How to Survive
a Plane Crash part 1
Good News - The Odds are in Your Favor
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The first fatal plane crash, pictured here, was on 17
September 1908 in Fort Myer, VA, when a plane piloted by
Orville Wright dropped 100 ft, injuring Orville and killing
his passenger.
The 50% survivor rate of that first crash has definitely
improved since then.
Part one of a four part
series on how to survive a plane crash. See also :
1.
How likely are you to be in a plane crash, which are the
safest planes, and when are the most dangerous times on a
flight
2.
The safest seats
3.
Exiting the plane
4.
Bracing and other considerations
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While some plane crashes
clearly aren't survivable, most are survivable, and in most
cases, most passengers do indeed survive.
There are a few things you can
do which might further tilt the odds in your favor, while
requiring no unusual degree of preparation or inconvenience for
what is hopefully a lifetime of safe plane journeys with never
any need to use the information below.
But, because the points below
are simple, and because they just might save your life, why
not at least read through the article.
Disclaimer
: This article series contains things
which are subjective opinions rather than provable
repeatable facts, and deals with probabilities
rather than certainties.
Different
experts sometimes have differing opinions on the
optimum strategies for surviving a plane crash.
I'm not an expert or an
aviation lawyer, and my selective endorsement of
some opinions over others may or may not be correct.
You are best
advised to read what follows with an open mind, then supplement it with your own research,
and
adopt what you feel comfortable with, adapt what
you're not so comfortable with, and improve as best
you can to fit your needs and your emergency
situation.
Good luck.
Let me know, afterwards, what worked for you! |
What Are Your Chances of Having
a Problem - and Surviving It?
Air travel is the absolutely
safest form of transportation when measured in terms of
accidents per mile traveled, and very much safer than traveling by road.
In the last two years (2007
and 2008) there have been no passenger fatalities in any US
plane crashes. During those same two years, there were 17
million domestic flights in the US, with 1.5 billion passengers
carried.
Various statistics suggest
your odds of dying on your next flight are somewhere between one
in 9 million and one in 60 million. Whether it is one in 9
million or one in 60 million, either which way, the chances are
overwhelming that you'll be walking off the plane upon its safe
completion, just
as you hope to. Indeed, taking the least favorable safety
statistic (one in 9
million), you could fly two flights every day from the day you
were born until you turned 80 (ie 58,400 flights in total), and
your total chance of being killed in a plane crash is still only
one in 154.
Put it another way - the
biggest killer among professional pilots and cabin crew is old
age rather than air related fatalities.
So, overall, your chance of
dying while flying is minimal. But it isn't zero. And you've an
appreciably greater chance of actually being in a plane accident (the
chance of this is harder to calculate as it depends on what you
define as an accident) which will call on your survival skills.
Fortunately, and as
mentioned at the top, a National Transportation Safety Board
study looked at all US accidents between 1983 and 2000, and
found that of the 53,487 passengers involved in these
unfortunate events, 51,207 of them survived - 95.7%.
They also refined the
statistics to consider only at major and serious crashes, and found
the survival rate still remained over 50%.
Lastly, they again studied
only at serious major crashes, but took out the very worst
crashes where no-one had any chance of surviving (like 9/11 or
the Pam Am 103 Lockerbie bombing) and this improved the odds so
that 75% of passengers survived.
One more statistic, and this
one is the most nebulous of all. Various experts estimate
that as many as 30% of the passengers who died in airplane
accidents could have survived if they'd responded better to the
emergency when it occurred.
So, our bottom line is
simple - you'll probably never be in an air accident of any
kind, and you'll probably be just fine if you are.
But you might not be fine,
and if you adopt the best possible response, you can improve
your odds of surviving by a massive 30%.
Why are these statistics so
much better than I thought?
Most people have a very
inaccurate and apocalyptic perception of air plane crashes.
They have pictures in their mind involving massive fireballs,
clouds of smoke, and scarred earth. For sure, a really bad
airplane crash (like the Air France Concorde at take-off - lots
of videos of this on Youtube, including
this documentary piece) is visually spectacular and
memorable.
But
not all visually spectacular crashes are 100% fatal.
Indeed, one of the more spectacular ones was an Air France A-340
that crashed upon landing in Toronto in 2005 - it overshot the
runway, broke up and caught fire (pictured on the left).
But everyone on board - all 309 passengers and crew survived.
The moral of that particular
story is two-fold. First, 'it ain't over 'till it's over'
- passengers on board started clapping once the plane had
landed, thinking their flight had safely concluded. 15
seconds or so later, things started to go horribly wrong.
So stay tense and alert until after the plane has completed its
landing roll and has slowed down to taxiing speed.
Second, don't give up.
Keep your spirits high and tell yourself 'I can survive
and I will survive' and then do all you positively can to
ensure you do, no matter how scary the situation is or how
certain it might seem that death is staring you in the face.
Maybe death is staring you in the face - but look back
resolutely and unblinkingly.
One last comment about this
crash. Some of the passengers attempted to, or indeed did
take their carryon items with them. Don't do this.
Don't pause for an instant when getting off the plane - carry on
items will slow you down, and all the other people behind you.
And, if someone in front of you is trying to get their carry-on,
be assertively insistent that they don't, or, at the very least,
push on past them. Which would you rather have - your
laptop or your life?
(More information on this
particular crash on
this Youtube video.)
One more answer to why the
reality of air crash survivability statistics are much better
than most people perceive them to be. That is that we as
people are not completely rational - we tend to mis-understand
the risks involved with various things and to allow some risks
to seem more extreme than others. An obvious example of
this is the difference in comfort levels between a person
driving a motorcycle, and a pillion passenger riding behind them
on the same bike. The driver - the person in control -
doubtless feels much safer than the passenger. And it is
the lack of control and lack of understanding of air transport
that causes many people to be more fearful of that than they are
of, eg, much more dangerous travel by private car.
How Long Does it Take to
Evacuate a Plane
This is a very relevant
question. The FAA requires a plane to be capable of being
emptied in 90 seconds, and requires airplane manufacturers to
prove that by simulating an emergency evacuation, in near
darkness, and with pillows and blankets randomly obstructing the
aisles, and only half the emergency exits working.
Some people believe this
test is still too easy and unrealistic, and they're probably
correct. Having a plane full of volunteers doing a drill,
on a stable plane with no real danger, is very different to
having a plane that has broken in two, is lurching at an
improbable angle, is filling with smoke, and with panic stricken
and injured passengers screaming and shouting.
The ninety second target
evacuation time is not a mere coincidence. Many experts
estimate that there is less than a two minutes window to get out
of a plane after a crash before bad things happen. Flames
and smoke are the two most pressing issues after a crash, as
also might be sinking in the event of a water landing.
On the other hand, the
number of passengers that can exit a plane under FAA test
conditions is usually considerably greater than the number of
passengers typically on a plane. For example, the new A380
had 853 passengers and 20 crew complete their evacuation test in
77 seconds. Typically an A380 will carry about 500
passengers and less than 20 crew, giving a nice extra time
margin in the event of a real evacuation.
Note that evacuating a plane
is dangerous, whether it be part of a test or a real evacuation.
An FAA review of 19 full-scale evacuation demonstrations between
1972 and 1991 involving 5,797 participants found that 269, or
about 4.5%, of evacuees were injured.
When do Plane Crashes Occur
The two most dangerous
periods of any flight are the take-off and landing phases.
While you're cruising along at altitude, the plane and its
engines is unstressed, the pilots are unstressed, there are
fewer other planes to avoid, much less that can go wrong, and
lots more time to correct any such problem before reaching the
ground.
80% of accidents occur in
either the first three or the last eight minutes of a flight.
Taking off
Take-offs are the most
dangerous part of any flight, because everything about the plane
is at maximum stress.
The plane may be at close to its
maximum weight, the engines will be running at close to red
line, and the fuel tanks may be full. From the point on
the take-off roll where the pilot passes the point of no return
and needs to commit to taking off, no matter what (termed the V1
speed), and for the first couple of minutes of flight, there are
commonly no reserves of anything.
While cruising
On the other hand, when
you're at 35,000 ft and 550 mph, you (or, to be more precise,
the pilots) have more time to solve any problems that might
occur.
Assuming the wings haven't fallen off (and airplane
wings almost never fall off, not even in the most violent of
turbulence), and depending on if the pilot feels the need to
quickly descent from altitude down to below 15,000 ft (where you
can breathe unassisted, if the cabin pressurization has failed),
you probably have about 20 minutes before the plane reaches the
ground, and that may be sufficient time for the pilots to hopefully
come up with a solution to whatever the issue is, and/or to
allow them to prepare for the upcoming landing and hopefully do
so at an airport rather than somewhere inhospitable, less
survivable, and less easily rescued from.
Landing
But when your plane is below
about 10,000 ft, there's perhaps only 5 minutes between you and
the ground. The plane suffers both from less altitude and less
airspeed - the two things any pilot wants most desperately when
things start to go wrong. This should be the time when
you switch back into a semi-alert and in your mildly ready state.
When you're landing, things
aren't nearly as stressed as when taking off (except for the
pilots - they're busier and more stressed landing than taking
off), but the plane is getting close to the ground, it is going
very slowly (comparatively speaking) - perhaps 200 mph or less -
and it doesn't have much reserve 'energy' in its state should it
suddenly lose engine power, or encounter a strong downdraft, or
if something goes otherwise unexpectedly wrong. Things
that might result in a 5,000 ft loss of altitude and which don't
matter when you're at 35,000 ft become much more serious when
you're at 3,000 ft!
Which are the safest planes?
It is very difficult to come
up with meaningful statistics on the relative safety of
different models of airplanes.
The main reason this is
difficult is because when there is an accident, it can be a very
subjective interpretation to determine how much blame should be attributed to
the plane itself, how much to the pilots and their training, how
much to the maintenance of the plane, how much to other factors
(eg weather) and how much is just random bad luck.
It is probably safe to say
that some airlines are less safe than others, and similarly,
some airports and countries are less safe than others, but it is
very difficult to be able to create a clear distinction between
different planes.
Some planes had bad
reputations that were either not fairly deserved or which, while
fairly reflecting earlier models of the plane, were no longer
accurate for more recent models of the same plane.
It is also positive to note
that, over the years, airplane safety standards and regulations
have several times been revised upwards, making more modern
planes generally safer than the ones before then.
It is probably fair to say
that newer planes are generally better than older planes, but
that is about all you can conclude.
Your Alert Periods
The most dangerous parts of
the flight are the first five and last ten minutes of the
journey, assuming the plane climbs smoothly up and way from the
airport and comes in quickly to land without an extended time of
holding near the destination airport. Another way of
phrasing this, and a useful rule of thumb, is that any time the
plane is below about 10,000 ft, your risk increases
greatly compared to when the plane is above that height.
So, any time
the plane is below 10,000 ft, you should switch to your more
alert mode.
This means, when taking off,
perhaps go easy on the drinks before boarding and prior to
take-off, and if you're going to take a sleeping pill, wait
until the flight is safely in the air before doing so.
It means, when coming in to
land that you are ready to respond to a sudden brace and
subsequent
evacuation, with the safety things you need at hand rather than
in the overhead locker (or zipped up in the bottom of the bag
under the seat in front of you.
It means in both cases, you
know where your emergency exit would be, and where the alternate
is too. Check the note you made to remind yourself how
many rows they are from you.
When you are alert, you
should have your shoes on, be wearing suitable clothing (or have
it within reach), and you should also minimize the number of
solid/sharp objects you have in your pockets and around you so
they are least likely to cause injury during the rough and
tumble of a crash landing.
During your alert periods,
you want to be mentally running through the emergency and
evacuation scenarios that might arise. You won't be alone
in doing this - the flight attendants are taught to do similar
things, too.
These alert periods are
important, as is the mental preparation you go through silently
while alert. If something does go wrong, you'll be
overdosing on adrenalin, you may become non-responsive, and
whatever else is happening, you're not likely to be thinking
clearly. If you already have your routine planned before
an emergency occurs, you can function at a lower intellectual
level and simply do what you've planned to do without the need
for so much higher level planning and thought.
Reading the Safety/Emergency
Card
Something to do during your
alert time is to read the flight safety briefing card.
Most of the material on the
card is stuff you'll already know, like not smoking, how to
fasten/unfasten your safety belt, and so on. But there are
some unique things also provided that are specific to your plane
and the airline operating it, in terms of how doors are opened,
how slides are activated, and where life rafts are kept.
Don't just glance unseeingly
at the card, but carefully look through it to find the
information that is most relevant and specific to your flight.
Accidents happen without
warning
This might seem obvious, but
it bears specifically stating. All flights start off as
normal ordinary flights, with no apparent reason to worry or
expect something untoward to occur.
The transition from normal
flight to disaster can sometimes be slow, but more commonly (and
particularly for the passengers) will be completely sudden and
utterly unexpected. For example, one minute you are
impatiently waiting for the plane to land at the end of its
flight and watching the ground approaching out the window, same
as always. Then all of a sudden something goes wrong with
the landing, and the plane is careering off the runway, hitting
things, breaking up, and possibly bursting into flames.
You need to prepare for
these scenarios in advance, because when they do occur, for sure
you'll have no time to prepare for them as they unfold.
Part one of a four part
series on how to survive a plane crash. See also :
1.
How likely are you to be in a plane crash, which are the
safest planes, and when are the most dangerous times on a
flight
2.
The safest seats
3.
Exiting the plane
4.
Bracing and other considerations
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Originally published
23 Jan 2009, last update
21 Jul 2020
You may freely reproduce or distribute this article for noncommercial purposes as long as you give credit to me as original writer.
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