Does the choice of aircraft affect my survivability during an emergency?

Does the choice of aircraft affect my survivability during an emergency?

1/7/2014 10:00:51 AM

So let’s say you have to make an emergency landing, as you describe.

37% of fatalities occur in the final phases of flight – the initial approach, final approach and the landing. (Cynics will claim it almost all happens upon ‘landing’).

It could also be that your take-off went badly and they’re doing an emergency landing after that. So combining the two, 80% of crashes take place in the first 3 minutes after takeoff and the last 8 minutes before landing!

So obviously, this is a potentially dangerous time to be worried about an emergency. In the situation you describe, you’re already presumably in trouble if an emergency landing is taking place (eg, are you on fire, out of fuel, bird damage?).

So does the model of plane matter? Yes. According to FAA crash investigations, larger planes absorb more energy upon impact, meaning you’re subjected to less potentially deadly force, meaning more chance of surviving.

Maybe you’re concerned about the ‘safety’ of each plane model. In that case, you probably want to avoid the Concorde with the highest fatal crash rate per million flights. Of course, it’s not flying any more, but the Embraer Bandeirante certainly is, at the next highest rate. Of course it’s important to realise that crashes happen so rarely that we don’t have statistically significant sample sizes to accurately compare these.

In the end, there’s far more you can do onboard the aircraft to increase your survival rate, than when you’re on the ground choosing your aircraft/airline.

1/7/2014 9:43:56 AM

Simple answer no. There are some many factors in place that it is hard to limit that to only the size of the airplane.

If you compare the size of the titanic to the boats that are currently navigating our seas, the titanic is just a medium ship
Titanic comparison to qm (Source: Wiki commons)

The cliche still holds, flying is the safest mode of transportation. The weakest link remains the human factor, not the size.

Credit:stackoverflow.com‘

About me

Hello,My name is Aparna Patel,I’m a Travel Blogger and Photographer who travel the world full-time with my hubby.I like to share my travel experience.

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