Burnelli, the Story

Why do car manufacturers go to great lengths to build a roll-cage around passenger compartments but aircraft manufacturers build aircraft with as little as 13% of the aircraft structural weight to protect passengers?


Thank you Larry Pope!
The Burnelli Story
Below are excerpts from this great site...check it out!

Burnelli Story via Vimeo courtesy of Ralph Capobianco

In November 1999, Fox News 29 in West Palm Beach, Florida did a “Fox Files Report” on Burnelli and interviewed our late Chairman and President, Chalmers H. Goodlin. For those of you who have not seen it, we believe it is an excellent 5 minute introduction to the topic.

Already 10 years has passed and, as far as we know, this is the only TV report done about Burnelli during that time. How do we get more coverage about this safer, more efficient design in the media?  Would you like to see more reports in the news? Write a letter to the editor, write / email your local TV station and ask them to expose Burnelli to others in your area.

Cars are designed with crashworthiness in mind. Portions of the car will deform to absorb the energy of a crash and the portion of the car where the passengers are is designed to stay intact.  Airplanes are not.  When you see pictures of a plane crash, you often see only a tail, the wheels, maybe an engine or two but the structure that is supposed to protect the passengers is missing, having disintegrated during the crash – it did not protect the passengers.

The position maintained by officialdom, that most accidents are caused by pilot error, may be correct, but it ignores the more fundamental and important question which asks:

“what are most fatalities due to?”

There is ample evidence that:

“most fatalities are caused by the irresponsible common practice of hanging engines and landing gear onto fuel tank supporting structure in combination with excessively high take-off and landing speeds on overstressed tires.“

And when the question regarding the cause of most fatalities is answered, the next question becomes:

“Why do we continue to build and fly aircraft that have such low survivability rates in case of crash, when an alternative exists and has existed for over eight decades?”

Since the 1940s an aircraft design exists that makes aviation crashes more survivable – a Burnelli.

In its December 1946 issue, Mechanix Illustrated, in an article entitled “Something New on the Wing” stated:

“In addition to their hitherto unapproached stability, 80 passenger ships of the new 1946 design, … are designed to descend on the water with complete safety and travel for days under their own power as full-fledged sea-going boats. This feat is the more remarkable in consideration of the fact that they are strictly land planes.

Under any circumstances necessitating a landing at sea, passengers of this type of ultra modern sky hotel lose none of the comfort and luxury that they enjoyed in the air. A specially designed mechanism, which cannot be operated in flight, is used to disengage the wings from the fuselage section once the ship is on the water. Once this is done, even a stormy sea holds no terrors for the occupants of the safety-sealed fuselage with its complete set of navigation instruments and its diesel-driven underwater propeller. In short, a landing at sea is not even an emergency for this newest of passenger aircraft.”

A hopeful message from the New England Air Museum yesterday. “Upon completion of the multi-year restoration of our Douglas A-26 Invader, anticipated for mid-2012, the Burnelli CBY will be moved into our restoration facility for its restoration.” 

Michael P. Speciale, NEAM.

After so many years in the New England winters, the CBY-3 will finally 
be recognized for the historic, aviation gem that it is.