I'm no engineer, but why aren't ALL baggage doors hinged at the leading edge instead of the top or elsewhere? I understand you can't put a piano hinge on all sides due to the curvature of the fuselage, but some hinged mechanism so that if the door isn't secure it doesn't result in an emergency or worse. Second question: Wouldn't there be an alarm (annunciator panel) indicating an unsecure baggage door?
NASCAR driver and family in plane crash
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DropTank
Well-Known Member
All engineering is compromise.
Most likely answer?
MONEY
Like you said, cheap, flat piano hinge vs complicated articulating hinge
Most airplanes DO have door annunciators for "OPEN" but not many have an "unlocked" or "unsecured" indication.
And the latching mechanisms on the older citations are less than ideal.
Which is why the more cynical pilots make a final walk around before each leg, specifically looking for things that will make their best attempt to murder them and their crew/passenger.
They're somehow even worse on the Caravan...
Maybe with the death of a relatively famous person, someone will make a SB adding non sucking door mechanisms.
Because all it takes for change in aviation is smeared blood with charred and fragmented corpses.
T/O w/FSII
Well-Known Member
We’re talking the best of the 70’s designs made in the 80’s here. The older planes had no annunciator other then a simple open closed switch.
The new ones have a switch on both latches AND the lock in the EICAS.
Want to really get upset? The citation cockpit and plane is the most changed plane in existence to keep the same type rating, and now has EICAS. Yet the 737…
Autothrust Blue
”…trusting ze process…”
Incidentally, the P-8A (it’s a 737, but it fires torpedoes and Harpoons) also has EICAS or at least something that looks and acts more like it, so it CAN be done.