Surviving Deadliest Plane Crashes Takes Luck

When Jeju Air Flight 2216 crash-landed at a South Korean airport, skidded into an embankment beyond the runway and burst into flames, it seemed impossible that any of its 181 occupants could have survived. Miraculously, two did but how?

- By Jo Craven McGinty And Timothy W. Martin

Investigators assessing the survivability of a plane crash focus on five factors: integrity of the aircraft, effectiveness of safety restraints, G-forces experienced by passengers and crew, the environment inside the aircraft and postcrash factors such as fire or smoke.

The National Transportation Safety Board deems a crash "survivable" if the forces transmitted to occupants don't exceed the limits of human tolerance and the structure of the aircraft surrounding the occupants remains largely intact. A crash is deemed non-survivable when the G-forces are so great, the body can't withstand the punishment.