Background
During my initial shopping for aircraft, the quality of seatbelt was a total afterthought. The rentals that I flew all had some form of shoulder harness, and I never really considered the safety advantage they provided.
When I first saw N22900 I noticed the lack of shoulder harnesses, but didn’t think too much of them. In my mind I was thinking:
“well if you get in an accident, what are the odds that a shoulder harness would actually make a difference”
Turns out the odds are shockingly good.
FAA Investigation
https://www.tc.faa.gov/its/worldpac/techrpt/AM72-3.pdf
In 1972 the FAA published a report titled: THE BENEFITS OF THE USE OF SHOULDER HARNESS IN GENERAL AVIATION AIRCRAFT. In this report the FAA reported on major and major accidents. They performed a survivability analysis on the accidents and found that head trauma was one of the crucial injuries that would determine if most pilots would walk away from the accident or not. With only lap belts, the pilots upper body and head would be slammed into the instrument panel, but this could be prevented with the installation of 3 and 4 point harnesses to restrain the upper body.
The report showed that proper use of should harnesses in aircraft could reduce major injuries by 88% and reduce fatalities by 20% when compared to lap belts alone. These numbers are too strong to ignore which is why I decided to upgrade N22900.
Hooker Harness Kit
So after all the potential jokes about the name, it’s hard to find any flaws with the Hooker Harness kit.
Many other available kits try to take advantage of the existing nutplates in the rear spar of the cessna 150. This attachment point is weak and is only held in place by a couple of rivets, and in an accident seems likely to pull out of the spar.
Hooker decided to do things differently. They designed a reinforcement plate to be installed around the spar that relocates the attachment point to the aft of the spar. In a case of an accident, the load would have to rip the entire spar out of place instead of a single nutplate.
The Hooker harnesses are made to order so you just need to contact them through their hookerharness.com. Each kit comes with it’s own set of installation hardware, the belts, and requisite STC paperwork. You are able to select the color of the belts and stitching at the time of order.
From order to shipping was only a few weeks, and that was over the winter holidays too.
I still have yet to receive the kit, or perform the installation but I’m sure I will be impressed with the quality.
I will update this page with the installation details after installation of the kit.