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Experts say full survival rates in air crashes grow more common
An Aeromexico flight carrying 103 people crashed just after taking off from an airport in northwestern Mexico, forcing passengers to escape via emergency slides before the aircraft went up in flames. No one died. And although that might be surprising to many people, it's in line with recent developments in aviation safety, CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo said Wednesday.
"It's actually getting to be more typical, more the rule than the exception," Schiavo said, noting that no one dies in 87% of air crashes, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization. "It's the science of crashworthiness that has really improved over the last 20 years to help people survive a crash," Schiavo said. "Before then, you used to think a plane crash (meant) everyone would die. Not so anymore."
For example, she said, all aboard survived when an Air France jetliner overran a runway in Toronto in 2005, and when a Singapore Airlines plane burst into flames in the city-state in June 2016. Just three passengers died when an Asiana Airlines flight crashed at San Francisco's airport in July 2013.
A bionic priest and a web designer were on the Aeromexico flight.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday August 02 2018, @03:24PM
That's when most crashes occur, because problems higher up can frequently be corrected by pilots in the time it takes to go from, say, 9000m up to 0m up.
Another major reason why airplane crashes are rarer than they once were is that we're accumulating knowledge about maintenance and testing that makes it less likely that failing equipment and failing pilots will be in the air in the first place. The FAA and their international counterparts, along with airplane manufacturers, issue new repair requirements and guidelines on a daily basis, ranging from "You should check to make sure X isn't happening next time you take this plane in for regularly scheduled maintenance" to "you have to replace part Y before you can legally fly this plane, and yes, we're checking".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.