At some point you have to look at the cost/benfit as it relates to probability of complete engine failure.

GE says no double engine failure in 20 years. How many flights through bird air space per day is that?

How much fuel is expended per engine per take-off/landing?

How much additional fuel would be expended to address the desire for perfect bird strike safety?

How much does fuel cost, on average, over 20 years?

How much to retrofit each engine?

How much would that fuel cost + retrofit affect ticket price?

Sum all of those.

Subtract from ....
How much is the loss from act-of-god lawsuits per bird collision?

I'll bet the loss (negative value of that subtraction) is in the multiple tens of millions. Maybe hundreds of millions.

I agree. Aviation safety is a probability game. Usually fatalities require more than one thing to go wrong. In this case several didn't go wrong like the crew's handling of the aircraft and the aircraft meeting its cert requirements like flotation. Efforts would be better spent on reducing the threat of a large birdstrike rather than burden the engines with some contraption as has been suggested. There would likely be more engine failures as a result of such a device that those prevented by it. Aircraft engines are extraordinarily reliable devices. The reason is that they are made as simple as possible.

It would have to be incorporated in new engine designs, retrofitting would be impossible.

How much is 155 lives worth?

There are more and more geese every year.

Whatever a good attorney can get in settlement.

There are 50 to 60k people dying and tens of thousands more permanently maimed on the streets and highways every year. We could demand far greater safety but we choose not to because of the expense.

Are auto injuries and death more or less valuable than airline injuries and death? I'll bet that it would be cheaper to increase auto safety per passenger-mile than airliner.

We tolerate a level of probability of failure. I don't know what the stats are for airline safety vs automobile, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if airliners were 100x safer per passenger mile.

As much as they always were. Do not want a decrease in flight safety.

I believe it.

Inlet contraptions are not the right solution.

More people die each year on the way to the airport than die in plane crashes. More die in bathroom or kitchen accidents than in plane crashes. At some point you have to say that this is about as safe as we can make engines or planes, or cars and still have a market for them.

Now, if manufacturers like Ford or GM realize there is a problem, as they had with the Pinto and GM truck gas tanks, and don't fix it for a couple of dollars, then I would say that they are entirely culpable. But, when the manufacturers have gotten the odds of failure down so low as not to be a point of consideration, then I think that that is about as good as one can expect.

Life, by its very nature, is a gamble. You pays your money and takes your chances.

Here is a link with some stats for a small sample.
http://www.geocities.com/dtmcbride/travel/train-plane-car.html

Planes are 20x (using this subset of data).

Interesting stuff. Thanks.

You guys remind of the Ford engineers/ accountants debating the cost vs benefit of the isolator between the gas tank and the rear frame support.

Same argument. It always comes down to cost/benefit. As it should, IMO.

Just read the latest report on this event. It is nice to read a story about NYC and want to cry for another reason this time.

When I saw all of those boats almost immediately heading to the plane I felt that way, too. Those folks would have done the same if it had cartwheeled or burst into flames. No matter who was onboard. Fundamental decency. I love it.

That's a perpetual argument. A good attorney can always make a successful argument that a manufacturer could have spent an additional $3.00 to make his product safer so that the specific accident that he's attemting to solicit money for would not have occurred.

The problem is that no company can forsee every possible outcome for the use of its product and the product is sold at a price point where the company can make a profit.

It's easy to make a case for a better product after the fact. The decisions by the engineers and the accountants before the fact are the tough ones.

I'm surprised that no enterprising attorney would sue the carrier for a plane crash because the carrier didn't have a proper parachute on the airplane. How much does a parachute cost? Could you have carried a parachute Mr. Airline Executive? Why didn't you carry it?

The possibilities are endless.

I'll bet the bastards haven't spent a dime on developing levitation modules. They would not only save lives but improve fuel efficiency.

Real ways to improve survivorship.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-sherwood/the-three-myths-about-pla_b_158362.html?alacarte=1

GE apparently overlooked Yukla 27, 23 Sept 1995.

http://www.elmendorf.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123070056