold for luggage, but in a crisis, it could be ejected at any point of the flight — takeoff, cruising or landing — and presumably allow the passengers to float to safety.

We're saying 'float' because the cabin itself would be equipped with parachutes that would let it land softly (we'd hope) on land or in water. The underside of the cabin would also have self-inflating bumpers, to either cushion its landing or to allow it to stay buoyant in the water.

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It's an interesting concept, I guess, but it has already attracted its share of armchair critics. According to The Independent, some have questioned whether allowing it to fall to the earth is actually any safer, considering the obstacles, buildings or other aircraft it could encounter, while others wonder why the pilots' safety wouldn't be taken into consideration, too — which is a question you might ask yourself while watching the nose of the plane burst into flames just behind the gentle landing of the cabin.

Nikolaevich conducted a survey to determine whether air travelers would pay for this safety feature and, according to his research, 95% of those asked would be willing to fork over a few extra dollars (although he did not disclose his sample size or any other parts of his methodology).

In November, Airbus filed a patent for a detachable airplane cabin, not for safety but to speed up the boarding process. This pod-style concept would allow passengers on an arriving flight to deplane from one cabin, while the departing passengers boarded in a second cabin at the same time. When the flight was ready to leave, the second cabin would be secured in place and the plane could take off.

Both designs seem equally unlikely to ever get beyond the concept stage, but it's always nice to see ideas that are about passenger safety and convenience, instead of seeing how many seats can get Tetris-ed into economy class.