Headrests. Love 'em or not.

[Echo]

I have had Mooney's with and without headrests.  Personally I think aesthetically they look better, but functionally not so much. I didn't ever use them when flying and the height makes reaching into the backseat and into baggage MUCH more difficult.  Pulling items like flight bag forward with a headrest is MUCH more difficult.  What do others think?  Current plane does NOT have headrests and I have zero desire to retrofit.

[KSMooniac]

I concur.  Mine came without, but with my recent seat upgrades (front and back) I've added them since they came with my new seats.  I'll likely leave them out unless the seats are full AND a pax might want to sleep.  Otherwise, they take up space, add a little weight, and are unnecessary.  

[N201MKTurbo]

I have them, but they are on a shelf in the hangar. I think they get in the way.

[DCarlton]

I love mine too but they are on a shelf in a closet.  Echo's comments nailed it.  

[Danb]

I won’t fly within them.

[PT20J]

They are only there to restrict neck movement in a crash. If you don’t crash, you don’t need them. Same as shoulder harnesses. 

[LANCECASPER]

Headrests limit head movement as a result of an impact that can cause whiplash and other cervical spine injuries.

You're not likely to have a rear-end collision in an airplane, but anything that can help you survive a crash is worth having. When you look at slow-motion video of front-end car crashes with crash-tests dummies it's easy to see why front seat headrests became mandatory in all cars sold in the U. S. starting in 1969.

[Echo]

Good points on safety benefits. Duly noted. 

[Echo]

I look at risk reward and not seeing risk trumping reward.  Shoulder harness?  Definitely. 
 

I originally wrote this @$$ backwards…

Edited September 13, 2023 by Echo
Brain freeze?

[LANCECASPER]

Same as a motorcycle helmet .. if there's not much up there to protect that has an effect on the decision to wear one . . lol 

[TheAv8r]

Having just added them to my plane at additional cost... they're primarily for aesthetic . No real function purpose, other than my wife getting to nap a bit more comfortably by laying her head back on them. I'm okay with that though, the look was worth it to me.

[DCarlton]

6 hours ago, PT20J said:

They are only there to restrict neck movement in a crash. If you don’t crash, you don’t need them. Same as shoulder harnesses. 

I'm not sure mine would even contact my neck or head enough to support anything.  Might help a tad.  Guessing they were improved in later models.  

[M20F]

6 hours ago, PT20J said:

They are only there to restrict neck movement in a crash. If you don’t crash, you don’t need them. Same as shoulder harnesses. 

This is the correct answer.  You are probably better off with only a lap belt if you don’t have head rests.  It is a restraint system of lap, shoulder, and head rest. 

[Echo]

1 hour ago, M20F said:

This is the correct answer.  You are probably better off with only a lap belt if you don’t have head rests.  It is a restraint system of lap, shoulder, and head rest. 

I completely disagree with your reply. A head rest only protects you primarily in a rear end collision, which is unlikely in an aircraft. In comparison, a shoulder harness provides dissipation of energy, prevention of contact with yoke and Dash with head and spreads the deceleration over a larger portion of the body. How much more likely a field accident scenario is striking a tree, wall, ditch, barrier, or other fixed object or shoulder harness can literally be the difference between life and death.

[PT20J]

If you look at crash test videos of front end collisions, you'll note that the torso first goes forward and then rebounds forcefully from the shoulder harness. Without a headrest, the neck will bend backward over the top of the seat which is what causes the damage. It really is a system: you need the shoulder harness to keep from hitting the instrument panel and the headrest to protect against the rebound.

[Echo]

5 minutes ago, PT20J said:

If you look at crash test videos of front end collisions, you'll note that the torso first goes forward and then rebounds forcefully from the shoulder harness. Without a headrest, the neck will bend backward over the top of the seat which is what causes the damage. It really is a system: you need the shoulder harness to keep from hitting the instrument panel and the headrest to protect against the rebound.

Where is the headrest when you go forward?  Come on.  Please stop this nonsense.

[PT20J]

41 minutes ago, Echo said:

Where is the headrest when you go forward?  Come on.  Please stop this nonsense.

It's the rebound. Oh, wait, I already said that 

[Echo]

1 hour ago, PT20J said:

It's the rebound. Oh, wait, I already said that 

Oh, I read it. I understood it. I just don’t agree with it. Will just agree to disagree.

[MikeOH]

1 hour ago, Echo said:

Oh, I read it. I understood it. I just don’t agree with it. Will just agree to disagree.

Hmm, what is it that you disagree with:

1) That you don't believe your body rebounds back from the shoulder harness?  (Take a look at some frontal crash videos with crash dummies...)

2) That you agree your body does bounce back, but that nothing bad will happen without a headrest?  (ditto...)

3) That your agree it does, but that something bad will happen even with a headrest?  (So, you don't see the point of having it?)

 

[LANCECASPER]

There's nothing to agree or disagree with in @PT20J's description, the collision videos show it just as he describes it. You are either believing what your eyes are seeing or not. 

Now whether you believe that what you are watching will cause you injuries is another subject. Whether you believe the data that shows that a headrest would help with the rebound collision is for every person to decide.

Making those decisions for your passengers though carries a lot of responsibility.  Whether not having headrests makes it easier to access the back seat or whether the seats look better with or without headrests or whether they are comfortable shouldn't carry much weight in the decision. No one plans on getting into a crash, so yes the statistical odds are low, but if you're really doing a "risk versus reward" calculation, rather than just using that as a catch-phrase, human life always outweighs inconvenience. The low odds of a crash are counted as completely irrelevant the day that you have a crash and I believe we have an entire forum that covers crashes, so they do happen. 

There are three collisions in every accident. The vehicle collision, the human collision and then the internal collision (example: the brain colliding with the cranium in a concussion). Everything I've read says that a padded headrest slows down the acceleration of that collision and helps to minimize hyper-extending the cervical part of the spine. I believed it so much that 30 years ago in the first Mooney I owned, a 231, I found headrests and had them upholstered to match the interior. Thankfully I've never had to confirm how much help headrests are in a crash. 

[Echo]

3 minutes ago, LANCECASPER said:

There's nothing to agree or disagree with in @PT20J's description, the collision videos show it just as he describes it. You are either believing what your eyes are seeing or not. 

Now whether you believe that what you are watching will cause you injuries is another subject. Whether you believe the data that shows that a headrest would help with the rebound collision is for every person to decide.

Making those decisions for your passengers though carries a lot of responsibility.  Whether not having headrests makes it easier to access the back seat or whether the seats look better with or without headrests or whether they are comfortable shouldn't carry much weight in the decision. No one plans on getting into a crash, so yes the statistical odds are low, but if you're really doing a "risk versus reward" calculation, rather than just using that as a catch-phrase, human life always outweighs inconvenience. The lows odds of a crash are counted as completely irrelevant the day that you have a crash and I believe we have an entire forum that covers crashes, so they do happen. 

There are three collisions in every accident. The vehicle collision, the human collision and then the internal collision (example: the brain colliding with the cranium in a concussion). Everything I've read says that a padded headrest slows down the acceleration of that collision and helps to minimize hyper-extending the cervical part of the spine. I believed it so much that 30 years ago in the first Mooney I owned, a 231, I found headrests and had them upholstered to match the interior. Thankfully I've never had to confirm how much help headrests are in a crash. 

Love the passion. Me?  Not so much.   Yes Lance, Safety is trumped big time by ease of use on headrests in my aircraft. I’ll make sure and caution any family on my death trap before they fly. Thanks for input. Freedom to choose is awesome.  You made your choice and I made mine.

[Echo]

Do you have airbag harness retrofit fit on all four seats?  Do you fly at night?  Do you fly IFR to minimums?  Do you have known ice tks?  Risk/reward. Exposure vs liklihood of incident and resultant event resulting in identified injury. Humans make calculated risk exposure and mitigation decisions every day. Not all possibilities are equally probable. That is risk assessment and decision making. 

[LANCECASPER]

59 minutes ago, Echo said:

Do you have airbag harness retrofit fit on all four seats?

No, just the front two seats. The rear seats do have the shoulder harnesses though.

The point of this post though wasn't would you take any risks - we all do just by getting out of bed in the morning. The point was would you keep or remove the headrests. If there's something there that could help, personally I wouldn't remove it.

[TheAv8r]

51 minutes ago, Echo said:

Do you have airbag harness retrofit fit on all four seats?  Do you fly at night?  Do you fly IFR to minimums?  Do you have known ice tks?  Risk/reward. Exposure vs liklihood of incident and resultant event resulting in identified injury. Humans make calculated risk exposure and mitigation decisions every day. Not all possibilities are equally probable. That is risk assessment and decision making. 

This is true, but there's a reason we practice emergency procedures, not because we expect it to never happen, but so that we're ready for the unlikely event it does happen. Everything you mentioned above is a conscious choice you make as a pilot and involve a myriad of factors. Your engine quitting in the air and you having to "crash" it into a field/street/whatever is not a conscious choice you can make. As pilots, we're not taught risk avoidance. We're taught risk management. How can we use our knowledge + the tools at our disposal to minimize risk to result in the safest outcome in a given situation? Be that icing, IFR, etc. Every example you gave are risks that can be managed. Fly IFR to Minimums? Sure - if I'm proficient by shooting 2-3 approaches to minimums every month, have the appropriate equipment, and have a backup plan.

Take flying at night for example. Sure, there's a risk. Some may feel the best way to manage that risk is to never fly at night. Others may make it a point to do 3 hours of night flying a month with 10 landings, or carry supplemental oxygen at night, or not go above 8000ft at night, or always program the RNAV approach as backup when landing at an airport at night. Does that eliminate the risk? No, but it manages it, it mitigates it by knowing the things that can go wrong and putting systems and tools in place to mitigate the chances of it going wrong. 

I think the argument people are making here is - you can't really control the conditions you might be in in a crash. You can be the best pilot in the world, have an engine die at 450ft right after takeoff with few options to put it down, and it's going to be what it's going to be. However, you can control how you can mitigate that risk to result in the safest outcome:

• Practice emergency procedure flows often
• Practice the occasional engine dies at takeoff with a CFI
• Use shoulder harnesses - they're proven to reduce the risk of injury or death from an airplane crash
• Use headrests - they're proven to reduce the risk of neck and brain injury from an airplane crash
• Brief the departure before you takeoff, verbally say where you'll put the airplane down if you lose an engine and don't have any runway left and have looked at the geography already to know where that best spot is

That's all that Lance PT20J are saying - they are advocating for using headrests to mitigate that risk in a situation you can't really control. If you choose not to, that's fine, but there shouldn't be any argument that it does increase the risk of injury should a crash occur, the argument is just whether you're comfortable with accepting that increased level of risk when it can be mitigated or not. I hope my engine never dies on me inflight, and I do as much preventative MX as possible to keep an eye on it to that regard, but if it does, there's only so much I can do in that situation to guarantee a safe outcome. One of the things I can do is make sure I have the proper safety equipment onboard so that even if the terrain isn't great, I've done the best I can. 

[MikeOH]

58 minutes ago, Echo said:

Do you have airbag harness retrofit fit on all four seats?  Do you fly at night?  Do you fly IFR to minimums?  Do you have known ice tks?  Risk/reward. Exposure vs liklihood of incident and resultant event resulting in identified injury. Humans make calculated risk exposure and mitigation decisions every day. Not all possibilities are equally probable. That is risk assessment and decision making. 

Sounds like this hit a nerve, eh?

I admit I missed your point: you just don’t care if headrests add safety. As you say, your choice to whistle past the graveyard; I agree that’s what freedom is all about.

Should you live through a crash with passengers that are injured/killed you probably won’t be whistling past the courtroom! Your analogies with night flight, IFR, TKS are poor ones in that they are commonly accepted risks. If your plane was originally equipped with headrests which are now removed…THAT is a whole ‘nother kettle o’ fish when it comes lawsuit time.  I suspect you know this but don’t care; your choice but it sounds like you’re really just believing you’ll never have a crash.