Icarus v. Harvard

Human beings are just not built for flying. But since they insist on flying, they might as well have planes designed to carry them with the least discomfort and danger. So says Harvard's Physiologist Ross Armstrong McFarland. For ten years Dr. McFarland, a stubborn gadfly to the U.S. aviation industry, has scientifically studied the effect of plane design and operation on man, "perhaps the most unstable unit in the entire man-machine relationship." He has also flown a good many miles himself.

Summing up the airplane's anti-human aspects in a weighty book (Human Factors in Air Transport Design; McGraw-Hill; $6), Dr. McFarland concludes that modern planes, for all their silvery slickness and speed, are still dangerous, noisy, uncomfortable and a generally unsatisfactory means of travel.

Dr. McFarland was a wartime consultant to the Navy and the Civil Aeronautics Authority; he also developed tests for selecting and training pilots. He thinks that airplane makers have paid far too little attention to adapting planes to the limitations of the human body. His book examines in detail the punishment that flying inflicts on people.

Drafts & Nausea. The typical air passenger, says McFarland, arrives at the airport flushed, harried, overfed and in a state of foreboding about his coming flight. As a result, his tense body gets into trouble adjusting to sudden changes of pressure, temperature, etc. His difficulties grow soon after the takeoff. The plane becomes both too hot and too cold. Disagreeable drafts swirl around his ankles and eyes. The cold air, after being scooped into the plane at 200-300 m.p.h., becomes unpleasantly dry as it warms up. It makes the passenger's eyes smart and aggravates his cold or sinus trouble. If he is a nervous type, he is repelled by all the trapped smells that fill the cabin.

By itself, none of these inconveniences makes a normal passenger airsick--but it helps. The chief cause of airsickness is the plane's up-&-down motion in bumpy air (not its rolling or yawing). A large-scale Army study during the war indicated that at least a fourth of all passengers are susceptible to airsickness. Most of them become more or less immune once they get used to flying, and airlines would do well to help them become immune by making it harder to get sick. An estimated one-tenth, whom Dr. McFarland classifies as "usually neurotic or emotionally predisposed to airsickness," never do. "Their nausea is severe, is unrelieved by vomiting, usually lasts throughout the flight, and continues for some time after landing."

Noise & Bumps. Besides the natural air hazards (bumpy air currents, bad weather, lack of oxygen at high altitudes), the airplane itself is a menace to health, McFarland thinks. Scientific tests have shown that the modern plane cabin is almost as noisy as a subway train. On a long flight, McFarland reports, noise can increase fatigue, inefficiency and irritability to the danger point. There is no proof, he says, that constant flying permanently deafens airmen, but it does reduce their hearing in the higher frequencies (a deaf spot known as "aviator's notch"). The plane's vibration also may have bad physical effects; on a long flight it temporarily impairs vision and deadens certain reflexes.

Certain changes in planes, Dr. McFarland believes, could make flying safer and more comfortable. An automatic pilot (like those on scheduled transports), to hold the plane steadier, would reduce airsickness. A tighter cabin would cut noise; smaller propellers would lessen vibration; orange and red lights in the cockpit would improve pilots' night vision and help prevent serious accidents caused by pilots' inability to adjust quickly from light to dark. One of the greatest needs in airplane design: better ventilation.

Crashes & Speed. Human beings will never be really at home in the air, Dr. McFarland thinks, but they'd be better off higher up, as in the pressurized, high-altitude Constellation, DC-6, and Boeing Stratocruiser.

At higher altitudes, in strongly built, sealed pressure cabins, passengers get a smooth, steady, quiet ride, are less liable to airsickness and to earaches from changes in altitude. The plane is above the hazards of weather and collisions with mountains. In the heavier cabin, passengers also have a better chance of survival in case of a crash, McFarland contends, particularly if they ride backwards (to take the shock on the back instead of being pitched head first).

High-altitude flying, Dr. McFarland admits, has its own risks: at 25,000 feet an accidental break in the pressure cabin would plunge the passengers into an oxygen-poor atmosphere where they could not long survive; but the plane could probably dive in time to revive them.

Planemakers and airlines, McFarland concludes, should give more thought to flying comfort and safety, and less to speed. Anyway, 300 m.p.h., he thinks, is plenty fast enough.

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