I have a picture somewhere, which I could obviously NOT post here, showing the Queen of England, sitting along with a whole bunch of guys in some type of uniform, including kilts. The guy right next to her has his "stuff" proudly displayed (altho, in my humble opinion, he had nothing to be proud of), for all the world to see. Maybe, in his defense, his chair was cold too...

I dunno... this kind of proves my point. You crash, and you survive, you've got a big honking storage container under you. You're sitting on the world's largest signal fire (ever seen a plane actually crash? The smoke is impressive). those folks that froze, it sucks. I don't know if they tried scrounging, but I have to wonder why they didn't move closer to that burning wreck.

For the Souix City (and wasn't there a NYC water landing a few years ago?) or that flight in the Everglades about 10 years ago... you're crashed at the end of the runway. What the heck do you need there? A fire extinguisher? You sure don't need a fire starter, signal mirror, whistle, paracord. Again, you're on a big freaking signal to rescuers. A knife would be useful if you need to get out of that seatbelt, I admit. Perhaps a P-38 or P-51 would be useful, if allowed.

Can't see why you'd need any land nav. gear. Why leave the crash site? Unless you've crashed your Cessa, there's a good chance they'll find your plane.

BTW, I do know of one jumbo water landed and had significant survivors. Again, though, fairly close to rescue. Like others have said, you crash mid-atlantic, you're pretty much re-running the Titanic disaster.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2QjWNRlDVw

Hmmm - I'm not sure how I "proved [your] point" since your point was that if the airliner crashes, you die - which simply isn't true. Maybe I misunderstood.

I've never seen an actual airliner crash, but I've seen the footage of the Sioux City crash. There was a huge fireball, but there was little or no "burning wreckage" after the first couple of minutes. The Arrow Air disaster in Gander, Newfoundland (where, admittedly, everyone did die) had no "burning wreckage", according to the reports I've read; in fact, I can't remember reading about an airline crash which produced a long-lasting fire. What airline crash have you seen where the airplane carcass burned for hours afterward? And would a huge bonfire really be effective at warming injured survivors?

Much of an airliner's fuel is carried in the wings, anyway, and those are very likely to break off on impact. Hence the huge but brief fireball witnessed in the Sioux City crash.

You have a very good point - most airliner accidents occur during the takeoff and landing phase. Even the ones that don't, such as Sioux City (which resulted from a catastrophic failure in flight) the pilots are going to try everything possible to make it to an airport. So if you are in an airliner crash, and you survive, there's a very good chance that you'll be found within minutes. However, that's not guaranteed.

Personally, to the extent that I worry about being in an airline crash at all, my main priorties would be (a) first aid for the injured, and (b) basic fire-starting and possibly shelter-construction for a couple of hours. I can't see rescue taking longer than that, except maybe in a Tom Hanks stranded-on-a-desert-island worst-case scenario. If you're flying on some South American airliner in the Andes or over the Bolivian jungle, then I'd be a little more concerned about the long-term survival issue, of course.

I always carry on my key chain a BSA Hot Spark metal alloy rod, a poker chip shaped thing that has a piece of steel imbedded in it (I use steel for striker and for knife sharpening), a whistle, and a pill fob that has 3 "spark-lite" tinders in it. My work has me in remote areas sometimes and this is minimal, along with my pocket knife, incase I get stranded.

Anyway, I have flown several times with this keychain (the knife goes in checked luggage but I do carry scissors in my carry-on) and have never had TSA take a second look at the keychain.

The best I could find was this one:

6 August 2005; Tuninter ATR72; near Palermo, Italy: The aircraft was on an unscheduled international flight from Bari, Italy to Djerba, Tunisia when the aircraft reportedly developed engine trouble. The crew ditched the aircraft off the coast of Palermo. The aircraft had been on a scheduled domestic flight from Kish Island in the Persian Gulf.
Two of the four crew members and 14 of the 35 passengers were killed.

But most of the fatal airline accidents I could find where people survived involved the aircraft hitting short of the runway or landing long, too fast, or on the wrong runway and running off the end.

http://www.airsafe.com/events/last_15.htm

It's not a deep water landing but didn't one go down on take-off/landing in the Potomac in the late 70's or early 80's?

Edit: Added link

Whenever I fly to the UK/Scotland which is several times a year (my wife is from Glasgow) I always get stopped and pulled aside for my EVAC-U8 smoke hood. TSA doesn't give it a second look but for some reason UK security doesn't like it. If it ever gets taken away from my I'm going to be pretty upset since they don't make the EVAC-U8 anymore.

There's a reason for that... http://forums.equipped.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=65327&an=

Air Gabon crash, previously mentioned on this forum

I'm familiar with the recall and the reasons why. But to my knowledge there is not a small and portable unit on the market. I'm still willing to take my chances with the EVAC-U8.