Plane Crashes: 5 Things You Didn't Know

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3- Planes routinely crash by running out of fuel

This unacceptable and totally egregious event goes by a sickeningly perfect name in aviation: fuel starvation, generally a consequence of leaks or extensive holding patterns. Avianca Flight 52 is an infamous example; a misunderstanding prevented air traffic controllers at JFK from grasping the crew’s urgency. The craft lost all engines and crashed on Long Island.

Unfortunately, the fate of Avianca 52 has already been shared by at least five other aircraft this decade alone.



4- Survival rates improve when the pilot ditches

The chief reason your survival rate spikes? Not what you might think: Sure, ditching is performed under somewhat controlled conditions and it trumps a nosedive, but survival rates for passengers are over 50% in these cases because ditching is an emergency procedure for which pilots and passengers are all offered training prior to every flight — the 2-minute drill mimed by the cabin crew. You know, that thing so many of us ignore.

Granted, the crew rarely does it with any enthusiasm, but they are attempting to communicate to us the means by which we can raise our chances of survival — why would anyone choose to ignore that?



5- There is a 0.00001% chance your plane will crash

One last thing you didn’t know about plane crashes is the figure Professor Jeff Rosenthal has arrived at to determine your chances of surviving your next flight: 99.9999815%. Not bad.

People enjoy dreaming up these odds, but their goal can’t be to turn aerophobes into aerophiles. In fact, the better the odds seem to get, the more aerophobes stand their ground. Why? Because these figures fail to address the character and complexity of a phobia. After all, phobias are partly defined by their irrationality.

Still, they can be tantalizing. For example, the odds of dying in a plane crash are equal to quadruplets being born — but not just any quadruplets, naturally conceived quadruplets. And not just any naturally conceived quadruplets, but naturally conceived identical quadruplets.

Forget the conception part — when’s the last time you even saw a set of identical quadruplets?