Air Crash in Artic survival

As I sit here this afternoon, I am watching a real time feed of my kids flight heading to Asia. Right now it is over Greenland. I was just wondering about the following (god forbid): What if the plane had some malfunction and needed to land pronto (ala Capt. Sully) and did a perfect belly glide on the ice up north. Temp in the deep frost category. Say -20 or -30 F. It would easily be half a day to a full day before someone got up there. What would be the key techniques to staying alive in a fully equipped 777? I am gonna assume they have lost all power. Any thoughts?

Find some way of tearing out the foam from the seats and jamming it in your clothes as insulation, maybe.

Find one of the batteries and some wire and torch the fuel and tires or anything; both as signal and warmth.

This is the reason you should dress for the weather enroute and not just the weather in the terminal(s). The polar flights I've been on have been cold inside the aircraft. If you need an excuse, use the cold cabin temps to justify dressing warmly. Wool is good for air travel -- warm when it's cold, cool when it's hot, much safer if there's a fire or if you need to evacuate the aircraft and leave everything behind.

It doesn't even need to be a polar flight. A flight I was on while flying home for Christmas had to land in Minot ND for fuel -- much colder there than at either end of the flight.

Stay warm, stay dry, stay warm, stay sheltered, stay warm, stay hydrated ... did I mention stay warm? Here are also two stories about surviving after the crash:

http://www.equipped.org/waldock698.htm

Not much else to say other than to carry a comprehensive kit on board if you can. Will ponder a bit and post some specific techniques later on.

Good ideas all. I was also wondering about the crew. Certainly they get evacuation training and are good at that. But what about post evac time? I would actually be surprised if the airlines gave them training on survival skills and how to "take care" of the passengers for any period of time afterwards.

Ya guys are making me feel better already

I googled 'airline survival training' and didn't find much.

One site said that flight crews will be getting training on dealing with on-board terrorist type situations, but nothing indicated that they were taught anything about survival once on the ground. This site will train pilots: http://www.etisurvival.com/pil.htm, but since airlines have cut pilot pay in half, I would assume that the airlines aren't going to pay for it.

I guess it's up to the passengers, as usual.

Sue

Shared bodily warmth. I recommend finding a toothsome flight attendant and pairing up for the duration. Once rescue arrives, you can return her to the upright position....

I flown over those areas several times, while enroute between the USA and the UK. I remember looking out the cabin window at the ice sheets and the freezing oceam, saying a little prayer to myself, and hoping the aircraft was reliable. Frankly, the chances of survival if a commercial aircraft put down on those freezing wastes (water and ice) is pretty much negligible. What kinds of gear and clothing do the passengers have ... just the normal clothes they were wearing when the boarded. Nowhere close to what they would need to have a good chance of survival.

other Pete

Well I'm no expert, but it seems to me that the odds of surviving a a full-blown disaster in mid-flight are so utterly miniscule that they're hardly worth fussing over, from a preparations point of view. It's takeoffs and landings that are at higher risk, with some potential for preps and initiative.

A flight would (I think) be some five miles up while over Greenland. If the aircraft is intact, that buys a fairly decent glide path. If you hit the ground or ocean early, the odds of the aircraft being intact are pretty darn small.

IF you are conscious and able to move when the aircraft stops moving, all you can count on is the clothes on your back. I wear non-synthetic clothing on flights, with wool socks and grippy shoes, and wear a smallish daypack that I can bug out with. Anything larger is a fantasy -- you need to get out, get out, get out NOW NOW NOW. You are not going to be dragging your junk out with you. Smoke will kill you quick.

BTW, I generally hate flying. Bloody sardine cans. Nothing romantic about it IMO. YMMV.

Tarzan, I think you have the right idea... If you are unable to prepare for all situations - improvise! Improvise with a brunette flight attendant if at all possible

This is a topic I'd expect Doug Ritter to know a lot about.

I don't have any special personal knowledge other than buying
signal mirrors surplused from airline refurbishment of life raft
kits, but Googling a bit:

Here's a photo of Lufthansa crew practicing with signal mirrors:
( you knew I was going to get that in ... )
http://rides.webshots.com/photo/1097254627028551299bautqq

Wikipedia says (though I don't see a targeted citation) of flight
attendant training:
" Safety training includes, but is not limited to: ...
survival in the jungle, sea, desert, ice, ..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_attendant#Training

There should be a fair amount of survival equipment on board,
including 2 days of food per passenger.
http://www.flightsimaviation.com/data/FARS/part_125-209.html

and it seems the crew should know how to use it, per
FARS 121-417(b)(2)(1) and FARS 135-331(b)(2)(1)
http://www.flightsimaviation.com/data/FARS/part_121-417.html
http://www.flightsimaviation.com/data/FARS/part_135-331.html

Here's one school with safety classes:
http://www.flightsafety.com/fs_service_aviation_training_role.php?div=30&code=R
http://www.flightsimaviation.com/data/FARS/part_135-331.html

That web site you found: http://www.etisurvival.com/pil.htm ,
is an excellent find, btw.

Get what ever clothing and blankets you have, get everyone to huddle together for warmth. Pray. There's not much else you can do on a commerical flight.

Since the plane is intact, there's lots of warmer clothing in the luggage compartment. However, belly landing on ice? will probably rip the aircraft apart before it stops, but it's your scenario.

First thing I'd do is try to restart the APU.

Don't forget that you could rig the emergency rafts as shelters or wind breaks. There's bound to be those hideous blankets in the plane. And, yeah, scrounge the luggage - even if the bottome is torn up, you'll find a trail of luggage spreading back from where you first touched down. Plus slogging through snow will keep your body temp up!

If you crash leaves you floating in icy water you're dead in minutes without a dedicated cold water survival suit. Wearing one of those on a regular trans-atlantic flight is a bit over the top for even the most über-prepared, isn't it? I have absolutely no idea of how the rafts on a commercial airline works, but I imagine it could give you perhaps as much as a couple of hours before freezing to death.



That's only good advice if you're dressed for it. If not, I can promise you that slogging through snow is hellish work that will make you very wet, very tired and very soon very cold.

In fact, even dressed for it, slogging through snow _*will*_ make you wet (and tired). If you have to, improvise some snow shoes and poles.

As stated above, if you're stranded in the middle of Arctic nowhere in typical every day clothing, your best bet is to make the best use of whatever you have available for shelter, huddle together for warmth and pray.

I was thinking about this question last night while driving home.

Airliners are built to withstand a certain amount of cold. From the information I could find online, the outside of an airliner can be exposed to temps as low as -60º. I also found that the planes are wrapped in an insulating blanket.

I have no idea what the heat source might be for the interior of the plane, but without the plane running, I would assume that the power source isn't, either.

All the humans aboard would produce heat, varying according to what they're doing and if they've been eating.

"The human body maintains a basic minimum rate of heat production at about 250 Btu/hr during sleep, the heat equivalent of about 75 watts, and about 400 Btu/hr (120 watts) when awake but sedentary. As bodily activity increases, the rate of oxidation of food, with its attendant release of energy, must increase. The level of heat production for light work will be about 650 Btu/hr (190 watts)." http://irc.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/pubs/cbd/cbd102_e.html

Someone, somewhere, must have done the math on a question like this. Intact plane space inside x number of people x BTUs = interior temperature. Or something.

Sue

The engines are the heat source for the most part, hydraulic fluid is routed through the wings for de-icing, and pre-heating fuel.

I realize we are dealing with hypotheticals here, but it seems to me that crashes of commercial aircraft in the Arctic are kinda rare, like I can't remember hearing of any. Has there ever been a commercial plane crash on an icecap with passengers surviving the impact and resorting to survival techniques?

A C-130 Hercules crashed just 12 miles from an Aleut settlement in 1991, breaking up when it hit. All 18 aboard survived initially, but some didn't last through the cold.
After a Plane Crash, 30 Deadly Hours in the Arctic

A Russian airliner crashed and burned north of the Arctic Circle in 2005, with 24 survivors.
29 are killed in Russian plane crash in Arctic

Having an airliner land in the Arctic intact maybe has never happened. OTOH, how many times have you seen an airliner land on a river in January with 156 occupants walking off the wings to safety?

We haven't seen everything yet.

Sue

Great information! Thanks.

Dougwalkabout has the correct on 2 points -

1. airline travel sucks (about as romantic as bus travel but with abusive security checks and the chance of falling to earth on fire) and
2. having clothes is a good idea - I always keep my shoes on while flying and I only assume what I have on person is what will leave the plane with me - if something goes wrong - say a fire and emergency landing - then finding my shoes or sorting through the overhead locker isn't going to happen, so wallet, phone, light need to be on me and I'd better have sometthing to keep my delicate little toes from get cut/burned/stepped on

Hopefully, you're pilots are ex-military, with both survival training and leadership skills.

For most commercial jetliners (the kind I would expect over the arctic) the air conditioning power uses engine bleed air. Very hot, high pressure air from the core of the jet engines (or the aux power unit) is bled off and used to drive the air compressors that provide cabin pressurization at high altitudes and air conditioning (cooling) at lower altitudes. Bleed air is also available to heat the incoming air and can also be used to heat the leading edge of the wing to prevent ice build up.

Most of the time cooling is a bigger concern than heating since there are lots of electronics and passengers aboard the plane that produce a lot of heat.

-Eric

The contributions on this thread are great. It has gotten me really thinking about this kind of scenario. Susan had referenced a couple of airplane emergencies over the cold weather sites. I will add the following incident from 1946 (not recent yes but it just goes to show it does happen).

http://www.zianet.com/tmorris/GanderRescue.html

OK, three examples of Arctic crashes, earliest dating to 1946. Reading the accounts, all developed problems while attempting to land at established runways, a fairly common type of accident, and not at all like the Captain Sully event cited by the OP.

Apparently there haven't been any Arctic "Sullenbergers.' Planes developing problems at altitude may not have the chance to glide to an impromptu landing. We experienced the fatal plunge of an Alaska Airlines plane off Anacapa Island about ten years ago which plummeted into the water from about 17,000 feet. Evidently the pilot was attempting to reach an airfield when he lost control. Survival was not an issue.

There are so many possible combinations of conditions at the time of any crash, that a prediction would be impossible until the aircraft came to a stop, intact, in pieces or in flames. Weather, landing surface, plane damage, pilot skill, etc. With landing on the Hudson, they had the best of all conditions. Had a wingtip touched the water, had they hit ice chunks in the water (they were doing 150 mph when they touched the water), less pilot cool, guts and skill, and it could have been just another no-survivor crash.

The biggest problem in the Arctic and surroundings would probably be weather, closely followed by landing surface. All the luck and skill in the world isn't going to change the outcome if you're making a dead-stick landing in a whiteout with a hill of ice dead ahead.

I guess you just hope that your plane would be the exception.

Good article on that Gander rescue, Streamside. I had never thought about why there weren't any helicopters in WWII movies! The article emphasizes how emergency rescue methods have been improved, yet so much depends on the brains, muscle and knowledge of the rescuers.

Sue