Let’s say you are a CEO on your way to Washington to ask Congress for a bailout. You don’t want to take the corporate jet because the media and shareholders will tear you to shreds. Your hybrid Toyota Prius is in the shop, so you have to fly commercial coach. How scared should you be?
Not too much, according to some experts. Indeed, Thursday’s miraculous survival of all 155 aboard a U.S. Airways Airbus 320 that ditched in the Hudson River just after take off from La Guardia shows that your mortality is not a foregone conclusion in airplane crashes.
Here are a few points from blogger Ben Sherwood:
- The National Transportation Safety Board has found that 95.7 percent of all passengers survived crashes between 1982 and 2000.
- Not everyone freaks out in a crash. Screaming when told to “brace for impact” may be natural behavior while panic is not. Many passengers actually remain calm and help each other, experts find.
- Knowing what to do in a crash can save you and others. Experts find that 30 percent of those killed didn’t know what to do.
- Try to sit within five rows of an exit and in aisle seats.
- Pay attention to the safety briefing.
- Be prepared to act within three minutes after takeoff and eight minutes just before landing. That’s when 80 percent of accidents happen.
- Relax. Your changes of being killed in flight are one in 60 million.
That’s what I should have told myself. I was nervous in a U.S. Airways jet taking off from La Guardia just two afternoons before Flight 1549 went in.
