How do people survive airline crashes?
source: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/06/30/air.crash.survivors/index.html
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Reports of a lone child having survived Tuesday's crash of a Yemenia Airways flight in the Indian Ocean have people wondering: How does anyone survive a plane crash? "I just don't think there's any pattern to survivability. It's just luck of the draw and depends on how the plane goes in," said aviation expert John Eakin, head of Air Data Research in Helotes, Texas.
Not counting Tuesday's disaster, there have been 12 airliner crashes since 1970 that yielded a sole survivor, according to data compiled by Dr. Todd Curtis, director of the Airsafe.com Foundation. Five of those survivors were minors and four were crew members, accounting for 75 percent of the total.
"I can't figure out for the life of me why crew members and children tend to be disproportionate in these sole-survivor events," Curtis said. "I just don't think there's any pattern to survivability. It's just luck of the draw and depends on how the plane goes in," said aviation expert John Eakin, head of Air Data Research in Helotes, Texas.
Not counting Tuesday's disaster, there have been 12 airliner crashes since 1970 that yielded a sole survivor, according to data compiled by Dr. Todd Curtis, director of the Airsafe.com Foundation. Five of those survivors were minors and four were crew members, accounting for 75 percent of the total.
"I can't figure out for the life of me why crew members and children tend to be disproportionate in these sole-survivor events," Curtis said. "I don't think there's any particular type of aircraft or position in an aircraft which is more survivable, because it pretty much depends on what type of accident -- it depends on how the aircraft impacts," Eakin said. "Sometimes, the survivors are all located in the tail, sometimes in the forward fuselage. I don't think there's any rhyme or reason to it."
A 2007 Popular Mechanics magazine article, researched and written by Noland, presented a different view.
Noland analyzed 20 U.S. airline crashes in which at least one person lived and one person died. The statistics indicate that seats farther back in a plane are safer in crashes, the article said.
"Passengers near the tail of a plane are about 40 percent more likely to survive a crash than those in the first few rows up front," Noland wrote.
Passengers in seats behind the wings had a 69 percent survival rate in crashes that included at least one fatality, Noland wrote. Those with seats in coach areas over and forward of the wings survived 56 percent of the time, and passengers in first class and business class had a 49 percent survival rate, he found.
"To me, it's fairly obvious: You hit something going fast and obviously, the front is going to get crunched more than the back," Noland told CNN. "To quote one [National Transportation Safety Board] guy, 'Planes don't back into mountains.'"
Even in other types of crashes -- runway overruns, forced landings, etc. -- the plane is always going forward, so the front takes the impact, Noland said.
"That's why they put the crash recorders in the tail," he said.
Wide-bodied aircraft -- such as the Boeing 747 and 777 and the Airbus A310 and A330 -- tend to yield more survivors than smaller ones, Curtis said. He chalked up that trend to what he called the SUV theory: Larger crush zones provide more and larger areas of survivability.
Both Curtis and Eakin pointed to the July 1989 crash of United Airlines Flight 232 in Sioux City, Iowa. Spectacular video footage showed the McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 cartwheeling down an airport runway as pilot Al Haynes and first officer William Records tried to land the airliner without hydraulic controls. Of the 296 people aboard the plane, 111 were killed but 185 survived.
Not counting Tuesday's disaster, there have been 12 airliner crashes since 1970 that yielded a sole survivor, according to data compiled by Dr. Todd Curtis, director of the Airsafe.com Foundation. Five of those survivors were minors and four were crew members, accounting for 75 percent of the total.
"I can't figure out for the life of me why crew members and children tend to be disproportionate in these sole-survivor events," Curtis said. "I just don't think there's any pattern to survivability. It's just luck of the draw and depends on how the plane goes in," said aviation expert John Eakin, head of Air Data Research in Helotes, Texas.
Not counting Tuesday's disaster, there have been 12 airliner crashes since 1970 that yielded a sole survivor, according to data compiled by Dr. Todd Curtis, director of the Airsafe.com Foundation. Five of those survivors were minors and four were crew members, accounting for 75 percent of the total.
"I can't figure out for the life of me why crew members and children tend to be disproportionate in these sole-survivor events," Curtis said. "I don't think there's any particular type of aircraft or position in an aircraft which is more survivable, because it pretty much depends on what type of accident -- it depends on how the aircraft impacts," Eakin said. "Sometimes, the survivors are all located in the tail, sometimes in the forward fuselage. I don't think there's any rhyme or reason to it."
A 2007 Popular Mechanics magazine article, researched and written by Noland, presented a different view.
Noland analyzed 20 U.S. airline crashes in which at least one person lived and one person died. The statistics indicate that seats farther back in a plane are safer in crashes, the article said.
"Passengers near the tail of a plane are about 40 percent more likely to survive a crash than those in the first few rows up front," Noland wrote.
Passengers in seats behind the wings had a 69 percent survival rate in crashes that included at least one fatality, Noland wrote. Those with seats in coach areas over and forward of the wings survived 56 percent of the time, and passengers in first class and business class had a 49 percent survival rate, he found.
"To me, it's fairly obvious: You hit something going fast and obviously, the front is going to get crunched more than the back," Noland told CNN. "To quote one [National Transportation Safety Board] guy, 'Planes don't back into mountains.'"
Even in other types of crashes -- runway overruns, forced landings, etc. -- the plane is always going forward, so the front takes the impact, Noland said.
"That's why they put the crash recorders in the tail," he said.
Wide-bodied aircraft -- such as the Boeing 747 and 777 and the Airbus A310 and A330 -- tend to yield more survivors than smaller ones, Curtis said. He chalked up that trend to what he called the SUV theory: Larger crush zones provide more and larger areas of survivability.
Both Curtis and Eakin pointed to the July 1989 crash of United Airlines Flight 232 in Sioux City, Iowa. Spectacular video footage showed the McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 cartwheeling down an airport runway as pilot Al Haynes and first officer William Records tried to land the airliner without hydraulic controls. Of the 296 people aboard the plane, 111 were killed but 185 survived.
