Small planes, what to wear for safety?

I have the the sense that there are a lot of small mishaps
and serious accidents. Does anyone have some info that
would help guide discussion. Causes: weather, pilot error,
mechanical failure.

What types of injuries a common? Trauma, drowning, hypothermia,
burns.

Do any pilots wear Nomex? Or any protective gear?

Would a chest protector or helmet do any good?

Parachute?

When I fly I make a point of wearing comfortable but sturdy clothing. Long sleeve shirts and long pants in a fire resistant fiber like cotton or wool. Sturdy leather footwear(usually boots). A light jacket with a fold-away hood, leather gloves, ear plugs, and a wool watch cap in stuffed the pocket. Ear plugs can make sleeping on the plane, or terminal, much more comfortable. The watch cap pulled over the eyes helps also.

Even if nothing major happens clothes you can walk/jog a good distance and lounge in comfortably makes a difference. Airports, and many airliners are kept far to cold for my tastes so the jacket is handy. It isn't uncommon to have the smaller planes diverted to out of the way airports where you may have to walk a good part of a mile, sometimes in miserable weather and through standing water, to get to the terminal.

The ladies in skirts, high heels with open toes can have a time of it. And that is just getting to and from the plane. I hate to think what a deficit they would be dealing with in the event of a landing that overshot into a swamp or icy water.

I would avoid rayon because it catches fire readily. Many other man made fibers melt. If they melt onto skin they can make burns far worse. Synthetic underwear, unless it is Nomex or similar, can put the boys at risk.

A lot depends on where your flying. The places I'm likely to fly are all pretty settled so any crash or accident will most likely be seeing rescuers in a short time. Flying into the arctic tundra or the Amazon rain forest I would be more concerned with long-term survival.

As understand it, the most common cause of small plane crashes is running out of fuel - pick a good pilot.

For what it's worth - when flying in helicopters, I was required to wear a Nomex flight suit and helmet. When flying fixed wing, nothing special was required. Appropriate clothing and good walking shoes amke a lot of sense.

As far a safty gear I have to agree with Desperado about the parchute. Though I should add that I have never sky dived nor used a parachute, so that may be more harm than good.

I did live in Alaska (didn't grow up there) I was on a Volenteer SAR team. My bags were always packed with gear that you would NEVER get on a plane (even more so post 9-11). But if you are flying ins small aircraft I would sugest the following

PSK (keep this one light and be aware of flair and matches issues. there is a TSA aproved butain lighter capsual for flying)

Small light AX
Saw

Packing synthetic clothing (dont' wear it, see above)

Also I would not be afraid to polightly ask if they have necessary safty gear. and take a moment to know where that gear is.

But that is just my thought

As long as you remember to deploy the 'chute, everything else "SHOULD" be okay. If not, your odds have changed very little in the long run.....

Dress for the night or two of waiting for rescue after treating injuries. Consider how you'd dress if you knew you'd be pinned in your seat that long.

While a parachute sounds like a good idea, it is best applied to inflight fire or structural failure situations which aren't very typical. I suppose you could make the case for them with fuel exhaustion too but.... it would be hard to jettison a pretty good glider at high enough altitude for the 'chute to be useful.

Nomex flight suit including gloves and helmet would be of great comfort sometimes but ultimately folks would make fun of you when you climbed into your Cessna 172 dressed that way. Even CAP isn't wearing nomex or helmets for their missions.

Unfortunately, most of the light aircraft fleet isn't very crashworthy from the standpoint of restraints and crushable structure. Primary reason is that most lightplanes are really OLD. Shoulder harnesses, for example, aren't universal. Then again, it's hard to make something light enough to fly if it needs to be crashworthy for 150mph impacts.

You can look over the many crashes over the years and get a sense of errors that lead to disaster here:
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/month.asp

An awful lot of the problems amount to stupid pilot tricks or known traps that keep catching pilots since the 1920's.

Just watched a YouTube last night of a Bonanza that flew into clouds in a pass and the videographer riding in the backseat of the plane caught the flash of greenery thru the windshield as the plane's right wing touched bushes on a hillside parallel to their flight path as they emerged from a cloud. They survived and the plane flew to the airport where the wing damage was shown. Classic stupid pilot trick which isn't always survived......

I always point out the folks in the airport terminal dressed in tank tops, shorts and flip flops, and tell my passengers, "Would you want to run through burning jet fuel wearing that?"

They usually understand proper dress after I point that out.

Bump to Art.

There's really nothing you can wear or have to make a crash landing in a Cessna survivable. As noted from this post about the crash in Alaska that killed the passenger and seriously injured the pilot.

While I agree with Art completely, I wouldn't try to wear too much, especially if you were traversing water. All those clothes would weigh you down in the event of a splashdown.

So I guess just dress comfortably and appropriately for the terrain you're going over and pray you survive the initial crash.

Nomex doesn't need to look like military issue. Massif markets a very good line of Nomex clothing. I have a lot of their fleece outerwear and more than a couple pieces of their hotjohns underwear. Good stuff.

I'm not affiliated with Massif, just a customer.