How not to survive:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/06/23/tofino-plane-crash.html

"Drunken passengers aboard a floatplane that crashed near Tofino, B.C. last year likely interfered with the pilot during the short flight, causing him to lose control, according to a report released on Wednesday.

The report said it was possible that one of the passengers seated behind the pilot kicked the pilot's seat forward and held it there. This could have pushed the pilot into the instrument panel and the controls forward, inducing a dive.

"It is likely that passenger interference caused the pilot to lose control of the aircraft whereupon it descended in a steep nose-down attitude until it struck the water," the report said.

The report also said the passengers' may not have recognized the seriousness of the situation because of their level of intoxication and didn't stop interfering with the pilot in time for him to regain control of the aircraft before impact."

I am just speechless. Darwin Awards doesn't cover this one. If the Transportation Safety Board conclusions are correct, it's essentially a multiple homicide. Fuelled by utter, incomprehensible stupidity on the part of people who couldn't hold their liquor and therefore should not drink, but did so anyway.

Design of pilot seat now a concern.

As long as they allow unrestrained drunks on board there isn't much a pilot in a small plane can do if a passenger acts up. Short of fitting each passenger with a pain collar, buxom drill thralls with big hair and wearing silver outfits are extra, I'm not sure there is any easy answer.

A blast from the past, A nice picture of those pain collars. And, entirely incidentally, Angelique Pettyjohn as drill thrall Shahna, who made quite an impression in my youth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gamesters_of_Triskelion

I suspect that the practical answer is empowering the pilots to decline inebriated passengers without the exclusion being considered a violation of any agreement or contract.

The only other alternative to come to mind is that the dunks might be hog tied, or stuffed in a sack, and carried as cargo. Perhaps lashed to one of the floats.

Keep in mind that the report is hypothesizing by the investigators. There is no 100% proof of what actually occurred and caused the aircraft to crash as the keywords in the report are: "What was happening in the cabin moments before the pilot lost control cannot be accurately determined"

Here is the link to the official report.

Alcohol is the great randomizer isn't it. Keep drunks distanced from cockpits. In small cockpits, just keep them off the plane. That's a fail here.

And hate to say it, but is the next headline a lawsuit by the deceased families, against Cessna for design failure on the cockpit seat, for not having a locking mechanism? The law can be cruel.

A closer look at this shows that he flight was between two
indian reservations,
the passengers where young drunken indians;
empty beer cans where found inside the wreck;
the flight time would have been 6 (!!) minutes;
two of them where not weraing seat belts.

Obviously, what's needed here is a secure barrier door between the cockpit and the passenger compartment.































I kid, I kid!

Not sure pointing out the ethnicity of these individuals benefits the analysis of their poor decision making.

Pete

It should be known what ethnic group was involved in that crash
because the non-indian Canadian taxpayer not only had to pay for the charter, but also for the recovery and investigation.

It certainly isn't critical; I have been on lots of operations where the inebriated (as determined by their posthumous BACs) of all ethnicities came to an untimely end. The taxpayers did have to pay whatever costs were involved.

I really don't understand your post, unless you are simply trying to be as negative as possible.