Back in 2012, a film crew carried out a controversial experiment, crashing a Boeing 727-200 on purpose to find out if passengers in certain seats had greater chances of surviving
The only passenger who survived Thursday’s Air India crash was in seat 11A – and while talking to his family after the tragedy, he admitted he doesn’t know how he managed to escape alive.
Briton Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, was seen walking away from the site of the crash in Ahmedabad, India, and is now recovering in hospital. His window seat was right next to one of the aircraft’s emergency exit. Sharing details of the incident last night, he told a medic that around 30 seconds after take-off there was “a loud noise” before the plane split in two, throwing him out, and crashed.
His survival has prompted speculation over whether 11A is the safest seat on a plane in case of an accident – but experts say this is difficult to say as circumstances can change and it’s impossible to predict survivability based on seat location. Back in 2012, a team working on a documentary carried out a controversial experiment which saw them crash a Boeing plane on purpose in a bid to find out which seats are the safest in the event of such a collision.
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The experiment, which used an unmanned Boeing 727-200, was conducted in the Sonaran desert in Mexico on April 27, 2012. Several federal permits were needed before the crash could be performed – and Mexican authorities required that the aircraft had to be flown by humans during part of the flight as it was due to fly over a populated area.
The airplane, piloted by captain Jim Bob Slocum, took off from Mexicali International Airport with three flight crew and three support jumpers as well as crash dummies with breakable bones, cameras and sensors, and sand bags. The dummies were arranged in three different positions on the plane – one in the classic brace position and wearing a seatbelt, a second with a seatbelt but not in the brace position, and another without seatbelt and not in the brace position.
As the flight progressed towards the desert, its occupants parachuted to safety, with former United States Navy pilot Chip Shanle controlling the aircraft remotely after the pilot exited. The plane hit the ground at 140 mph and upon impact, it broke into several sections, with the first 11 rows of seat ripping out as the nose of the plane dipped.
Following the crash, the “passengers” in seats at the front of the aircraft were found to be the least likely to survive. Experts also found that the dummy in the brace position with its seat belt fastened would have survived the impact.
The second dummy, whose seatbelt was fastened but was not in the brace position, would have survived but suffered severe head injuries. The third unrestrained dummy would have died. Anne Evans, a former investigator at the UK’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch, inspected the black box data recorded after the event and said at the time: “It is safer to sit at the back of the aircraft where the flight recorder is. The front is more vulnerable because that often sees higher impact forces.
“I would pick somewhere which is comfortable and within a few rows of an emergency exit.” The experiment, which was met with controversy as it was carried out just weeks after seven Brits were killed in a plane crash in Nepal, was only the second time a jet has been crash-tested in this way. The plane involved in the first experiment, which was carried out by Nasa in 1984, ended up in a fireball.
Generally, aviation experts say that seating towards the back of the plane is safer – and because of this, Vishwash’s survival has left many people baffled. CNN safety analyst and former US Federal Aviation Administration safety inspector David Soucie he told CNN how the seat was positioned, “right where the spar of the wing would go under, and it would be a solid place for the aircraft to hit the ground, but as far as survivability above it, that is incredibly surprising.”
Data from the National Transportation Safety Board in the US, which came from analysis of 20 plane crashes, found that passengers sitting at the back of the plane had the best chance of survival – a 69 per cent chance of staying alive compared to 59 per cent for those at the front. Another study, by Time, analysed crash data and also found that the back of the plane seemed to be the safest place to sit. It also found that passengers sitting in the middle seat tended to have a higher chance of survival, Forbes reported.
Seat maps of the aircraft show that Ramesh’s seat, 11A, was positioned close to the front of the plane. He was also next to a window – all of which makes his survival statistically unlikely. However, he was placed near an emergency exit, according to the plane seat map, which could have played a key role in his survival. Cary Grant, an assistant professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s College of Aviation, told Travel + Leisure that “if there was a seat that was safer, being close to an emergency exit increases the chance of getting out quicker.”