At least an airplane can land without power, though the idea of a hydrogen aircraft (with the hydrogen stored in the wings if it's anything like conventional aircraft) catching on fire is pretty terrifying.
There are many aviation disasters caused directly or indirectly by the fuel catching fire.
Such as the horrific SST crash.
The idea that jet fuel is somehow safe is just a terrible misjudgment of the situation. What we have learned over time is how to handle it safely - but it is NEVER safe and it DOES burn. Another way to set it merrily burning is to scrape an airliner along the runway, or have the airliner hit any sort of obstacle, or for the fuel to leak onto hot engine parts, and on and on.
> The idea that jet fuel is somehow safe is just a terrible misjudgment of the situation.
Surely if that's your benchmark then nothing is safe (with enough effort, few things don't burn), and the point is really rather the safety margin, which is significantly larger for fossil fuels than for LOH, therefore making them much safer than LOH? There's a reason why we prefer dynamite to liquid nitroglycerin, even though both do, in fact, explode.
A lot of aviation accidents result in devastating fire. A fire in the air can destroy the airplane in a minute or two. If there's a ground accident, there's a darn good reason why the FAA requires evacuations within 90 seconds or something like that. Fire is the reason.
As I said, jet fuel is NOT safe. What we do is try to safely handle it.
For example, nobody in the industry is going to allow a lit cigarette anywhere near an airplane.
We have a lot of experience with jet fuel fires and have learned how they burn, how they start, how to fight them, and how to prevent them. We have very little experience with hydrogen fires. They may be worse, they may be better. We don't know.
