There has been another breakthrough in the world of saving lives in general aviation airplanes. AmSafe (www.amsafe.com) has gone a step beyond its custom seatbelt airbag system—individually designed and built for over 150 types of general aviation aircraft—and developed a “universal” seatbelt airbag system that can be installed on almost any seat in almost any general aviation airplane.
While that is great news for occupant safety, in our opinion, the better news is that this universal retrofit—entitled SOARS (State-of-the-Art Restraint System)—is less than half the price of the bespoke system that has been going into airplanes since about 2004.