on Christmas Eve 1971 lightning struck a
commercial jet flying over Peru it
exploded the only survivor out of 92
people on board 17 year old Juliana
koepka still strapped in her seat she
fell two miles into the Peruvian
rainforest thanks to the survival skills
her father taught her she emerged ten
days later with a broken collarbone
ruptured knee ligaments and covered in
deep gashes but still very much alive
now not all of us are trained
survivalists but there are certain
things we can do to increase our chances
of surviving a plane crash after all
plane accidents in general have a 95%
survival rate you can start before you
even get to the airport
experts recommend wearing tight-fitting
clothing when you fly if there is an
accident loose or baggy things are more
likely to snag on jagged edges and slow
you down plus long snug jeans and shirt
sleeves can protect your limbs from
sharp objects and fire double down on
fire safety by wearing clothing made
from cotton or other natural materials
they don't burn or melt as easily as
synthetic ones and your shoes should be
just as practical as the rest of your
outfit
boots sneakers and other shoes that
won't fall off your feet are the smart
choice when it comes to a safe escape
officially the Federal Aviation
Administration says that no seat on an
airplane is safer than any other but the
statistics disagree in 2015 Times
studied airplane accidents from the
previous 35 years it found that the
seats in the back third of the plane had
a 32% fatality rate compared to 39% in
the middle and 38% in the front and if
you narrow it down even further middle
seats in the back had the best odds of
survival and the aisle seats in the
middle of the craft had the worst an
analysis by University of Greenwich
professor Ed Galia found that sitting
within five rows of an emergency exit
will drastically improve your chance of
survival
Galia analyzed the seating charts for
more than a hundred plane crashes
interviewing 1900 passengers and 155
crew members
he found that most survivors only had to
move 5 rows or less before escaping the
plane any more than that your odds of
survival drop
giving up a little legroom is a small
price to pay for some extra protection
broken feet and legs are very common in
plane crashes protecting them is pivotal
to a quick evacuation putting your
carry-on under the seat in front of you
closes that gap so your legs can't slide
under and get caught it can also pad
your shins if they fly forward during an
impact if you fly often you might not
always pay attention to the preflight
safety briefing the US National
Transportation Safety Board surveyed
almost 500 passengers that were involved
in a plane evacuation between 1997 and
1999 a little more than half of them
said they paid attention to only 50
percent of the presentation or less 13
percent said they didn't watch it all of
the passengers on the infamous 2009 US
Airways flight that landed in the Hudson
only about 30 percent of them watched
the briefing after the impact only 10
out of the 150 people on board grabbed
their life vests and evacuated with them
the most cited reason for ignoring the
briefing frequent fliers thought they
were already familiar with the equipment
on board the FAA has been testing brace
positions on crash test dummies since
1967 the postures have changed and
updated throughout the years but the
general idea has stayed the same lean
forward and keep your head close to the
seat in front of you this serves two
purposes one is to keep flailing to a
minimum and the other is to reduce the
chance of a secondary impact secondary
impact is a head injury on top of a head
injury like what might happen if your
head hits the seat in front of you
multiple times during a crash the FAA
recommends holding your head against the
object it may hit and flexing or bending
your limbs inward to keep them in place
in the rare event that an accident
occurs while the plane is cruising you
could be faced with a freefall surviving
a six mile plummet is highly unlikely
but not impossible and if you stay
attached to something your chances are a
little bit better
wreckage Rider is a term coined by
amateur historian Jim Hamilton Hamilton
developed the freefall research page an
online database of nearly every instance
of humans falling from great heights the
record for the longest survived fall
without a parachute is held by a
wreckage writer in 1972 a Serbian flight
attendant named vesna vulovic fell
33,000 feet after the plane she was on
blew up over Czechoslovakia wedged
between a catering cart
seat a piece of the plane and the body
of a fellow crew member she crashed into
a snowy incline severely injured but
still alive people often have fatalistic
attitudes when it comes to plane crashes
which can lead to apathy when it comes
to safety briefings but the NTSB says
plane accidents which are when a plane
suffers substantial damage or someone
suffers serious injury or death have a
95 percent survival rate so the next
time you hit turbulence and start
thinking about all the ways you could
die think about all the ways you could
live instead
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