The key factor in surviving a plane crash is the design of the plane, according to USA Today. Airlines must certify that they can get all passengers off a plane within 90 seconds in an emergency situation.
Passengers were able to survive the crash of Asiana Airlines in San Francisco on Saturday because planes have strengthened their safety features in response to previous crashes, creating more durable planes, according to aviation safety experts.
Wheels are designed to break on impact, but the fuselage and seating has been strengthened to protect passengers, experts say.
"It's because of what we've learned from past accidents and that's due to great accident investigation techniques and taking what we've learned about what's failed about the structure of the airplane," Kevin Hiatt, the CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation, told USA Today. "They hit very hard, they skidded down the runway and then into the dirt and then really rotated around.
"It's great design characteristics that kept everything intact on that airplane so that people could actually evacuate," Hiatt continued.
Most experts consider Boeing's 777 a safe plane. It was first introduced approximately 20 years ago. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which investigates crashes, has recorded 57 incidents with Boeing 777 since May 1997.
"We can generally say it's one of the safest airlines in the sky," Hiatt said. "Other than that, this aircraft has got a great safety record.
"It's one of the safest airliners up there," he continued.
A study of airline incidents has found that even when commercial airliners crash, most passengers are able to walk away. Out of 568 incidents since 1983, the NTSB found that 2,280 of the 53,487 passengers died, giving a survival rate of 95.7 percent.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found airline travel to have a fatality rate of .2 for every one million-airline departures, still making airline travel the safest form of transportation, even including escalators.
"The statistics are such that commercial aviation is incredibly safe," John Hansman, an aerospace professor at MIT and the director of the International Center for Air Transportation, said. "One of the ways that we do this is making the airplanes as crash-worthy as possible when you do have an incident like this, where there was apparently a problem on landing."
A major factor in survival was getting all the passengers out of the aircraft before it burned, according to Hansman.
"If people had dawdled getting off this airplane, that would have put them at increased risk," Hansman said. That is why the 90-second certification is so important.
News coverage of the Asiana Airlines crash.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
