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