How to Escape From a Ditched Plane

Nov. 25, 2002 -- The last time you were on an airplane, did you pay attention to the flight attendants' safety routine at the beginning of the flight? Did you check to see where the nearest emergency exit was?

The instructions may sound familiar from flight to flight, but safety experts say it is important to listen each and every time. Doing so can be the difference between life and death in a survivable plane crash.

When a USAir Fokker F-28 skidded off the runway during a snowstorm at New York's La Guardia Airport in 1992 and plunged into the water, 27 people died but 24 managed to get out alive. In 1996, 50 people survived when a hijacked Ethiopian airliner crashed into the Indian Ocean near the Comoro Islands off the African coast; 125 people died.

Flight safety experts recommend that air passengers take these steps every time they fly:

Listen to the safety instructions. Listen carefully to the flight attendants' safety instructions and study the safety card in the seat pocket. Find the two closest exits. Note the location of the nearest emergency exit to your seat: that will be your primary exit. Choose the next closest as your secondary exit, in case you cannot reach the primary exit. Plan your route. Before takeoff, create a picture in your head of the route you would take to each exit in the event of a crash, when you might be disoriented and in darkness. In each case, count the number of rows from your seat to the exit, and remember the number.

If the plane ditches in water, safety expert Richard McInnis recommends following this procedure:

Brace yourself. Assume the brace position, bending down with your head close to your knees. Hold the position until the violent movement that accompanies the initial impact has finished. Take a breath before the moment of impact. Don't undo your seatbelt immediately. Take a breath and stay strapped in your seatbelt for a moment while you get your bearings. Fight your instinct to get free immediately — it is easier to orient yourself while you remain in your seat. "Anchoring maintains our perspective within the airplane," says McInnis. Close your eyes as the water rises. Planes usually float for a while before taking on water and starting to sink. If the plane begins to sink and the water rises above your head, close your eyes to avoid any jet fuel that might be floating on the surface. Make your way to the exit. Once you have oriented yourself and remembered the route you planned before takeoff, undo your seatbelt, pull yourself up and out of your seat, and make your way to the exit, counting the rows.

McInnis runs Survival Systems Training Inc., a company that teaches airline personnel and passengers what to do in the event of a crash in water. To put his instructions to the test, Primetime sent correspondent Chris Cuomo to McInnis's training facility in Groton, Conn., where he was strapped into a $500,000 simulator in a 100,000-gallon tank of water. The simulator, designed to recreate the interior of a typical airliner cabin, is attached to a mechanism that can mimic the violent motions of a crash into water.

In the first test, Cuomo was seated near an exit row, and got out without difficulty. The second time, he was seated a few rows behind the exit and warned that the simulator would turn upside down. When the simulator executed its 180-degree roll, Cuomo was disoriented, but made it to the exit by counting the rows as he had been taught.

Cuomo noted that he was performing under test conditions, where he had been briefed beforehand and knew exactly what to expect and what he should do. "I would have panicked 150 times more than I did if I wasn't so bent on following the protocol," he said. In a real crash, there might be smoke and fire in addition to the water.

In the third test, the simulator's operators lurched it violently 90 degrees downward, this time without any warning. To get out, Cuomo would have to swim vertically down to the exit row, then sideways to escape. But he lost his sense of direction and was forced to break for the surface. "I panicked," he said. "Once things weren't where I thought they were going to be, I wanted to get out of there."

Cuomo said it was a humbling experience.

"In real life, you're only going to have one chance at this," said McInnis.