How do people survive plane crashes that kill nearly everyone else?
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. When Jeju Air Flight 2216 crash-landed at a South Korean airport, skidded into an embankment beyond the runway and burst into flames, it seemed impossible that any of its 181 occupants could have survived. Miraculously, two did—but how? Investigators assessing the survivability of a plane crash focus on five factors: integrity of the aircraft, effectiveness of safety restraints, G-forces experienced by passengers and crew, the environment inside the aircraft and postcrash factors such as fire or smoke.
The two flight attendants who survived the Boeing 737-800 crash were seated in the very back of the plane, which was the only recognizable part of the aircraft left intact. They are on a very short list among aviation’s worst disasters. Over the past eight decades of commercial travel, there have been just 17 other crashes where planes carrying 80 or more occupants left a sole survivor or two, according to data collected by the Flight Safety Foundation, an international nonprofit that provides safety guidance.
The Jeju Air flight attendants, a 33-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman who remain hospitalized in Seoul, sat in rear jump seats a few steps from where the jet’s tail snapped apart. Both are conscious and communicative, their doctors have said. The man suffered bone fractures largely on the left side of his body and is wearing a brace to limit his neck movement due to spine injuries.
The woman fractured her right ankle and possibly sustained other injuries on her right side. She recalled hearing a loud bang, then smoke billowing from the plane. “There are a lot of reasons someone may survive in what appears to be a totally unsurvivable situation," said Barbara Dunn, president of
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