The 5 Row Rule and 5 Expert Ways To Survive A Plane Crash
The tragic crash of Air France Flight 447 and apparent death of all aboard may have you feeling apprehensive and somewhat disappointed in air travel. Despite what the media portrays, 76.6% of people survive serious plane crashes and there are some simple ways you can increase your chances of survival if you are ever in one.
There isn’t much you can do if you’re on a jumbo jet that completely fails and you plummet to the ground from a high altitude like Flight 447. Luckily for us this isn’t how most crashes happen and expert research from air tragedies can teach us a lot about how to make it out of a disaster.
The 5 Row Rule
According to Ben Sherman, the author of The Survivors Guide: The Secrets and Science That Could Save Your Life, research shows that passengers usually move an average of 5 rows before they can get off a burning aircraft. Sitting any further away than 5 rows from any exit row greatly reduces your chances of surviving. You can also slightly improve your chances by sitting at the back of the plane.
Be Alert When Crashes Are Likeliest To Happen
Plane crash from statistics PlaneCrashInfo.com show that 68% of plane crashes occur with in 30 minutes of takeoff and 30 minutes of landing. In fact, 79% of all crashes happen when the plane isn’t cruising. Ben Sherman suggests that those are the times when most of us are buried in our books, deafened by iPods, and ignoring the safety directions. (Reading them, by the way increases your chance of survival too, even for frequent fliers.)
Keep Your Seat Belt On
Sudden losses of altitude and turbulence are rare but more common than plane crashes. A steep drop in altitude due to a strong downdraft, or computer error as happened on Qantas flight in 2008 can cause serious injuries. If you do survive the initial impact you don’t want to be hindered by a broken leg or head laceration because you were tossed about the cabin on the way down. A mere 20 second steep dive on that Qantas flight caused a number of serious injuries and while there was no crash, the injuries could have prevented those passengers from evacuating.
Dress For Success
Avoid wearing highly flammable clothing like nylon stockings and footwear that’s difficult to run in like flip-flops. Comfort is important but take a moment to think about how practical your clothing is before you head to the airport. It’s also a good idea to keep your shoes on during the critical times of takeoff and landing.
Put The Most Important Things In Your Pocket
Experts say that the single biggest factor to slow down an airplane evacuation are people trying to grab things out of their carry-on luggage. Anything that is sentimentally important or valuable enough to you that you’d risk your life to save should be in your pockets. If it can’t fit forget it. You can always by a new one and I’m sure your wife will forgive you for leaving behind that pen she gave you. Your loved ones would rather have you.
500 Feet (150 Meters)
Get at least 500 feet away from the aircraft’s wreckage to avoid explosions and fire from the plane but don’t get so far away that you’ll get lost or can’t be found. (Both are easy to do in a tense situation.) For water landings, get as far from the wreckage as possible to avoid strong waves and getting pulled under as the craft sinks.
Some More Survival Tips
- Stay Sober – Even though drinking is one of 3 fun things to do if your flight gets canceled being drunk won’t help you in any disaster, aerial or not. Getting drunk right before your flight is the worst time to be inebriated.
- Relieve Your Anxiety Without Relying On The Statistics – The further you are from being calm and assertive the less clearly you’ll be able to think and do the best things to survive. Relax while on any flight because your odds of being in a crash are extraordinarily small. Stress and blood clots from flying are more likely to kill you.
Be Prepare But Not Scared
Your chances of being involved in a plane crash are very, very small. While these precautions are sound advice, don’t preoccupy yourself by worrying too much about them. Use common sense and be aware when it counts, get a seat close to the exit, dress practically, and enjoy your flight.
[photos by: eperales, Ti.mo, Peter Gerdes]
Heroes Superpowers Any Traveler Would Love To Have
I don’t have a TV but have been catching up to the show Heroes on Hulu and Netflix online (here’s how to watch them outside of the US). It seems that most of the characters are so busy trying to save the world from some crazy plot twist when their powers would be more useful in the hands of you, the traveler.
If you could steal the powers of 3 characters ala Peter Petrelli, you’ll want to take the best ones to be a super-traveler.
Hiro Nakamura – Teleportation
Time travel is a good power too, except that you could screw up the space-time continuum, or your mom. So take his power to teleport anywhere he pleases and use it to skip airport lines, visa hassles, and swing by Paris for a few hours after work. The best part is you can take your friends with you, just make sure they’re holding your hand.
Nathan Petrelli – Flying
Sure, teleporting gets you from place to place, but flying gets you the best camera angles. There won’t be too many other photographers that will get the shots you do. Adrian Pasdar, who plays Nathan, actually starting flying in the 80s with Tom Cruise in Top Gun (clip below).
Micah Sanders – Technopath
This little kid has the ability to talk to machines and have his way with technology (”technopathy” not techno-party). A great gift to have if you can’t figure out a train ticketing kiosk in Chinese or are baffled by the payphones in Europe. You could also be mischievous and get free plane tickets or manipulate ATM machines but borrowing wi-fi and avoiding speed traps is as far as I’d go.
Take 2 More
It’s unfortunate the writers of the show couldn’t give any female characters some good traveling powers, but here are two that are close enough.
- Daphne Millbrook - Can move at super speeds, useful for obvious reasons.
- Molly Walker - Think Facebook is a good way to find old friends, try just thinking about them to get the exact location.
Superheroes doing super things are nice, but superpowers could really make routine tasks, like traveling, so much easier than thwarting villains. What is truly special is that so many people already are super travelers, with no magic required.
Star Trek’s Top Intergalactic Travel Destinations
“To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations…”
-Star Trek title sequence
The Star Trek universe is full of planets which may not be real but certainly would be great travel destinations if they were. Imagine a universe where you could hop on board a shuttle craft and zip around the galaxy like an Enterprise crew member. Here are the Star Trek intergalactic destionations you’d want to beam down to first.
Risa
You know you’re heading to a fun place when it’s nicknamed the “pleasure planet”. Risa is home to the free loving Risans who converted their rainy planet into a tropical paradise where most anything goes. Getting laid in Risa is about as easy as placing a fertility statue (known as the horga’hn shown below) next to your chair by the pool to let the locals know you’re feeling frisky.
Vulcan
The Vulcans may be too logical for it, but their deserts, rocky terrain, and mountains would make for some pretty sweet off-roading and hiking grounds. Gravity on Vulcan is stronger than here on Earth, so you’ll need to get a decent amount of speed on your ATV for good jumps. It would also make a great place to hike, camp, and has several plenty of religious temples to visit as well.
Andoria
The ice moon, not too far from Vulcan, rarely gets above -30 degrees Celsius (in the summer). Completely covered with snow, ice, and mountains it would make a great place to cross country ski, or snowboard – provided that you bundle up. (Especially since Earth’s ski resorts are heating up.) All of the Andorian cities are underground and its caves are popular honeymoon destinations.
Notable Mentions – Some of the worlds that didn’t make the list but were close in the running.
- Betazed – Generally mild with lush rain forests and jungles. Just don’t try to lie to your Betazoid travel agent, they can read minds.
- Trill - The Hoobshian Baths are a little bit of sauna and a little bit of Risa in one.
- Romulus - I suspect that Romulus would be a great place to jet ski since its covered in vast lakes and oceans. It might be hard to get a tourist visa though, the Romulans are notoriously suspicious and don’t like aliens.
The Winner: Sol III aka. Earth
The planet we all take for granted has everything and more than the fictional worlds of Star Trek above can offer. With our oceans, wildlife, mountains, deserts, variety of climates to name a few, I’m sure that Earth will be the tourist destination of the 24th century and beyond. Let’s just hope we can take care of it so it lasts and flourishes until then.
Aren’t we lucky that we live on the best travel planet in the galaxy? The Star Trek worlds are really archetypes of what already exists here on Earth and a reminder not to take it for granted. Perhaps those strange new worlds are not as far as think and what drives us to travel as much as we can.
“It can be argued that a human is ultimately the sum of his experiences.”
-Benjamin Sisko, Deep Space: 9.
How Your Memory Fuels Your Fear of Flying
There are a number of you, including myself, that don’t necessarily trust airplanes even though we fly many times throughout the year. Much of our anxieties are fueled by the availability heuristic, basically how easily it is to recall past incidents, in this case, plane crashes.
Psychology Today has an intriguing article that might help to ease, or at least explain, your airplane crash worries – despite the underwhelming odds against them.
What is the probability that the next plane you fly on will crash? The true probability of any particular plane crashing depends on a huge number of factors, most of which you’re not aware of and/or don’t have reliable data on. What type of plane is it? What time of day is the flight? What is the weather like? You get the idea.
Indeed, you probably have little or no data from which to base your estimate. Well, that’s not exactly true. In fact, there is one piece that evidence that you always have access to: your memory. The easier time we have recalling prior incidents, the greater probability the event has of occurring — at least as far as our minds are concerned. In a nutshell, this is the availability heuristic.
An example of an unexpected outcome due to our generally poor ability to gauge risks became evident after September 11, 2001.
When To Fight The Airlines
Often times you’re stuck waiting stand-by for a flight during a snow storm so angry that fumes are steaming off of your head. You want to do something but look around and see everyone else in the same agony and decide to do nothing.
With airfares going up and service going down, should you act or should you just keep quiet like everyone else?
A rule of thumb to follow is always fight the airlines when you think you’ve been wronged or the airlines don’t live up to their obligations.
- Don’t complicate things and speak up. You paid money for those plane tickets, remember?
- Avoid being complacent even if others are and hold the airlines to their obligations.
- Speak up – even when others are. Although the raging idiot yelling at everyone behind the ticket counter is embarrassing themselves, don’t worry that you’ll be seen as equally unstable. (It can actually help sometimes.) Also, don’t assume that other people voicing their opinions and gripes will be voicing yours as well – make your point, and clearly.
Speaking up is vital if you want to be reimbursed, upgraded, or get a decent explanation on how late to your destination you’ll really be. As simple as it is, most travelers – even experienced ones – stay quiet when they are bumped from flights, stuck sitting on the runway for hours, or get the run around from airline employees.
Remind yourself what the airlines do to you when you’re late or miss a flight – they make you pay. That contract goes both ways. Next week I’ll be taking a look at how to voice your complaints effectively during a number of situations to make sure you are compensated when the airlines don’t live up to their obligations.
[photo by: Mozul]
Will Flying Separately Save Your Family In A Plane Crash?
The other day I heard the morbid logic from a (non) frequent flier that he takes separate flights with one child and his wife with their other two. They do this so that in case of a plane crash, their family and one of the children will survive. This is not the first time I’ve heard people bring this up – some parents take separate flights when they leave the kids behind with relatives for this very reason.
As odd as it sounds, the idea intrigues me, does flying separately really reduce the chances of losing your entire family in a plane crash?
The Numbers
According to Plane Crash Info, the odds of you dying in a commuter plane crash are 1 per every 140,000 flight hours. Americans are at slightly higher risk, they have about a 1 in 20,000 chance of dying in a plane accident and frequent flier are more likely to die in a crash.
Two Flights, Better Odds?
Taking two flights (since plane crashes are random events) doesn’t reduce your chances of dying to 1 in 40,000. It just gives each passenger (if you’re family is taking two planes) a 1 in 20,000 chance of dying in a crash. So, even if the plane goes down you may still survive depending on where you sit and the type of crash.
Interview With Cabin Cuddler Creator Jim Levings
Jim Levings is a former pilot who created the Cabin Cuddler travel blanket, which I reviewed earlier this week. Jim is a fascinating fellow who was kind enough to let me ask him a few questions about his product the Cabin Cuddler, how he found out that airplane blankets aren’t washed, and his career as a pilot.
Jim, in your own words, describe the Cabin Cuddler for us.
The Cabin Cuddler is a travel blanket designed to solve the basic problems travelers have with airplane blankets and pillows on flights.
What inspired you to create the Cabin Cuddler?
I created the Cabin Cuddler about 6 years ago and got the inspiration while I was an airline pilot. I was coming back from a four hour flight and just sitting at the back of a plane. I noticed this lady trying to get wrapped up in a blanket then struggling to get up to her carry-on in the overhead bin then sitting and trying to eat a meal . As I watched her go through this process I thought to myself, there has got to be a better travel blanket that can solve the problems she’s going through.
I sketched out on napkin the basic design and gave it to my sister who is a design artist and we came up with the Cabin Cuddler.
Why this particular design?
The original design of the blanket hasn’t changed since we started. We may have made some changes to the packaging and have since included an inflatable pillow and made the tote bag reversible. We wanted to make an all encompassing blanket and pillow combination that would be easy to carry and travel with.
Your website, CabinCuddler.com mentions that airplane blankets are reused many times, spreading germs – are they not washed after each use?
How To Figure Out What Aircraft You’re On To Get The Best Seats
Many of us don’t know what type of airplane we’re flying in until we get on board, if we care to find out at all. There are some good reasons to look up what type of aircraft you’ll be getting on before your next flight – it’s easy to do and but you need to know why first.
- Find The Best Seats - You won’t be able to find the seats with the most legroom, closest power outlets, or other amenities if you’re ignorant of the aircraft you’re flying on. Take advantage of SeatGuru and reserve the best seats on every flight.
- Use The Secret Seats - Many popular airplanes like Delta’s 757 or USAir’s 737 have secret seats, which aren’t the standard aisle or emergency exit seats either. When booking your next flight find out the aircraft you’ll be flying on so you can request a secret seat by calling the airline ahead of time.
If you’re particularly fearful of flying you can examine the airplane’s safety card or check out how many times your aircraft has crashed.
How To Find Out The Type of Airplane Before Your Next Flight
In most cases you can get this information as you’re booking online underneath your flight itinerary. (Click seat map on Expedia or current seat availability on Travelocity.) You can also get this information by calling the airline directly, or better yet calling a travel agent or local airline office for this information, they’ll usually give it to you for free. (It’s faster than calling the main airline number.)
This can get confusing however if you’re given more than 1 flight number. Code-sharing allows airlines to extend their routes without actually adding planes and if you’re booking under one you’ll almost certainly have 2 flight numbers. As SeatGuru explains,
Tray Table Advertising
On my recent US Airways flight from Ft. Lauderdale back to Dulles International Airport (outside of Washington DC), I put down my tray table to rest my laptop on to find this.
What do you think of this Verizon tray table ad – a clever way of raising revenues in tough economic times, or more price gouging like raising fuel charges even though the price of jet fuel is going down?
I’m personally on the fence about it. While the ads don’t bother me, I do feel that the increase in fares doesn’t warrant it. I look forward to hearing any comments you may have on whether tray table ads are intrusive or innovative.
Secret Seats On Airplanes
Peter Greenberg shares the best coach seat numbers to get on a variety of aircraft. These ’secret seats’ aren’t the emergency exit or aisle seats either.
Here’s a full list of the secret seats by airline and aircraft:
- American Airline 767 – (Domestic flights only) 17H and 17J
- American 757 – 10A and 10F
- Delta 757 – 20A
- United 757 – 8A
My name is Anil, a traveler and travel enthusiast. I created foXnoMad to connect with other travelers, discover their world, and share what I’ve learned about mine.
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