The Asiana 214 crash does raise some troubling issues as far as maximizing your own chance of surviving a plane crash are concerned.

None of the passengers had any warning prior to the crash so one minute you're chatting with the person next to you and the next minute your whole upper body is slamming into the seat in front of you at a high rate of speed. After landing, the pilots initially announced that people should remain in their seats so the eventual evacuation was delayed further. Three of the cabin crew were ejected out the rear, presumably leaving the passengers in the rear section without any crew to direct them. Two of the escape slides deployed into the cabin, and not outward, thus blocking those exits and immobilizing two more crewmembers. The 911 tapes seem to indicate that ambulances did not arrive for a signficant length of time (callers say "20 minutes" but not sure if their sense of time can be trusted), but it's not clear if any of the firefighters were tending to the injured or perhaps just to the most seriously injured because there were so many injured.

Not sure how much smoke was an issue before everyone was evacuated.

You raise several good points Arney.

Regarding the lack of warning, I'm not sure what could be done about that. It appears the pilots thought they could manage the landing, or else do a go around, until seconds before impact. The message there (for me at least) is that takeoffs and landings are always critical times. I try to stay alert and make sure my belt is extra tight. I'm also not sure what could have been done differently regarding the ejected crew. The tail section was ripped off the plane, and apparently both of the fatalities were sitting in that section. Also I believe at least one of the crew in that section was severly injured.

The two aspects I find most troubling are the pilots delaying the evacuation and the escape slides inflating inside. The pilots knew they had just had a severe crash and everything I've ever heard about crashes is to get out as fast as possible. I think that was clearly an error on the pilots part, and I hope pilots in the future will take a lesson from that. Regarding the slides inflating inside, one account I read indicated that the NTSB crash examiners plan to investigate that. We may eventually see some improvements in escape slides as a result.

I'm sure seconds seemed like minutes and minutes seemed like hours to the people laying on the runway. One account I read said that the ambulances were sent to a nearby staging point and then dispatched to patients as the Fire/EMS folks triaged patients and called for transport. This would all be appropriate under ICS. All accounts I've read indicate the the hospitals thought the triage was handled extremely well. I've never been involved in a real Mass Casualty Incident, but I have had some MCI training. A MCI will by its very nature tend to initially be chaotic and overwhelm emergency responders. The key is to quickly separate the dead, from the severly injured, from the walking wounded. Meanwhile mobilize more resources and focus them first on those for whom you can do the most good. Given that only two people died, the responders clearly did some things right.

I think we should also look at the positive aspects. An airliner with 307 people crashed, had its tail ripped off, and burned. Yet only 2 died. Of the 305 survivers I think about 180 went to the hospital, but most of those have already been released. I think there were about 30 with severe injuries. The death toll could easily have been much more severe. Clearly a lot of things worked well.

The death toll has now risen to three; your point remains valid.

I don't fly very often, and haven't for a few years, but when I do I ask for the seat next to the emergency exit and pay attention to all the safety instructions. Read the book and pay attention to the presentation.

A friend asked me once if I did that because I was afraid, and I said "No. It's because I want someone who's responsible and paid attention to be in charge of this, not someone who's not going to have a clue and panics." I don't rely on someone else to do it. I've never thought of it before, but interestingly, I've never challenged or been challenged for the responsibility of the seat.

Good idea, Jacquie! Maybe I'll start taking exit row seats, too -- as ireckon likes to remind us, in the unlikely event there is a crash, and in the even more unlikely event that I survive the crash...

Another thing we can learn from the crash is: don't get covered up by foam. There is apparently a possibility that the fire trucks killed two passengers who were covered up by foam. It's unclear whether they were still alive when the truck ran over them.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/12/us/asiana-airlines-crash/

Let's keep the victims in our thoughts.

For those interested in incident response, a number of articles are appearing about the Asiana crash. I think it is valuable for everyone to understand how agencies respond to this sort of thing.

Incident Commander Talks about 777 Response, Ops

The risk is that the fuel tanks could explode and engulf rescue vehicles parked too close. Also, having fire trucks and ambulances running around randomly greatly increases the risk of collisions and running over someone, which apparently happened in one case. The rule in ICS is that first on scene takes command until relieved. As the incident reponse expands, the initial Incident Commander may be relieved by a more qualified IC. The relief is done in a formal manner and communicated. In ICS, everyone should always know who reports to them and who they in turn report to.

911 calls highlight emergency response challenges in Asiana crash

Yeah, folks have come to expect first responders to rush in with no regard for scene safety. I'll do the best job I can but I am not going to needlessly get killed or get my partners killed because patients insist that I sacrifice my life on demand.

I was reminded recently that I have flown over 500 flights in just about 20 years, more than the average flyer. And I'm not a happy flyer really, although by far I have far more confidence in air crews than I have fears that they may mess up. I can recall a handful of flights when we came in too slow and one where we were too low to land, the pilots had the sense to abort and go about for another landing. I distinctly remember I was in a window seat and knew we were off flight path and descending too rapidly like a sinking elevator, I had a growing panic and almost yelled to my row mates to brace for impact, and the sense of relief I felt when the pilot applied power and aborted. I think veteran pilots deadheading in passenger cabins and passengers have a decent sense of this when it happens, definitely - but in my experience its rare to occur. Far more frequent have been weather emergencies, which can be scary as hell. I don't like turbulence, having sat through some really bad southern and Midwestern flights, one of which caused a spinal injury to a Delta attendant. Then there are mechanicals, like a dead engine, including two experiences in foreign aircraft i will not recount - I did sing my death song both times expecting to bite it. I've never had to evacuate under duress but have read the safety card probably on 95% of flights, you never know. One of my morbid curiosities has been reviewing aircraft crash investigations and those with fatalities are grisly and consistently random in their physical effects on passengers. I say keep your EMT shears. For about 5 years you couldn't pry me from the exit aisle now when I fly coach I tend to sit about 4-5 rows behind. Even then I'm just playing the lottery and hoping for a relatively low speed crash like Asiana. If you crash the odds of having a really great pilot at the stick are pretty good, its fair to have faith in your pilot most flights. There are just no really great options to crash land jets at speed. Those passengers were lucky as hell to survive.

Sounds like lot of vivid memories but on the whole its been smooth air - thousands of hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sudden terror, like on a runaway roller coaster. Nothing you can do.

People aren't meant to fly otherwise they'd have wings, and feathers coming out of their assholes. A wise old TWA pilot told me that...

The stats claim you are safer flying than traveling the same distance by other forms of transportation.Life is a gamble.

It's quite amazing now to consider that in the 40's, 50's and early 60's the continuous loss of life that was considered normal in the business. But things can never be perfect.

A friend in the FAA who says that he believes his son will probably fly on airliners that have no pilot. The backup for the autpilot will be a flight attendant who has some simulator time to be able to land the plane if needed(maybe).

Considering that pilot error really is a major contributor to the remaining accident rate, it's a logical step to remove the pilot from the cockpit and substitute Windows Autopilot 1.0 instead. (and we all know just how error-free software is.... right?)

But you won't find ME on one of those flights!