- 6/8/2025
A brief history of airplane crashes shows the steps the industry has made toward improving commercial airline safety.
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00:00During the following program, look for web markers like this which lead you to expanded
00:05coverage on our website.
00:08Tonight on NOVA, from the early days of flight, they push themselves to the limit to come
00:17up with better ways to escape because accidents happen.
00:22Would you believe passengers walked away from this crash?
00:29When disaster strikes, can you get out alive?
00:34Fasten your seat belts for plane crash.
00:58Major funding for NOVA is provided by the Park Foundation, dedicated to education and
01:04quality television.
01:10This program is funded in part by Northwestern Mutual Life, which has been protecting families
01:15and businesses for generations.
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01:53An aircraft falls out of the sky.
01:59For the military pilot, there's one last chance of escape.
02:08For airline passengers, the only hope is to survive a crash landing.
02:13When we slammed into the earth, I could never have believed that we could have hit that hard.
02:21It was like near instantaneous thought was, I can't believe that the bones in my body
02:25are still connected.
02:27There will always be aircraft accidents.
02:40The problem is how to make them survivable.
02:49Airline tragedies have forced engineers to confront the question of how to design planes to enable
02:54crash victims to escape with their lives.
03:08The first world war introduced young aviators to the real dangers of aerial combat.
03:15If their aircraft were hit, they had no means of escape.
03:22On the western front, the crews of observation balloons were in an even worse position.
03:35Patrolling behind enemy lines, they were sitting targets.
03:38If you can imagine this, in a little cage beneath a balloon, full of hydrogen, with nasty people
03:47coming along in airplanes firing tracer bullets at you, you needed an escape system.
03:54It was just a case of wearing a harness attached to a parachute that was in a container on the
03:59edge of the cage, and all they did was hop over the edge.
04:02And their falling weight would pull the canopy out of its container.
04:09Although the lives of hundreds of balloonists were saved, parachutes were thought to be unsuitable
04:15for airplane pilots.
04:17Now, what they couldn't do was apply this same technology to the airplane, because the airplane
04:23isn't standing still like a balloon.
04:24The airplane, at best, is flying at a certain forward speed.
04:29At worst, it's going to be tumbling.
04:31It's going to be burning.
04:33No easy way to get out of that with a chute that is already attached to the airplane.
04:41Most pilots would have rather taken their chances with a parachute, even if they risked
04:45tangling it in a spinning aircraft.
04:49But the generals feared pilots might be tempted to abandon their planes at the first whiff of
04:55danger.
04:59Towards the end of the war, a German pilot was shot down, but managed to escape using
05:03a parachute attached to a can outside his aircraft.
05:10The war was over by the time the Allies decided to install parachutes.
05:18The idea of parachute escape was first conceived by Leonardo da Vinci.
05:24All Renaissance thinkers imagined it might save people from burning buildings.
05:30But it would remain a paper idea for three centuries.
05:35It works by the simple principle of counteracting the downward force of gravity with the upward
05:40force of air resistance from the canopy.
05:45The first public demonstration was in Paris in 1797, when a showman jettisoned his balloon
05:52and fell to earth on a parachute.
06:01Parachutes have always been associated with daredevil stunts.
06:03In California, the public enjoyed spectacular air shows, which often ended with jumps.
06:10But the parachute was still folded in a canister fixed to the plane.
06:18One of the best known jumpers was a showman with the nickname Sky High Irvin.
06:25He made his first jump from a balloon when he was 14 and had appeared in Hollywood movies.
06:32By 23, he was one of the most experienced parachutists in America and would be the guinea pig for a dangerous
06:39experimental jump.
06:46In April 1919, Irvin was selected by the Air Force to do a jump with the parachute strapped
06:52to his back instead of to the plane.
06:56The folded chute would be ripped out of the canvas pack with a cord.
07:02Many feared he might black out during the dive and not be able to pull the ripcord.
07:08But the parachute's designer, Floyd Smith, who flew the plane, was confident.
07:15Now both Leslie Irvin and Floyd Smith, they'd done high dives, they'd done trapeze work.
07:21Floyd Smith as a profession for the circuses, Leslie Irvin just for the hell of it.
07:26Now they knew that when they did these high dives, rather than losing consciousness, they
07:31became pretty damn sharp.
07:34But was he going to be able to pull that ripcord?
07:38Or was it true, as all the scientists and doctors said, that he would lose consciousness?
07:46So there was a great curiosity around McCook Field.
07:49There was an ambulance waiting there, which he didn't much like the look of.
08:08This would be the world's first free fall jump.
08:16Would the acceleration be too much to bear?
08:21Would he lose all sense of time and delay pulling the ripcord too long?
08:27Would the weight of his falling body be enough to pull open the chute?
08:43Pulls the ripcord, parachute open, no problem.
08:47Except he did break his leg when he landed, but that was nothing to do with the parachute.
09:00Irvin capitalized on the success of his jump and set up the Irvin Parachute Company.
09:06It soon became the largest parachute manufacturer in the world.
09:12The military realized that parachutes were so reliable, they could be used not just for
09:17saving air crews, but for deploying troops.
09:21And so, the para-trooper was born.
09:25They would become the cavalry of the air.
09:31Meanwhile, during the 30s, airline travel had become popular with the public.
09:41It was far more dangerous than traveling by land or sea, yet if there was an emergency,
09:48passengers had no effective means of escape.
09:51One control releases a harness and padding from the seat, enabling...
09:56Aircraft designers began thinking of ingenious ways of getting passengers out of planes.
10:00...like the trap door release, and the swing seat egress.
10:14One parachute company even made a promotional film to try to persuade airlines to provide
10:19parachutes for everyone.
10:21It's no use for us, we'll never make it.
10:27Take his chute and go back and help Mary with the passengers.
10:30In the days of propeller-powered aircraft, engine failure often caused accidents.
10:34Sorry folks, we have a little trouble.
10:37So we go down by parachute.
10:39Now don't worry, there's nothing to it.
10:43They're all ready.
10:44All right, sir.
10:45You're first.
10:46Just step right up.
10:47Your chute will open automatically.
10:49Alive and uninjured.
10:50But how different it might have been.
10:56Mass parachute evacuation for airline passengers would remain a fantasy.
11:03Yeah, Jim Carson, the pilot.
11:04In reality, people not trained in parachute jumping risked serious injury.
11:10So the airlines never took up the idea.
11:11In military planes, the parachute became the pilot's mission.
11:12In military planes, the parachute became the pilot's mission.
11:13main hope of survival.
11:14In military planes, the parachute became the pilot's main hope of survival.
11:20During the Second World War, it saved thousands of airmen's lives.
11:21In military planes, the parachute became the pilot's main hope of survival.
11:27During the Second World War, it saved thousands of airmen's lives.
11:34But as aircraft became faster, the aircraft became the pilot's main hope of survival.
11:40In military planes, the parachute became the pilot's main hope of survival.
11:44During the Second World War, it saved thousands of airmen's lives.
11:55But as aircraft became faster, bailing out became more difficult.
12:03Ground tests on a Spitfire showed the effects of wind blast when a pilot tried to climb out of the cockpit.
12:10At higher speeds, it may even be impossible for him to get out of his cockpit unassisted.
12:21Even if he could force himself out at such high speeds, he would risk smashing into the tail.
12:27A new method of escape was needed.
12:35Unknown to the Allies, in Germany, the Luftwaffe was already working on the problem.
12:40Their new prototype jet could travel at over 500 miles per hour, so bailing out with a conventional parachute was impossible.
12:54German scientists began trials to see how air crews might cope with sudden acceleration forces.
13:01During an ejection, they would need to survive extreme air blasts.
13:15Much of this work was carried out at a top secret research airfield at Rechlin, in what would become East Germany.
13:22It was badly bombed in the final days of the war, and little remains today.
13:34Returning for the first time in over 50 years, these men were all involved in high-speed escape.
13:41Theo Knacke is an engineer who left Germany after the war to work for the Air Force and NASA.
13:50One of his first tasks was to design a parachute which would not be ripped apart at high speeds.
13:57His ingenious shoot was made of silk ribbons.
14:16They allowed the sudden blast of air to be released between the gaps.
14:20After a few seconds, the weight of the falling pilot forced the ribbons to cling together, supporting his descent like a normal parachute.
14:31What you see here are so-called ribbon parachutes.
14:34The principle is this, these chutes open much slower than the regular parachute.
14:39They are more stable, they have a much lower opening shock, and the opening shock allows us to use the chutes in excess of 400 to 500 knots.
14:47But getting the pilot safely out of the cockpit was still a problem.
14:53The most important development to come out of Rechlin was the ejection seat.
15:04The seats were fired with compressed air, using the same principle as an air gun.
15:10Controlling the right amount of air was difficult.
15:14If too much was used, the pilot's spine would be crushed.
15:26One of the first to survive an ejection in battle was the Luftwaffe pilot Otto Fries.
15:32I was at 7,000 meters when I was shot down by a mosquito.
15:44The left-hand engine was on fire.
15:47I couldn't see a thing, I had blood in my eyes, but I instinctively grabbed the stick and brushed myself and pulled the plane out of its dive, and then I knew.
15:59My brain was hardly working at all, but I knew that I had to eject.
16:03But I just couldn't remember where the release lever was.
16:11And then I felt my pocket torch, hunted around with it, and eventually found the lever.
16:17Then I lifted the lever, forgot to lean my head back, and ejected.
16:23And of course, I tore my neck muscles.
16:27I was turning head over heels, and I was still in the seat.
16:31First I had to get rid of it, and it fell away.
16:35And then I waited a bit.
16:39You have a certain feeling for height, even at night when you can't see anything.
16:47And then, when I could feel the clouds, the moisture, I thought, well, this must be about 1,200 meters, so I pulled the ripcord.
16:57The chute opened, and I came down onto a cattle pasture.
17:01And just in front of me, not more than a meter, in front of me, there was a cow pet.
17:08And when I got myself out of the chute, I thought, you lucky bastard.
17:14The Allies never built an ejection seat until after the war,
17:18when a small aircraft company in England grew to become the world's largest manufacturer.
17:23The company, Martin Baker, was formed by an engineer named James Martin and a test pilot, Captain Val Baker.
17:36Shortly after it was formed, Baker was killed flying one of Martin's prototypes.
17:42So the company stopped designing planes and began work on ejection seats.
17:49The small family firm grew under the watchful eye of James Martin, who had a mission to save pilots' lives.
17:58My father was a skilled hands-on engineer.
18:02I mean, he was capable of operating any of the machinery in the factory.
18:06He was as good a draftsman as any of the others.
18:11And he had the capability to operate any piece of equipment in the place.
18:17And probably a lot better than some of the people he employed.
18:24In the 1940s and early 50s, Martin Baker carried out some pioneering research on how to eject a pilot safely.
18:31The pull-down blind protected his face from air blast and ensured his elbows were tucked close to his body.
18:44By using small explosive cartridges, rather than compressed air, a much smaller shock was inflicted on the body.
18:51The spine was only compressed briefly, reducing the risk of permanent damage.
18:56This was a major improvement on the early German seats.
19:03After several trial runs on dummies, they prepared for the first live ejection from an aircraft.
19:09The guinea pig was to be a Martin Baker employee, Bernard Lynch.
19:15What about blasts at high speeds?
19:17Well, in Germany, people have actually with stood air blasts on the face of over 500 miles an hour for a very short period.
19:23All the same, the aircraft's speed will be as low as possible before shooting yourself out.
19:28I think in those days, fortunately, there happened to be a lot of very brave people around.
19:34Particularly a chap called Bernard Lynch, who was a fitter, and he was a volunteer,
19:38although I have a feeling he was probably volunteered.
19:41He, I never had enormous respect for my father,
19:44and didn't believe that he was going to be asked to do anything which would kill him,
19:47although possibly it might hurt.
19:49Flying steadily at 300 miles an hour, Lynch gets ready to fling himself into space.
20:07First, he jettisoned the foot.
20:10Then, feet clear of controls, he holds his breath, pulls his elbows in,
20:16and yanks down the blind.
20:19As he flies clear, seat and all, a stabilizing drove opens to prevent him from turning over and over in the air.
20:26Then out comes the seat parachute.
20:29Now, his next step is to free himself from the seat.
20:33In his own good time, slowly and calmly, Lynch does it.
20:38Watch just below the white canopy, and you'll see Lynch's own parachute open as he falls clear.
20:46Initially, pilots were wary of these explosive seats.
20:53They did not like the idea of being human cannonballs.
20:59But as more and more lives were saved by ejection seats,
21:02they were soon adopted by air forces throughout the world.
21:07The unresolved question was just how much punishment the human body could take.
21:12Spotlighted for the first time, Air Force Colonel John Paul Stapp.
21:17In the 1950s, a U.S. Air Force doctor, Colonel John Paul Stapp, volunteered to put his own body on the line.
21:25His experiments on himself would measure the maximum forces a human being could withstand in an aircraft ejection or plane crash.
21:34From the outside, watch the breakneck stop.
21:37Shaking off the effects of the rapid deceleration.
21:42This is no stunt. Everybody thinks it is, but it wasn't.
21:46The object was keeping people alive.
21:51When I first went and was doing some serious thinking about using myself as the subject,
22:01I bore in mind that that is exactly what we were going to do, save lives.
22:11There were some spectacular failures.
22:14Luckily, most of them were on dummies.
22:17Later, they used anesthetized chimpanzees to measure the effects of G-forces.
22:22But chimps and dummies don't talk.
22:25Stapp wanted subjects who could describe the experience.
22:31And that was a problem, because he was usually the subject as well as the scientist.
22:36So he put in a request for a medical assistant.
22:39I went to my boss and said,
22:42Look, I need somebody else here to observe.
22:48We can't do it all with subjective reports.
22:51Can you get me an assistant?
22:54And besides, I might not be able to remember everything that happened and I got enough G's.
23:01He said, You mean you're risking my promotion to Brigadier? You're grounded.
23:06Stapp was forced to use chimpanzees until eventually his boss was promoted.
23:13Only then was he able to restore human test runs.
23:18In all, we did 73 experiments with humans before we finally collected the information that we wanted.
23:29And for some reason, I was the only one that got two broken wrists and cracked ribs.
23:42Water brakes. Check the sled speed in an instant. End of the line.
23:46And the colonel, cheating death again, says he's fine.
23:50Stapp's most dangerous experiment was on a rocket-powered sled called Sonic Wind.
24:01It would simulate ejection from a plane at supersonic speed.
24:05The last human run took place on 10 December of 1954.
24:12I said, Major, would you like some coffee and donuts?
24:18And I said, No, it makes a messy autopsy.
24:22That was to get them focused and serious because you could have an autopsy.
24:28Well, I had rehearsed sitting there and sweating out for five times.
24:38So all I could think of, well, let's get this over.
24:43The sled hit me 19 Gs in .07 seconds.
24:52And that's like being shot out of a can.
25:01Now, as I went through the water brakes, my vision turned salmon color from pressure going into the eyes.
25:11And when I couldn't see anything, I said, Oh, boy, now I really got it.
25:16White cane, seeing my dog and all that.
25:19I looked up, and gradually the orange gave way to blue.
25:26They hauled me over to the hospital.
25:29By the time we got there, I was getting my survival euphoria.
25:34All that could go through my mind was, Oh, boy, I paid the dues this time.
25:39They're going to treat me differently after this.
25:42They dead was not the way I thought.
25:46Stapp had become the fastest man on earth and proved the human frame was much tougher than anyone thought.
25:57At the end of the 50s, he was asked to tackle a new problem.
26:01The U.S. Air Force was testing experimental rocket planes that could travel many times the speed of sound and fly to the edge of space.
26:10These were dangerous missions, and the Air Force wanted to be sure their pilots could survive bailing out.
26:15Preliminary tests on dummies showed that free-falling from such extreme altitudes would throw a pilot into a disastrous spin.
26:29So they developed a small drogue chute to stabilize the descent.
26:38Now, Stapp wanted to know if a human being could survive the experience.
26:42He needed a volunteer, as bold as himself, who was prepared to take the dummy's place.
26:51Stapp decided Joe Kittinger was the right man for the job.
26:55He was an experienced skydiver and test pilot.
26:58But no one had parachuted from altitudes where the air was so thin it was impossible to breathe.
27:07And the pressure so low that only a special suit would stop his body from exploding.
27:18Kittinger would make his jump over the White Sands Missile Range in the New Mexico desert.
27:23The launch vehicle for the mission would be a helium balloon.
27:30And we finally came here in November of 1959, and we were ready to go for the first flight.
27:38It was very cool out here in the desert, and I actually laid down on the desert and breathed oxygen for two hours.
27:44And you have to do this because you want to get rid of the nitrogen out of the body,
27:48so that you don't get the bends as you go along.
27:49And finally, we'd gone through the checklist and everything, and I stood up, and I walked up the steps,
27:56and I turned around, and I had all my equipment on, and I got in the gondola and said,
28:01Well, we're ready to go. Everything's done, and now we're going to see what happened.
28:05The balloon rose steadily at 1,200 feet per minute.
28:12After an hour, it was ascending through the upper reaches of the atmosphere.
28:27I get up to about 76,000 feet, and the command post said, Okay, it's time to go.
28:36When I started to pick myself up to step out the door, I found that I was wedged into the seat.
28:42Now, I'd done this a hundred times in the chamber, and I never had any trouble getting out of the seat.
28:49But one of my crew members had put new insulation devices in there to make it look neat.
28:54And when he did that, he decreased the area, and I was actually wedged in the seat, and I couldn't get up.
29:00Now, here I am. I think I'm trapped in this doggone seat, and I can't get up.
29:05And so I'm really getting frantic, because I want to get out of there.
29:07I want to get this test on the way.
29:09And I jerked, and I pushed, and I pulled, and I finally, I stood up.
29:14But in doing so, I pulled a timer that I wasn't supposed to pull, and I jumped out of the door.
29:20And when I did, instead of falling for 16 seconds before anything happened, I fell two and a half seconds.
29:26And this little pilot sheet came out and wrapped around my neck.
29:30And I knew it was a hell of a situation I was in, because here I was going to be free-falling like a dummy without any stabilization.
29:37So I started free-falling.
29:40And I was a trained skydiver, and I got stable, and I was doing very good.
29:45And I was sitting there thinking, well, gosh, you're going to be able to skydive all the way down to a safe altitude.
29:51And all of a sudden, I started spinning kind of loosely to the left.
29:56And I stopped it, and I said, uh-huh, that's very good, kidding her.
29:59And then all of a sudden, I finally entered a horrible spin to the left.
30:04And I had on my left wrist an altimeter and a stopwatch.
30:08And I had a great interest in this altimeter and stopwatch, because if I was down at a lower altitude, I could pull the ripcord.
30:13But the centrifugal force was so great that I could not pull my arms in.
30:19And I was fighting to get my arms in, because I really wanted to look at that altimeter and stopwatch.
30:24Because if I had pulled the parachute above 30,000 feet, the parachute would disintegrate, and so would I.
30:31The g-force would be horrendous.
30:33So you had to get below 30,000.
30:34So all of a sudden, I had this horrible spin, and I started to gray out, and then I blacked out.
30:43And then I came to at about 10,000 feet.
30:47My emergency parachute was open, and I came down and made a landing here in the desert on my emergency parachute.
30:53I was happy that I was alive, but I was disappointed that we hadn't conducted the experiment the way that we had planned to.
31:03And I was really concerned that we were not going to get permission to go ahead and do it again.
31:08Kittenger and Stapp persuaded the authorities to complete the real objective of the program.
31:14To jump from the edge of space at over 100,000 feet.
31:19The difference is that you were really in space.
31:25At 76,000 feet, blood boils.
31:28So I always felt that if the pressure suit failed at 75,000 feet, I had a chance to live.
31:34I had a chance that I might survive.
31:36But when you go to 103,000 feet, there's no way you're going to survive.
31:40If anything happened to the pressure suit, you're dead.
31:43But something did happen.
31:45The glove on his right hand did not pressurize,
31:48so the blood began to pool, leaving his hand immobilized.
31:53I opted not to tell my flight surgeon on the ground in the command post
31:57because I knew that if I told him that my pressure suit glove wasn't working,
32:02that he would tell me to abort the flight.
32:04And I was very, I did not want that to happen.
32:07I was a little concerned about what was going to happen,
32:09but I felt that I could overcome any obstacle that would arise.
32:12So I jumped out.
32:14I free fell for 16 seconds.
32:17I had perfect stabilization.
32:19At 90,000 feet, I reached a speed of 716 miles an hour, which was supersonic.
32:26But you see, I'm in a vacuum. I'm in a space vacuum.
32:30And I'm falling in this vacuum at extreme high rates of speed.
32:32But there's no way you can visually detect how fast you're going or where you are.
32:37And every second I was falling and falling and falling,
32:40and I was getting back to a friendly environment.
32:43And this might not look like the Garden of Eden to you,
32:47but it sure looked like the Garden of Eden to me when I got on the ground,
32:50because I was elated.
32:51Joe Kittinger's record skydive still stands today.
32:57He had demonstrated that it was possible to escape from planes
33:02even at the very edge of space.
33:07But a new problem was emerging as military jets flew closer and closer to the ground
33:12to avoid enemy radar.
33:13Most fatal accidents happened when they were too low to guarantee safe ejection.
33:31So the seats were fitted with rocket motors,
33:34which could propel the pilot up and away from danger,
33:38even when flying at ground level.
33:44As Stapp's research had shown,
33:46it was theoretically possible to escape at almost any speed or altitude.
33:52Today, at his old rocket sled track in New Mexico,
33:56engineers are about to test a new escape system.
34:01There will be no human volunteers on this run.
34:04It's a dummy in the seat.
34:09This prototype will be able to sense when a plane is about to crash.
34:13On-board computers will automatically trigger an ejection
34:19and control its trajectory from the doomed aircraft.
34:24It could save a fighter pilot before he even realizes his life is in danger.
34:33To test the prototype, they will fire it down a 10-mile rocket sled track
34:36at 500 miles per hour.
34:42The seat knows exactly where it is.
34:46It knows where the ground is.
34:48It knows what the altitude is.
34:50So the seat knows what to do to give the pilot the optimum possibility of a successful escape.
34:55T-minus 15 seconds.
35:05T-minus 10, 9, 8, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.
35:19High-speed cameras show what happens at the moment the ejection seat rockets ignite.
35:30In a fraction of a second, the parachutes are deployed.
35:34The dummy floats safely back to Earth.
35:38Whether pilots will entrust their lives to an ejection system that takes the decision to abandon the aircraft out of their hands remains to be seen.
35:53As the technology of escape becomes more sophisticated, the chance of surviving an accident in a military jet increases.
36:07In civil aviation, the problems have been different.
36:14The idea of passengers ejecting or parachuting out of a plane in mid-air was abandoned long ago.
36:20Research shifted to making crashes more survivable.
36:27In 1965, the Federal Aviation Administration staged its first crash test.
36:37This crash may look fatal, but many passengers would have survived.
36:41I think one thing that the public at large fails to appreciate is how survivable an accident actually is.
36:52For most people, they have the vision that there's nothing left but some sort of a smoking hole and everybody is killed.
36:57But in point of fact, if you take a look at an aircraft accident where older aircraft were deliberately tested to the point of destruction,
37:06you realize that if you are able to keep the people alive in the cabin past the point where the fireball occurs outside the aircraft,
37:14and if you are able to protect them from the impact,
37:17that there is a high expectation that you will have a significant number of survivors from an accident.
37:21The FAA investigators realized that the key to survival was getting passengers out of the cabin before it filled with smoke.
37:30They used an old crashed plane to conduct timed evacuation trials.
37:35Clambering out of the overwing exits was cumbersome and slow.
37:39Passengers had to help each other out.
37:41As airliners became bigger, they needed more emergency exits.
37:55These were often too high above the ground for passengers to jump to safety,
38:00so some aircraft were fitted with evacuation slides.
38:02Okay, this is an example of one of the early evacuation systems to get people out of large aircraft, groups of people.
38:15And this design right here, it has to be manipulated normally in the dark if there's an accident at night.
38:21It requires that this handle be pulled. As it's pulled, the chute will drop to the floor.
38:26At this time, you have to bend down and get help from somebody to find the handles.
38:32And then these little clips tie into the rings at the floor and at the ceiling.
38:39Okay, we have the lower ones.
38:42The early slides were made from canvas and were difficult to deploy.
38:46I've got one on this side.
38:49It would be hard to sort out this mess with a fire billowing outside.
38:52Somehow this seems...
38:57I think we've got it right here. This goes right into this side on the top.
39:01We can throw this out and let us slide down to the middle of it.
39:09Airlines began experimenting with escape slides in the 1950s.
39:12The early slides required the crew to exit first and hold out the chute for escaping passengers.
39:22Back then, when planes were smaller, they could be evacuated in two minutes.
39:30Today, even though aircraft are much larger, their requirement is 90 seconds.
39:43To speed up evacuation, all commercial airliners are fitted with self-inflating slides.
39:48Well, with a properly inflated slide like this one is right here.
39:56But the only real problem you have is perhaps falling off the side if you get too many people on top of each other too quickly.
40:04Or you will get some chafing or some friction burns on your rear end or on your elbows.
40:10But there are small problems compared to what could happen if you weren't out of the aircraft.
40:17In 1971, an accident in San Francisco revealed that under some conditions, evacuation slides could be dangerous.
40:25After an emergency landing, there was a small fire in the undercarriage.
40:31The chutes were deployed, but the 20-mile-an-hour wind was enough to cause the slides to start to blow aft.
40:44And as people went to the doors, especially in the front of the aircraft, and they looked to the slides,
40:49they saw the slides weren't on the ground, but they were blowing aft.
40:53So they ran inside the fuselage back toward the tail of the aircraft.
40:56And as they did that, the tail of the aircraft settled down to the ground, the nose went up in the air,
41:03and finally the front slides were gotten a hold of by people on the ground.
41:09But instead of coming out at a 45-degree angle like this, they were almost straight down.
41:14But the people inside the aircraft weren't aware of that at first.
41:18And a number of people ran and jumped down the slide only to essentially free-fall to the ground.
41:23A minor incident ended up injuring 27 people.
41:32Since that accident, evacuation slides have been redesigned to be much more rigid.
41:38These massive structures fully inflate in four and a half seconds.
41:43They are made of flame-retardant material to help protect them from pools of burning fuel.
41:58But it's not always possible to deploy evacuation slides.
42:01In 1989, a DC-10 bound for Chicago went dangerously out of control after an engine explosion.
42:10As I walked to the cockpit, I thought to myself, well, we have an emergency.
42:15But when I opened the door, it was, to this day, it still gives me chills.
42:23It just stopped me cold.
42:24I felt my blood run cold because it was just the feel of what was in the air, that it was not an emergency.
42:39It was the worst crisis possible.
42:41The captain said, we've lost all hydraulics. Secure the cabin and prepare the passengers.
42:54The plane was diverted to a small airfield in Sioux City.
42:59It hit the runway so fast, the fuselage started to break up.
43:03I just simply blacked out and I was out for the duration.
43:13I could still hear all the metal noises and noises you've never heard in your life as we catapulted down the runway.
43:26The extreme impact had torn the aircraft apart, leaving the main cabin upside down.
43:31Amazingly, 184 people managed to escape, but 112 died.
43:39Most of them from head injuries as they were hurled to the front of the plane, still strapped to their seats.
43:48Colonel Stapp's crash tests had proved that passengers could survive if they were properly restrained.
43:54This test, conducted two months before the Sioux City crash, demonstrated that the seat and seat belt attachments could fail on impact.
44:03What used to happen, and in fact it still does to some degree, but not like it used to, the seats would break loose from the floor and the individuals would still be strapped in the seats.
44:18But they would all be wadded up in front against the front bulkhead.
44:23And there would be just a big pile of people in their seat belts and in their seats stacked on top of each other.
44:30But they're like missiles and they're piled on top and there's no way you could get out.
44:34And so if you could keep the seats from breaking loose and you could keep them restrained properly, there's a very good chance that you could let them live in more severe crashes.
44:43The latest planes are fitted with much stronger seats, but most aircraft still have seats like these.
44:51In the Sioux City crash, passengers who survived the initial impact faced another danger.
45:09I knew that I was in fire. It was the huge round red ball that I was suspended in.
45:16And then just as quickly the fire was gone, it seemed to be going forward to my, over my left shoulder.
45:25And within seconds we stopped and I was absolutely incredulous.
45:30I thought, I'm still thinking, in other words, I'm still alive.
45:35And then the job kicked in, it was like, if I'm alive, we've got to get out of here.
45:40Everyone went out, any opening they could find.
45:45And finally I had to leave because this horrible gray black smoke was pouring towards me at the top of the cabin.
45:53And as flight attendants were taught, if the fire is too hot, the water is too deep, or the smoke is too thick, you evacuate yourself.
46:02Smoke can be even more dangerous than fire, as this crash test demonstrates.
46:16As the remotely controlled airliner hit the ground, the fire retardant fuel being tested failed.
46:22Cameras recorded what happened inside the cockpit and cabin when the plane was engulfed in fire.
46:32Although flames briefly entered the broken fuselage, instruments recorded life-threatening levels of toxic smoke.
46:38You have here some products, some cyanide products, for example, things like this that are extremely toxic, extremely poisonous,
46:47and almost immediately act almost like a poison gas in, say, the World War I context,
46:53in terms of preventing a person from performing in any sort of satisfactory manner.
46:57When plastic interiors and foam seats start to burn, poisonous fumes build up rapidly inside the cabin.
47:11A few seconds delay in evacuating a plane can make the difference between life and death.
47:16This accident in Manchester, England, in 1985, left no doubts about the lethal effects of toxic smoke.
47:27The plane, carrying 130 passengers, caught on fire during take-off.
47:32During the emergency, one exit was blocked, but the other three were open with escape chutes deployed.
47:39There should have been enough time to evacuate everyone.
47:43But 55 people died.
47:48Most of them had collapsed after inhaling toxic smoke.
47:53The entire airline industry was shocked by what should have been a survivable accident.
48:00When the fire came in through the back of the cabin and people started to see the smoke and so on,
48:07many people rushed as rapidly as they could, some of them going over the seats to the front of the cabin,
48:12and when they came up against what we call the bulkheads, which are those solid sections,
48:17which are just in front of the galleys, and there we have a quite narrow gap of actually 20 inches between those bulkheads,
48:24the passengers weren't all able to get through as fast as they arrived,
48:29and we tragically finished up with a situation where some people just didn't manage to get through and fell,
48:35and others moved on in spite of them.
48:40We actually don't feel for experimental purposes.
48:43Helen Muir was asked to investigate by Britain's Civil Aviation Authority.
48:48She set up a series of trials designed to induce the chaos of a real evacuation.
48:52To do that, she offered a financial incentive to be the first off the plane.
48:58Whatever exits are used will receive a five-pound bonus payment immediately.
49:02And we have found that this does encourage people to make their way fairly rapidly.
49:08And very interestingly, we've had survivors from accidents come and see videos of behavior in these experiments and said,
49:14oh yes, you know, that is how it was.
49:18Undo your seatbelts and get out.
49:20The trials were conducted in an old airliner to see how different cabin layouts affected the flow of passengers.
49:28This research video shows how bulkheads can cause blockages.
49:33A recommendation was made that the opening be increased to 30 inches.
49:38Take it easy!
49:40Find your head!
49:42The researchers also experimented with different seat layouts
49:45and suggested widening the access to overwing exits.
49:50The openings were so narrow that people became jammed.
49:54In this trial, firemen had to intervene to unblock the exit.
50:00The findings were published, but few major changes were made.
50:04There was some feeling in certain parts of the world that Manchester could have been a one-off.
50:13But then, some years later, in Los Angeles, we had an accident where, again,
50:19we had a narrow-bodied aircraft which caught fire.
50:22And tragically, again, we had a situation where the passengers had problems getting out of the overwing exit,
50:28and again, it eventually became blocked.
50:31In Los Angeles, the U.S. Air Boeing 737 crashed into a building, blocking half of its emergency exits.
50:42Twenty of the eighty people on board were overcome by smoke and died before they could exit the plane.
50:48Even in the wake of these accidents, the airline industry has resisted change.
50:59Increasing the number of emergency exits means fewer seats and fewer paying passengers.
51:08Muir has also focused on other ways of improving evacuation times without redesigning the planes.
51:14The performance of cabin staff in an emergency can dramatically affect the number of survivors.
51:23Under your seatbelt, so come this way!
51:26Wait, wait, wait, wait!
51:28There's no doubt good, assertive cabin crew who can rapidly mobilise people and manage them so we don't have pileups make a tremendous difference.
51:37By aggressively directing, even pushing the passengers, the flight attendants can evacuate the aircraft much faster.
51:48In a burning plane, this could save the lives of dozens of people.
51:53Stop!
51:58In some trials, Helen Muir increases the realism by adding smoke and switching off the cabin lights.
52:05This is how most crashes end up.
52:07I think it is difficult to survive in a dark or smoke-filled cabin and the main reason is because most of the time we use our eyes to find out where to go.
52:18And if a passenger wants to know what they need to do in order to survive in an emergency, I think the key thing in addition to listening to the briefing is when they sit down,
52:28to look in front and behind them and locate their nearest exit and then think about how they would get there.
52:36Would they go over seats or would they go round through the aisles and in either scenario count how many rows of seats they would have to pass so that they know in their heads where the exits are and in the event of a fire and smoke they would still know where to go and how to feel to get there.
52:53Don't forget that.
52:59Researchers like John Paul Stapp have dedicated their lives to proving that crashes are survivable.
53:08In military aviation, such knowledge helped pioneer extraordinary advances, enabling jet pilots to escape certain death.
53:24In air travel, as in other forms of transport, accidents will continue to happen.
53:30How to make them survivable is a question that continues to haunt aviation.
53:35What do you need to know when accidents happen?
53:48Be prepared. Log on to NOVA's website.
53:54What do you need to know when accidents happen?
54:00Be prepared. Log on to NOVA's website.
54:18The Escape Set is available on home videocassette for $49.95.
54:24Plus shipping and handling.
54:25To order, call 1-800-255-9424.
54:54NOVA is a production of WGBH Boston.
54:59Major funding for NOVA is provided by the Park Foundation.
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55:38Have you heard from The Quiet Company?
55:41Northwestern Mutual Life.
55:44And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and viewers like you.
55:48This is PBS.
56:04Oh, boy.
56:05It's amazing how many stars there are.
56:08You know what's really amazing, Clell, is that recent discoveries within the Orion Nebula lend credence to the theory of a whole other solar system.
56:22Predating our own, of course, thus, increasing the chances of our not being alone.
56:38I see.
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