The Great Escape

FACT: Ninety-five percent of the people involved in U.S. airline accidents have survived. FACT: Aviation experts say that number could be even higher if the airline industry made improvements—and passengers took safety more seriously. Barbara S. Peterson reports on the science of evacuation and what's being done to get everyone out alive

It was not a miracle, but what happened to Air France flight 358 at Toronto's Pearson International Airport on August 2, 2005, could profoundly change the way most people think about large-scale airplane accidents.

Viewed one way, the crash was a disaster: The pilot unaccountably landed the plane halfway down a rain-slicked runway, skidded off the pavement, and tumbled into a ravine. The jetliner was destroyed, consumed by a fire so intense that the metal carcass continued to smolder for two days. From another perspective, though, the accident was vivid proof that serious plane crashes are survivable: In the two minutes it took for fire trucks to arrive and begin hosing down the burning aircraft, all 309 passengers and crew escaped alive. Click here to download a pdf graphic showing how passengers got out.

Within hours of the accident, newspaper headlines and broadcasters around the globe were calling it "the miracle of flight 358." But to the international team of researchers who sift through the details of crashes looking for ways to make them more survivable, it was nothing of the sort. "What happened on flight 358 was fantastic, but it was not about luck," says professor Helen Muir, an evacuation-science expert at Cranfield University, in Bedfordshire, England. "It's the result of everything we've been working on for the last twenty years."

Though it may be hard to believe, 95 percent of the passengers involved in all U.S. airliner accidents have survived. Even in the most serious crashes—those in which passengers were killed or badly injured or the plane was demolished—more than half of those on board lived. These statistics are partly explained by the fact that two-thirds of accidents occur during takeoff or landing, when speeds are similar to those of a race car and the impact is within survivable limits. But the odds of walking away from a crash are greater today than they have ever been largely because of safety advances that allow passengers to evacuate more quickly.

In the 1980s and '90s in particular, a series of life-saving improvements in aircraft design followed several high-profile accidents. For instance, aisles were widened and fire-retardant materials were added to cabins after a fire erupted aboard a British Airtours 737 during takeoff from Manchester in 1985: 55 passengers were killed by flames and smoke when they were trapped in the narrow aisle and unable to escape. One of the most important safety changes in recent history was made after an air-traffic- control error caused a USAir 737 to collide with a commuter plane at Los Angeles International Airport in 1991. While most everyone survived the impact, a pileup of passengers trying to exit the 737 prevented more than 20 people from escaping the advancing flames and toxic smoke. As a result, carriers widened the exit row pathways by seven inches (click here to download the timeline, "Lessons That Save Lives" ).