How To Survive A Plane Crash

It's happening. All of a sudden you're falling from a incredible hight of a 6,700 feet with
no chance of survival. Everyone else is dead or falling to their doom unconscious. The pilot
went rst and fell onto the uncontrollable panel of buttons and levers you would never be able to
understand. As you descend at 120 mph, you know your end has come. Or has it?

Milla Harrison, a BBC Horizon news reporter, says that from all 568 U.S. plane crashes
from 1980 to 2000, 90% of the people in plane crashes survived. You and I may not know how
to y a plane, and even if we did, every plane is different, but by following these simple few
steps, we can change our greatest fear, into our greatest feat.



Let's rst go over the cold hard research. You can't walk
onto a plane hoping that a plane crash is going to happen. The
reason people use planes is because of their speed and safety.
The chance of a plane crash is 1 to 15 million says Mark
Cleanliss, a U.S.A. safety inspector for planes. In this article
you'll nd out how to tackle the problem with tips that work from
survivors and experts.












Now that you know that the odds of getting in a plane crash is 1 to 15 million, what is
your chance of survival should the worst happen? The owners of howstuffworks.com have been
calculating the chances of survival, and it turns out that your chance of survival is 29.4 million to
1. This may seem like a very high number due to the terrifying stories you hear about plane
crashes, but from 1980-2000 90% of everyone in the crashes survived. How did they do it? Well
rst, when a plane is crashing, it doesn't just jitter around a
hundred miles an hour, it usually keeps level, only going down
a little bit every second. Putting that aside, what if we look at
those cases that we don't want to be caught in, like if the
plane is on re? Well, rst thing you might want to do is decide
if drinking on a plane is really worth it. If you are in a plane
crash the alcohol will slow your reaction time, reducing your
chances of survival. Another thing is you need to make sure
you wear your shoes. You need to keep your shoes on
because they will protect you from glass, metal, and ames if
the plane blows up or catches on re. Also it's also a good
idea to wear long sleeve shirts and pants for the same reason.

Another good thing to remember is where the exits are! If there is a re, then there will
be smoke. Smoke will limit your vision and you will be unable to see in front of you, so a good
strategy is to count how many seats away the exit is so you can nd it in case of a smoke out.
Safety ofcials refuse to say that the back of the plane is safer, but Levi Remodo, a scientist
from California, says that in his hufngtonpost.com blog that the back of the plane is 40% safer
then the other places. The hufngtonpost.com also says that the "golden" time for crashes is
when just taking off and just landing. After the 10 minute "golden" time, your chances to get into
a crash go far down, but then they go up when your about to land, but don't worry, at those
points you aren't that high in the air, if even in the air!

During a plane crash your worst enemy is panic, any people could have stayed alive if
they didn't panic. The rst thing you need to do when in a plane crash is to put on your airbag,
even if you have babies with you, because
if you don't put yours on rst, you might
faint and have no chance of survival at all.
Listen to preight instructions even if you
have heard it a thousand times, because
every plane is different. It might tell you
that the door exits come in, not out, or that
exit door three doesn't work for this ight. If
you want to use the safest planes in the
world, then you might want to aboard Australia's Qantas airlines according to the airplane safety
charts from www.airlineratings.com, as they haven't had a fatality since 1951.

The last thing you might want to know is that even though you might think that you
should just jump off the plane if it is going to crash, but that's denitely not always true. 50% of
airplane crashes are the faults of the airplane pilot, 15% of mistakes is from weather problems
and only 5% is due to mechanical issues. That means that the other 30% are miscellaneous!
like terroristMeaning about only 55% of the time you should jump out. What about the other
45%? You should always listen to the instructions given to you, but don't wait for them either! If
you hear your captain say something, follow his instructions. That leaves another question
though, what if your pilot is dead?

If you nd that your pilot is dead or unable to y, the rst thing you're going to want to do
is let the co pilot take control. If you are ying on a private plane it might be that you are the next
shot at survival, but rst make sure no one else has a pilot license. Because I too
would be stupid just to take control when someone with the experience is there, but if not, the
rst thing you need to do is remove his body from the seat. Sit in the seat and take use of the
controls. It may seem scary and big, but you can gure it out because all planes have these
essential things that we are about to go over. Here is what you need to nd;

Airspeed meter: this shows you how fast the plane is going

Throttle: lever that makes the plane ascend or descend

Yoke: this is the steering wheel pull back to go up, push down to go down

Altimeter: shows your altitude

Heading: compass that shows the direction the plane is heading

Flaps: make sure you use throttle not aps to change air speed

Fuel: shows how much fuel you have left


After you take the controls, you need to put on the pilots radio headset and say,
"Mayday, mayday." If you don't get a response, turn to radio 121.5, this is the emergency
channel, and they will tell you what to do. If you do need to land the plane, remember to always
try to land on the attest surface. A careful landing on tough terrain is better then careless
landing on smooth surfaces.
Hopefully this
guid has helped you on what to do, and remember that no matter what happens, you have the
means of living. So next time you hear about people dying in a plane crash ask yourself, do you
think you could survive that? Because you can survive.



Works Cited
"Airline Ratings." Airline Ratings. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 May 2014.
"HowStuffWorks "How to Survive a Plane Crash"" HowStuffWorks. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 May 2014.
"HowStuffWorks "Survival Tips and Crash Myths"" HowStuffWorks. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 May 2014.
"List of Accidents and Incidents Involving Commercial Aircraft." Wikipedia. Wikimedia
Foundation, 20 May 2014. Web. 22 May 2014.
"Plane Crash Statistics - Fear of Flying - FEAR OF FLYING." FEAR OF FLYING RSS. N.p., n.d. Web.
20 May 2014.
"Understanding Americas Broken Economy." Bacons Rebellion. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 May 2014.