I Even fatal airline crashes usually have at least one survivor; in the Sioux City disaster, almost two-thirds of the passengers, and all but one of the crew, survived, even though the jumbo jet was nothing but a big ball of flame tumbling end over end down the runway.
Passengers and crew evacuated the aircraft and had to walk half a mile to shore in temperatures of -30. Fortunately, it was pre-9/11 and the passengers were mostly oil-rig workers on their way back to work, so everyone was "dressed to survive".
It took authorities several hours to find the crash site... Quite a few people survived the crash, although many were badly injured; I believe several of them succumbed to the freezing temperatures waiting for rescue to arrive.
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
Previous Topic
Index
