Contrary to popular belief, there’s an excellent chance that buckling up your airline seatbelt will save your life. The International Herald Tribune tells us why:
What’s the point of listening to the safety instructions given by flight attendants? If there’s a crash, everybody dies, right?
Most airline passengers apparently feel this way. More than half of passengers in a large study by the National Transportation Safety Board admitted to routinely ignoring the flight attendants, heeding no more than half of their little spiel. But what the flight attendants say can very well save lives, because in any airplane accident, passengers are five times more likely to survive than to die.
[…] In 23 of the 27 DC-10 airplanes destroyed in accidents, 90 percent of the passengers have survived. In one 1989 crash in Sioux City, Iowa — a crash so violent that the plane broke into multiple sections and a fireball erupted — 185 of the 296 passengers and crew members survived, including a baby placed on the floor (as instructed).
The flight attendants have reason to tell you, first of all, to keep your seat belt fastened. People have broken their necks bouncing off the ceiling when a plane suddenly drops a few hundred feet in severe turbulence. But for anyone buckled in, a sudden drop, however stomach-churning, poses no danger.
2 responses so far ↓
1 maya // Apr 19, 2008 at 10:47 pm
damn straight!
2 JW // Apr 22, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Ok, but I still think the “in case of water landing” instructions are pretty useless. In case of water “landing”, a plane’s going to flip end over end and shatter into a few thousand pieces.
Just sayin’…
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