How to Survive an Air Crash

Flying is my mistress. I love it; I have since I was 20 and first strapped myself into the cockpit of a Marine Corps jet fighter. Even today, my most satisfying moments come not in the courtroom but when I am lifting off the runway at the controls of my own plane. Put as simply as I know how, flying to me is pure joy.

But if you are not impressed with F. Lee Bailey's romantic notions about flying, let me flash my economic credentials. I own a firm that manufactures helicopters, I have owned and operated a small airport and each year I fly more than 100,000 miles in the seats of commercial airliners. Given all this, I think I qualify as a "loving critic" when I mention the unmentionable in the airline industry: a crash.

The crash I am talking about is what safety experts label the survivable crash. In those cases, the passenger-cabin area remains relatively intact after impact and the so-called decelerative forces experienced by the passengers are within human g-force tolerances. The chances of a crash's being survivable are fairly good. For example, most take-off and landing accidents--and they make up more than half the fatal accidents--have been termed survivable. This type of crash usually occurs at speeds of around 120, 140 and 160 knots, and the airliner most often hits the ground in a flat, or nose-up, attitude. Unless the plane collides with some obstacle on the ground that will split open the cabin, or a fuel tank, the passengers should be able to survive and evacuate the plane.

It is difficult to pinpoint accurately just how many persons have died needlessly in these survivable accidents. But some statistics give a fairly good indication of the size of the problem. Between 1967 and 1976, U. S. airlines were involved in 520 accidents that claimed 2098 lives, 1853 of them passengers. Up to 70 percent of those were accidents termed survivable by air-safety experts. Despite that, those accidents claimed 505 lives. Of that total, approximately 30 percent should have lived. The crash of a Southern Airways DC-9 jetliner at New Hope, Georgia, on April 4, 1977, is a good example of a survivable crash. With both engines out, the jetliner snaked down from 14,000 feet and with magnificent flying skill, the pilot attempted an emergency landing on a county highway. His luck ran out when the DC-9's wing clipped trees on the side of the highway. The plane then veered into a line of cars and smashed into some gasoline pumps. Sixty-three persons aboard the plane died, but that still was a survivable accident, and 22 other persons did just that: survived. They were injured, yes, but they managed to get out of that blazing wreckage alive. Twenty others also lived through the initial impact, but their bodies were found by rescue workers. The coroner's verdict: death from burns and smoke inhalation, but--and this is a key point--the autopsies showed no significant injuries.

If they weren't injured, why didn't they get away from the plane in time to save their lives? The possible reasons are numerous. Negative panic is one. In those cases, the shock of the accident leaves the passenger in a state of near paralysis and he or she simply makes no move to flee. Others may be trapped by the wreckage or are too hysterical to help themselves. To some, toxic smoke brings quick death. But there are others who simply do not know what to do. Too many airline passengers fall into that category, I think. Part of the blame has to be placed on the passengers themselves. We've all seen the "cool dude traveler." He is the one who is too sophisticated to be bothered to listen to the flight attendants' safety briefing. Usually, you can spot him easily, since he normally wears a painfully bored expression or deliberately looks out the window during the briefing. Others bury themselves in papers.

Psychologists tend to attribute some of this exaggerated nonchalance to what they term a feeling of powerlessness on the part of the passenger. The theory centers on flight attendants who deliver the emergency briefing in a casual manner, tending to downplay its value. The passenger then gets the feeling that he has no control over his environment and therefore ignores the briefing. If, as I have, you talk to fellow passengers who qualify as cool dudes, you'll find that the usual answers to why they do not pay attention to the briefing range from "Why should I listen, the plane isn't going to crash?" all the way to "If the plane crashes, I'll be killed anyway." Then there is the eternal optimist who tells you the pilot and the crew will take care of everything if the plane crashes. But what are the facts? Simply put, neither the cockpit crew nor the flight attendants can be counted on to save your life. Obviously, they do the best they can. Often their efforts are both successful and heroic. The record shows that in the face of the most terrifying emergencies, they will endanger their lives for the sake of the passengers. Most recently, this commitment to the passenger was dramatically demonstrated in both the Southern Airways accident and the onground collision of the Pan American and KLM jumbo jets in the Canary Islands. But relying on crew members is not always practical. After a crash, the flight attendants and the flight crew may be dead, trapped in the wreckage or even may have succumbed to that all-too-human failing: panic. If the survivability record is to be improved, the airlines are going to have to stress--and the passenger must accept--the idea that passengers must be responsible for saving their own lives. To put it in a phrase, if you want to survive, take the initiative. That in no way detracts from the importance of the flight attendants and their role in evacuation. What I am talking about is self-motivation. Get it set in your mind that it is you, the passenger, who may be seated next to the emergency exit that must be opened if you are to escape. It is you, the passenger, who may have to find his way into the tail-cone exit and trigger an escape slide. Or even more basic, but still a major problem, it is you, the passenger, who has to get out of that seat after the crash impact or face the very real possibility of death from burns or smoke inhalation.

I've already mentioned the bored passenger who ignores the pretake-off briefing. Yet some safety experts contend that he misses very little, since the only real information contained in the flight attendants' spiel is the use of oxygen masks and the location of the exits. That's not trivial, obviously. But in some cases, it may not be enough to get you out of a burning airplane. More instruction is needed. For example, why can't passengers be given a simulated demonstration on how to open an exit door or operate an escape slide? Or be briefed on how to escape through a tail-cone exit? Take the case of a Texas International Airlines DC-9 that crashed on take-off in 1976 from Stapleton International Airport in Denver. All 86 passengers aboard managed to evacuate the burning plane. But there were hairy moments.

One of those came when a flight attendant and several passengers tried to get out of the plane via the tail-cone exit. At best, the tail cone is not an easy exit. First, you have to open the door to get into the tail cone. Inside is a short catwalk that is not exactly designed for elderly or clumsy passengers. To the side of the catwalk is a handle that must be pulled. Once it is, the tail cone falls away and an evacuation slide deploys. But in this case, the flight attendant couldn't find the tail-cone-release handle because the area was so poorly lighted. The investigation also showed that one of the flight attendants had never been in the tail-cone area before. Another one had been there only once in 15 years. A passenger finally found the release handle in the semidarkness. But if the same passenger earlier had been overtaken by a great urge to learn about the tail-cone exit, he would have had a problem. None of the seat-back safety cards on the plane contained any instructions on operating the tail-cone exit. Such information is a passenger's key to survival. If he reads it, not once but every time he flies, it appears to remain in his mind and he is ready to act on it, if an emergency arises.

Doubtful of this kind of theorizing? Well, then, digest this: Questionnaires were filled out by 114 persons who had evacuated a Trans World Airlines 747 jumbo jetliner. The replies showed that of the 72 passengers who had not read the seat-back card prior to the evacuation, 40 were injured in the evacuation. But of the 42 persons who had read the card before the evacuation, only seven suffered injuries during the evacuation. A limited sample, true. But the fact that the percentage of passengers injured in the evacuation was three times greater for those who hadn't read the card than for those who had read it is impressive. And it leaves the strong impression that knowledge can mean survival. But simply reading the seat-back card and listening to the flight attendant aren't going to guarantee your safety. In fact, part of the problem is the emergency briefings themselves. They are not as good as they could be.

Example: Have you, as an airline passenger, ever been told not to carry personal belongings with you in the event of (continued on page 372)Air Crash (continued from page 174) an evacuation? Or of the urgency of simply getting out of the plane after a crash because of the danger of death from those deadly twins, smoke and fire? Most important, have you ever been told that there may be more exits aboard some jetliners than there are flight attendants to open them? Part of the problem with evacuation is that passengers really have no idea of what to expect when a plane crashes--at least as far as what happens in the cabin.

It is not unusual for the ceiling panels, overhead racks, life rafts, blankets, dinner trays from the galley, oxygen masks or movie projectors to tumble to the aisles and seats. Worse, carry-on luggage--that one item that is so very dear to most airline passengers--can become a deadly menace in a crash. Many passengers try to take their luggage with them after a crash. This can create stability problems when they try to hold on to it and use an emergency chute or slide down a wing. The impact of the crash often dislodges the luggage and tosses it into the aisle. Most flight attendants are constantly checking carry-on luggage for proper positioning. But the truth is there is no proper position and the luggage should be banned from under the seats.

Another pet peeve of mine is the safety belt. Not enough attention is paid to it. It may seem trivial to some, but release of a seat belt--especially for those persons who fly infrequently--can be a problem that will waste time when seconds can mean the difference between life and death. What investigators have found is that some passengers, under the stress of the crash and the evacuation, revert to a previously learned response of opening their automobile seat belt, which most commonly has a button to push. Critical moments are wasted while they fumble with their belts, trying to find a button. A brief lecture on this possible problem could save lives. Even more effective would be a recommendation by the Air Transport Association of America and the International Air Transport Association that the airlines standardize all seat-belt designs.

Another safety problem in the cabin that can only be solved by repeated education is improper use of the oxygen mask. We've all seen the flight attendant dangle the mask for our edification and then place it over her face and turn from side to side to show how it should fit. But in real life, when the masks deploy, passengers have been found to be more than a little confused, since most airline briefings on the mask are too brief. In some systems, it is necessary to pull a lanyard to get the oxygen flowing. In others, you must pull the mask toward you to activate the flow of oxygen. In many tests, passengers have been shown to lean forward into the mask, which seems the more natural thing to do, but by doing this, they get no oxygen, since the "pulling" of the mask activates the system.

True, the flight attendants allude to this, but they do it with a smile and very briefly. I think a few well-chosen phrases by flight attendants on the qualities of oxygen might make an impression on the average passenger. For one, they could point out that when you are using the oxygen mask, there is no smell to oxygen. More dangerous, in a decompression incident, you have no feeling of a need for oxygen. That has led passengers to believe their masks were not working and they have begun moving from seat to seat to find a "working" mask: and that can prove fatal. Others have been known to place the mask over their mouth during decompression and breathe through their nose, yet another bad mistake. I know that most airlines require flight attendants to use the phrase "placing the mask over your nose and mouth," but it is done without any real emphasis on the reason behind it. Nor is mention often made of the need for mothers to first place the mask to their own faces, and then immediately attend to a child. Not the other way around. If that isn't done, the mother could lose consciousness while she attempted to care for the child, and then both mother and child would face the threat of death.

What is also lacking in the briefing is a sense of urgency in the use of oxygen masks. If there is a rapid decompression incident at, say, 37,000 feet, it is entirely possible to lose consciousness in as little as 15 seconds. If you think I am over-dramatizing the lack of understanding about oxygen masks, consider this example: A DC-10 jumbo jet was descending from 35,000 feet near Brownsville, Texas, in 1974, getting ready for an approach to Mexico City, when it suffered a pressurization malfunction. The DC-10's oxygen masks are packaged in passenger-seat backs, but in an emergency, doors open automatically and the oxygen masks are exposed. The system worked perfectly, but only two of the 53 passengers removed the stowed masks to activate the oxygen generators. The 51 other passengers either did nothing or merely leaned forward and attempted to breathe without fully removing the masks from their compartments.

The flight attendants had to circulate through the cabin, instructing the passengers on how to use the masks. Picture the scene if the decompression had been a rapid one. In my mind, rapid decompression is always a possibility, but the threat, I feel, is a minimal one. Decompression "accidents" average about three a year. But in only one of those has decompression been rapid enough to cost a life. However, it is the potential that concerns me. So I advocate that the passenger be given more detailed lectures by flight attendants on oxygen masks, their problems and their lifesaving potential.

Probably the most mysterious of all safety devices aboard an airliner is the escape slide. It is never seen and seldom talked about and, in most cases, a passenger finds out about its existence only when he has to evacuate an airplane. At that point, he is being asked to jump into what looks to him like a king-size, but very flimsy, bed sheet. That is wrong. Passengers should be told about evacuation slides by the flight attendants and not simply be expected to read about them on a seat-back card, assuming they find one to read in the seat back. Many of the injuries caused by the slides are results of passengers' piling up at the bottom, trying to sit, rather than jump into the slide or taking personal belongings with them down the slide. You can see that, in part, these injuries are due to the lack of mental preparedness on the part of the passenger. In effect, he is suddenly asked to trust his body to an unknown item. That is asking a lot from someone who may just have survived an airplane crash and is driven to the exit by smoke and fire. But a few words from the flight attendant about the slides during a pretake-off briefing would help immeasurably to prepare the passenger.

While I am on the subject of escape slides, I want to talk about shoes. For years, in emergencies, flight attendants have been telling passengers to take off their shoes to prepare for a crash. In the past, it was true that shoes, particularly the stiletto heels favored by women, impeded walking in a wrecked airplane, and they could tear holes in evacuation slides. But time has marched on and most women no longer wear the same kind of spiked heels. Also, escape slides are now made of stronger materials. More importantly, investigations have shown that in many cases, passengers have been badly injured in evacuations when their shoeless feet were burned or cut as they fled across cabin floors seared by flames or pocked with sharp wreckage. The time has come to re-examine the shoe problem. And the time also may have come for the airline industry to re-examine its entire philosophy on cabin safety--at least as it relates directly to their passengers.

From a technological standpoint, today's airliner is a marvel. There are 13,500 airline flights every day. Jetliners cross the Atlantic at the average rate of one every 15 minutes. In 1976 and 1977, U.S. airlines flew more than five billion miles and had a fatality rate of .002 for every 1,000,000 miles flown. And for every fatal accident, the airlines have averaged more than 2,000,000 flights. Based on aviation's accident rate over the past five years, a passenger could fly more than 300,000,000 miles before an accident. Put another way, the percentage of safe flights is 99.99998. All of that is done by a machine that may have as many as 4,500,000 parts, 100 miles of wiring and 2000 pieces of tubing. The same aeronautical geniuses have created the supersonic transport and are now thinking in terms of commercial space travel.

But when it comes to talking about safety to passengers, the industry gets nervous. It clings to the philosophy that airplane maintenance is the only thing that counts. It is a sort of "if we can keep them flying, we don't have to worry about evacuating passengers" type of attitude. That is often reflected in the role given the flight attendant. Generally, you will find the flight attendants under the in-flight services department, not under airline flight operations, even though these men and women are charged with the safety of a cabinload of passengers. But airline marketing men usually take a dim view of any plan that makes passengers more conversant with safety. Obviously, it is not because they are antisafety. They are not, but discussion of items such as risk exposure, decompression or evacuation slides simply does not fit into the accepted marketing concept.

Maybe it should. In fact, maybe the airlines should start selling safety to passengers with the same priority they give to other flight operations. Some already have taken the first steps in that direction by continuously searching for ways to improve the preflight briefings. I think a variety of items are needed, a saturation approach. For example, what could qualify as more "wasted time" than the period spent at the plane gate waiting for your flight to be called? There is an opportunity for an airline to install a simple film that would introduce the passengers to items such as the escape slide, the life jacket and the knowledge needed to open an exit door. I know the critics immediately cry that the passenger is frightened by a display hinting that his trip might end in disaster. I say, "Nuts." Your average traveler is just too sophisticated to be thrown into a funk because someone presents him with information that could, should the need arise, save his life. How many persons object to the antihijack measures? But for those who might reject the idea of a film at the boarding gate, I submit that one could be shown during the preflight cabin briefing, an idea already undergoing some testing. I also realize that repetition of the same film would quickly turn off passengers. But there is nothing to say that the films couldn't be varied.

Some airlines provide their passengers with a selection of channels for their entertainment. You can get classical music, pop/rock and comic monologs, if you don't care to listen to the movie sound. Why not add a channel to carry a well-produced cabin-evacuation lecture? Or why would it be impractical for flight attendants to talk to individual rows of passengers periodically about evacuation procedures? I am talking about long flights, when both the passengers and the flight attendants have time to spare. The idea would be to encourage questions from passengers that were not answered in the preflight briefing. Along the same line, it could pay dividends for flight attendants on flights of, say, over five hours to repeat on the landing approach some of the more salient facts: the locations of exits or a reminder to reread seat-back cards, as well as the usual instructions on trays, seat backs and safety belts. Another item to consider is screening passengers who sit next to wing exits. That is a key position in many evacuations and not a spot for either the elderly or the infirm. Nor would it do harm to have flight attendants give a simple briefing on how to open the wing exit. I have sat next to passengers who have revealed that they didn't know they were seated next to one.

Is that the fault of the airlines? No, the airlines did everything they were required to do. The wing exit was in place. It was clearly labeled. And the flight attendants had pointed it out in the pretake-off briefing. But, to me, that all-too-numerous unaware, or unreached, passenger represents a safety failure. In the airline industry, failure has never been tolerated in the cockpit; why should it be in the cabin?

"The truth is there is no proper position for luggage and it should be banned from under the seats."