In 1972, flight attendant Vesna Vulovic fell nearly 10,000 metres inside the tail cone of a disintegrating Yugoslav airliner and landed on a wooded hill. All 27 other passengers and crew on board died. Vulovic survived with broken legs.
In 1995, a Colombian plane exploded in mid-air near Cartagena. The only survivor – a 9-year-old girl – was found unconscious, lying in the midst of a lily pad.
In the past 40 years, there have been 13 instances in which a single person has survived an air disaster. Six of those survivors have been between the ages of 3 and 14. Four others have been crew.
“I can't figure out for the life of me why crew members and children tend to be disproportionate in these sole-survivor events,” Todd Curtis of the Airsafe.com Foundation told CNN.
On Wednesday, a 9-year-old Dutch boy was the only survivor of a jetliner crash near Tripoli, Libya. One hundred and three others died in the catastrophic descent. News footage showed the youngster in hospital, bruised and suffering several bone fractures, but otherwise stable. Dutch news reports named him as Ruben van Assouw. According to the same reports, he was in Africa on a safari with his parents and brother.
So why him? And why all the others?
Like Curtis, the experts don’t have conclusive answers.
Professor Ed Galea, director of the Fire Safety Engineering Group at the University of Greenwich, suggests that size is on a child’s side.
“With an adult with their head above the seat and legs on the floor, the chances are you'll receive some sort of injury from debris landing on your head and legs flailing around. You're more prone to broken limbs,” Galea told the BBC. “A youngster in their own seat . . . might be less likely to receive body injuries. They are more or less cocooned in a solid, rigid environment.”
This also helps explain the “brace” position that adults are told to assume in the event of a crash. Pressing against the seat in front of you limits the exposure of your head to flying objects and shearing injuries.
The childhood advantage does not extend to infants. Seated on their parent’s lap inside extension restraints, they are often crushed on impact.
Weight may also be a factor mitigating in children’s favour. The smaller mass of a child lends itself to greater likelihood of surviving any sort of fall. The same rules may apply in a plane crash.
For the rest of us, there is a surfeit of advice, most of it contained in the pre-flight safety demonstration. Pull your seatbelt tight. Make sure you know how to unclasp it. Be aware of the exits.
Conflicting studies have suggested that your placement in the airplane is key.
Popular Mechanics did a study suggesting your chances of surviving a crash increase by 40 per cent if you sit in the tail section.
After doing his own study, Galea adheres to the rule of five. Whether you are in the front, middle or back of the aircraft, never seat yourself more than five rows from an emergency exit.
Take 660 seconds out of your flight to be aware. Research has shown that the first 3 minutes after takeoff and the 8 minutes before landing are the most dangerous – 80 per cent of crashes happen in this window. So during that brief time, be aware, don’t fall asleep, don’t wear earphones and keep your shoes on.
More to the point, be choosy about who you fly with. The European Union keeps a watch list of sketchy airlines.
Most importantly, don’t spend your time being terrified.
The National Transportation Safety Board studied all the accidents and crashes involving U.S. carriers between 1983-2000. There were 568 accidents in all, 71 of them involving fatalities.
The NTSB found that 95.7 per cent of passengers –51,207 of 53,487 – survived.
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