The search for the 239 passengers and crew on board Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that went missing off the coast of Southeast Asia last Saturday (March 8) is still ongoing. Although no new progress has been made, the authorities and militaries of neighboring countries have coordinated to search for this plane.
Assuming the plane has crashed into the sea, how can the people on the plane survive in the open sea?
The first thing to consider when a plane falls into the sea is how to survive the crash. And this survivability is surprisingly high. According to the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTBS), the passenger survival rate after a plane crash is more than 95% . Experts have noted a few things passengers can do to boost survival, such as wearing appropriate clothing and footwear.
“Imagine running out of a burning plane. In that case, will your flip-flops help you run faster? What about your high heels?” , said Cynthia Corbett, a human factors expert at the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
A Malaysia Airlines plane. (Photo: livescience).
Studies have shown that people in the back of an airplane have a 40% higher chance of survival than those in the front of the plane , and aisle seats near emergency exits are the ones. the safest.
The first 90 seconds after impact are the most critical: If you stay calm and get out of the plane quickly, your chances of survival will be much higher. Some passengers may be in such a state of panic that they cannot unbuckle their seat belts themselves. NTBS figures show that many plane crash victims are found in their seats, still wearing seat belts.
“The main thing is knowing what to do, even without instructions. Some people just sit and wait for instructions, and if they don’t hear anything, they’ll just sit there waiting for disaster to hit their heads,” Corbett said.
Any plane crash into the sea is an example of exceptional circumstances, as anyone who survives will face continued existence in the open sea, in a lifeboat or half-submerged. half floating on water.
Lifeboats greatly increase survivability, as they are less likely to suffer from reduced stamina due to constant splashing, are less likely to be attacked by sharks, and they also attract fish and birds, precious food sources. In addition, lifeboats are often equipped with first aid kits, drinking water, flares and screens to protect passengers from external influences. But here’s the problem: not every plane has a lifeboat.
The FAA requires aircraft to equip all passengers with lifeboats when making long flights over the sea, usually 50 miles (81km) or more. However, in some cases, the FAA does not require certain flights to have lifeboats, such as aircraft that have life jackets for all passengers and do not fly more than 25,000 feet (7.6km). At this point it is not clear whether Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 is equipped with a lifeboat.
Even those lucky enough to get on the lifeboats faced daunting challenges, namely dehydration and starvation.
It will take days to find the crashed plane or any survivors. (Photo: theeasterntribune.com).
The human body needs water to survive, and very few people can survive more than a week without water. A person’s temperature, humidity, body size, and health can prolong or shorten their ability to survive without water.
This past January, a man named Jose Salvador Alvarenga washed up on the shores of the Marshall Islands after drifting for 13 months on a 5,000-mile (8000km) journey from Mexico. Alvarenga said he survived by drinking turtle blood and rainwater, and eating fish and birds he caught.
“In the sea, turtles, birds and fish are things that can be eaten without having to be cooked. Poisoning from eating sea fish is very rare,” said Claude Piantadosi, professor of pharmacology at Duke University Medical Center.
Alvarenga also said that he had to drink his own urine when there was nothing to drink, but this was not a good idea. “ Drinking urine means recharging the salt your kidneys are trying to get rid of,” says Professor Piantados.
When falling into the sea, a person without a lifeline or something to hold on to will quickly become exhausted after a few hours, especially when immersed in cold water. Sharks are also a danger, although shark attacks are not as common as many people think.
A more serious problem is heat loss, which occurs when the water temperature is around 60 degrees Fahrenheit (16 degrees Celsius). Surface water temperatures in the Gulf of Thailand, where the Malaysia Airlines plane likely crashed, are around 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius). This means that the chances of survival of the passenger who crashed here will be higher.
But it will take days to find the crashed plane or any survivors. In 2009, after an Air France plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, it took five days to find the wreckage and two years to find the black boxes. The entire crew and 229 passengers were killed.