airbags are positioned in a general aviation aircraft cockpit relative to a control yoke , a pilot , and a front seat passenger . airbag actuation is controlled by a adaptive programmable controller such as a microcomputer . airbag actuation is based upon information that the controller receives from multiple acceleration sensors . the outputs of the acceleration sensors are subjected to thresholding techniques , such as output signal weighting and / or majority voting . a programmable threshold is adaptively established for the controller based upon unique aircraft parameters , such as weight , altitude , angle of attack , ground and / or air speed , etc . the controller ignores all acceleration sensor inputs that do not meet this adaptive threshold . thus , airbag actuation takes place only when a sufficient acceleration event occurs concurrently with the presence or absence of defined aircraft parameters that establish a proper threshold for the acceleration event . airbag inflation includes a controllable delay that is used to customize airbag inflation to particular aircraft parameters , such as ground / air speed and weight .