AIRLINE SAFETY IS IN A DEEP RUT (part 4)

Another glaring example of the FAA favoritism towards the manufacturers was the recent Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 767 break-up during an emergency landing on relatively calm surf. This makes a sick joke of the FAA assertion that passengers of such aircraft can survive emergency landings in the North Atlantic. It could not be more obvious: The streamlined fuselage does not have the structural integrity, demanded for all-round safe operations, and it cannot compare with the safety features, inherent in the Burnelli lifting body configuration.

Vincent Justus Burnelli was born on November 22, 1895, in Temple, Texas, of Italo/German parents. The record clearly shows that he is America's most outstanding aeronautical genius. In 1919, he built America's first airliner, the 26-passenger Lawson, which was a conventional airplane. When it flew, Burnelli saw it as a "streetcar with wings". He set out to improve upon it by developing his lifting body configuration.

Of his many accomplishments, Burnelli's lifting body invention in 1921 stands out as his greatest. McDonnell Douglas [now BOEING], Aerospatiale, Airbus and the Russians have all recently embraced the 1940s Burnelli technology in their new megajets. This offers proof that Burnelli was far advanced in technological excellence. The B-2, the F-22, the Aurora and the X-33 space shuttle all employ this same technology without attribution to Burnelli.

Burnelli's misfortune was that his financial backer was Arthur Pew of the Sun Oil Company. Pew was a staunch republican who backed Wendell Wilkie against F.D. Roosevelt in the 1940 election. Despite Gen. Arnold's glowing report of the Burnelli design's enormous superiority over the streamlined fuselage in the USSAC competition, Roosevelt, out of pure hatred for Pew, [Ed.: or was it merely a smoke-screen to hide who was the real party in interest; who was really benefiting from the suppression?]  Roosevelt had the USAAC issue a falsified, technical condemnation of the Burnelli design in 1941. It ended thusly:

This 1941 Report set the stage for the blackballing of Burnelli and his company.

The conventional airplane manufacturers were delighted that Burnelli and his superior product had been politically erased from the procurement scene, regardless of the fact that Burnelli airplanes would have saved thousands of wartime aircrew lives. Postwar, the military-industrial complex flexed its politically strengthened muscle and institutionalized the Burnelli blackball.

The technical falsifications from the 1941 Report flowed out from the Pentagon to perpetuate the status quo and to stifle any type of support for the Burnelli Company. The despicable harassment of Mr. Burnelli by the military-industrial complex persecuted him into a pauper's grave in 1964.

The 1941 Report remained classified until the Freedom of Information Act became effective in 1973. Pleas by the Burnelli Company to the Department of Defense for the retraction of the fraudulent Report have been arrogantly rejected to present date.

The public is being brainwashed when the president of the tax-free Flight Safety Foundation responded to the 1996 air crash fatality record with this statement: "flying is not becoming inherently more dangerous, but, because we are getting significantly more flying, we are just going to see more and more accidents."

Not only is a truly independent FAA required, but a new and independent flight safety foundation as well, both of which will foremost uphold the interests of the flying public.

The production of fundamentally unsafe, conventional jets continues unabated. As a consequence, record air crashes and passenger fatalities will also continue unabated until wisdom prevails and the flying public demands safer, superior Burnelli lifting body airliners.

The spectacular crash [video clip - 2MB] of the Burnelli UB-14 in 1935 clearly demonstrated that even severe crashes can be fire-free and survivable. The denial of this technological excellence to the travailing public can only be considered a crime against humanity.