You don’t have to be a flying ace to survive an accident. Most of the time, it’s just a matter of luck or bad luck. And there are 5 main factors that affect the probability of survival.
181 people were on board the Jeju Air plane in South Korea when, last month, one of (almost) all passengers. Two flight attendants survived — a 33-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman, who are stable and communicating normally.
The two survivors were sitting in the back of the plane.
Also, the Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed in Azerbaijan days earlier killed 38 people, and there were 29 survivors — all sitting in the back.
In 1987, a plane crashed in Detroit, killing all 155 passengers except a 4-year-old girl. Your place was at the fronto 8F.
In the last eight decades, there has only been 17 other accidents on commercial trips where planes with 80 or more occupants left one or two survivorsaccording to data collected by the Flight Safety Foundation.
Is it a matter of luck? Yes. But experts explain what’s happening 5 circumstances that increase the chances of survival.
“Many people think it’s safer to sit in the back than in the front,” he said. Barbara Dunn, president of the International Society of Aviation Safety Investigators. “Not necessarily. How quickly the fire takes hold of you and how quickly you can reach an exit, all of that is also important.”
“There are many reasons why someone might survive a situation that seems completely unsurvivable,” he adds.
“Depending on the how the plane lands and the place where the passenger is sitting has an impact. If your belt is tight, this limits the amount of movement the body undergoes. It also depends on the fact that the passenger is able to assume a emergency position“, he further points out.
The emergency position, in English “brace position”, is a posture in which the passenger protects himself from the impact by bending his body.
Here are, therefore, the 5 factors that experts point out as important in these situations: aircraft integritya effectiveness of safety devicesas G forces experienced by passengers and the crew, the environment inside the aircraft and the post-accident factors, like fire or smoke.
G forces are the gravitational forces that keep human beings on earth. In everyday life, humans are subject to 1 G and, in general, consciousness is lost at 4 or 5 G.
If a plane like the Boeing 737 that crashed in South Korea does not suffer more than 9 G’s in forward motion, the occupants have a reasonable chance of escaping serious injury, professors say. Thomas Zeidlik e Nicholas Wilson.
“Sometimes things happen, and it’s really hard to explain,” he says. Anthony T. Brickhouse, aerospace safety specialist. “I hate to use the term, but sometimes luck comes into play.”
