Tips to Survive a Plan Crash

On Christmas Eve 1971, lightning struck a commercial jet flying over Peru. It exploded. The only survivor out of 92 people on board? 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke. Still strapped in her seat, she fell two miles into the Peruvian rain  forest. Thanks to the survival skills her father taught her, she emerged 10 days later with a broken collarbone, ruptured knee ligaments,and covered in deep gashes, but still very much alive. Now, not all of us are trained survivalists, but there are certain things we can do to increase our chances of surviving a plane crash. After all, plane accidents in general have a 95% survival rate. You can start before you even get to the airport.

Experts recommend wearing tight-fitting clothing when you fly. If there is an accident, loose or baggy things are more likely to snag on jagged edges and slow you down. Plus, long, snug jeans and shirtsleeves can protect your limbs from sharp objects and fire. Double down on fire safety by wearing clothing made from cotton or other natural materials.

They don't burn or melt as easily as synthetic ones. And your shoes should be just as practical as the rest of your outfit. Boots, sneakers, and other shoes that won't fall off your feet are the smart choice when it comes to a safe escape. Officially, the Federal Aviation Administration says that no seat on an airplane is safer than any other, but the statistics disagree. In 2015, Time studied airplane accidents from the previous 35 years. It found that the seats inthe back third of the plane had a 32% fatality rate, compared to 39% in the middle and 38% in the front. And if you narrow it down even further, middle seats in the back hadthe best odds of survival, and the aisle seats inthe middle of the craft had the worst.

An analysis by University ofGreenwich professor Ed Galea found that sitting withinfive rows of an emergency exit will drastically improveyour chance of survival. Galea analyzed the seating charts from more than 100 plane crashes, interviewing 1,900 passengersand 155 crew members. He found that most survivors only had to move five rows or less before escaping the plane. Any more than that, yourodds of survival drop. Giving up a little leg roomis a small price to pay for some extra protection. Broken feet and legs arevery common in plane crashes. Protecting them is pivotalto a quick evacuation. Putting your carry-on underthe seat in front of you closes that gap, so your legs can't slideunder and get caught. It can also pad your shins if they fly forward during an impact. If you fly often, you mightnot always pay attention to the preflight safety briefing.

The US NationalTransportation Safety Board surveyed almost 500 passengers that were involved in a plane evacuation between 1997 and 1999. A little more than half of them said they paid attention to only 50% of the presentation or less. 13% said they didn't watch at all.

Of the passengers on theinfamous 2009 US Airways flight that landed in the Hudson, only about 30% of themwatched the briefing. After the impact, only 10 outof the 150 people on board grabbed their life vestsand evacuated with them. The most cited reason forignoring the briefing? Frequent fliers thoughtthey were already familiar with the equipment on board. The FAA has been testing brace positions on crash-test dummies since 1967. The postures have changed andupdated throughout the years, but the general idea has stayed the same. Lean forward and keep your head close to the seat in front of you. This serves two purposes.

One is to keep flailing to a minimum, and the other is to reduce thechance of a secondary impact. Secondary impact is a headinjury on top of a head injury, like what might happen if your head hits the seat on front of youmultiple times during a crash. The FAA recommends holding your head against the object it may hit and flexing or bending your limbs inward to keep them in place. In the rare event that an accident occurs while the plane is cruising, you could be faced with a free fall. Surviving a six-mileplummet is highly unlikely, but not impossible.

And if you stay attached to something, your chances are a little bit better. "Wreckage rider" is a term coined by amateur historian Jim Hamilton. Hamilton developed theFree Fall Research Page, an online database ofnearly every instance of humans falling from great heights. The record for the longestsurvived fall without a parachute is held by a wreckage rider. In 1972, a Serbian flightattendant named Vesna Vulovic fell 33,000 feet afterthe plane she was on blew up over Czechoslovakia. Wedged between a catering cart, her seat, a piece of the plane, and thebody of a fellow crew member, she crashed into a snowy incline severely injured but still alive.

People often have fatalistic attitudes when it comes to plane crashes, which can lead to apathy whenit comes to safety briefings. But the NTSB says plane accidents, which are when a planesuffers substantial damage or someone suffersserious injury or death, have a 95% survival rate. So the next time you hit turbulence and start thinking aboutall the ways you could die, think about all the waysyou could live instead.