How two crew members survived the deadly South Korean plane crash

Two crew members may have survived the Jeju Air plane crash in South Korea thanks to sitting backwards with a harness on in the safest part of the cabin, according to aviation experts.

The Boeing 737-800 belly-landed and skidded down the runway at Muan International Airport on Sunday before hitting a structure beyond the tarmac and bursting into flames. Of 181 on board, 179 were killed.

The two surviving flight attendants were rescued from the plane’s tail.Credit: AP

The two surviving flight attendants, who had reportedly been seated in the rear section of the aircraft that separated in the collision, were rescued from the plane’s tail, which pictures showed ended up upside down.

Lee Jung-hyun, chief of the Muan fire department, said: “Only the tail part retains a little bit of shape, and the rest of [the plane] looks almost impossible to recognise.”

It follows the survival of two crew members in the tail of a plane that crashed in Kazakhstan last week, killing most of its passengers and crew.

Experts have suggested that the crew members’ positioning within the aircraft, as well as probably wearing a four-point harness, may have saved their lives.

Lee Mo, 33, who was in charge of passenger service at the back of the plane, according to local media, suffered a fractured left shoulder and head injuries before waking disoriented at the intensive care unit in Ewha Womans University Hospital in Seoul.

He repeatedly asked “what happened?” and “why am I here?” before recalling wearing his seatbelt before the crash, The Korea Times reported.

Hospital director Ju Woong said Lee was “fully able to communicate” and there was “no indication yet of memory loss or such”.

Another crew member known only by her surname, Koo, 25, was reportedly taken to the Asan Medical Centre in Seoul with a scalp laceration, a fractured ankle and abdominal pain.

Investigators from the US National Transportation Safety Board and representatives from Boeing at the crash scene this week.Credit: AP

She reportedly said in her initial statements: “Smoke came out of one of the plane’s engines and then it exploded.”

Officials said that the crash came after the plane was struck by birds about 7am AEDT on Sunday.

Jay Robert, a former senior cabin crew member for Emirates, said that crew at the rear of a Boeing 737-800 conventionally sit in backward-facing seats and wear a harness.

“The 737-800s I have been on all have seats facing backwards at the rear,” he told The Telegraph.

“It is a better position for impact and you wear a four-point harness.

“The airplane usually breaks apart on impact and passengers in the rear tend to have a better chance of survival.”

Shem Malmquist, an air safety and accident investigator, pilot and professor of aeronautics at Florida Institute of Technology, said both the harness and backward-facing seats would have improved the chance of survival.

“They definitely would have been wearing harnesses, that would possibly have helped, and if they were sitting backwards that would keep them somewhat safer,” he told The Telegraph.

Malmquist, who has flown Boeing 777s for the best part of 35 years, said that harnesses would not necessarily improve safety in most accidents and so their rollout would depend on return on investment.

“It would be safer, but people don’t like to wear the harnesses, and of course it is the cost,” he said, adding that airlines would be cautious about accepting changes to seats and seat belts because of the added weight, which would increase fuel consumption.

A report by Naval Aviation News in 1952 suggested passengers in transport planes were 10 times more likely to survive a crash in a backward-facing seat, while Richard Snyder, a scientist at the University of Michigan, concluded in a 1983 paper that “data appears to overwhelmingly substantiate that the seated occupant can tolerate much higher crash forces when oriented in the rearward-facing position”.

Malmquist said: “It should be looked at. Nobody is talking about this. There is a lot we can do and it is virtually untapped.”

On Christmas Day, two crew members also survived after an Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 went down in Kazakhstan after it was allegedly hit by a Russian ground-to-air missile, killing 38 people.

A part of Azerbaijan Airlines’ Embraer 190 lies on the ground near the airport of Aktau, Kazakhstan.Credit: AP

Zulfugar Asadov and Aidan Rahimli had been stationed at the back of the plane when the aircraft split, with the tail remaining intact, while the front caught fire.

“In these two crashes, the impact was from the front,” said Robert, adding: “In South Korea, the crew at the back would possibly have been shielded from the explosion.

“I would assume it would have been a bit more protected than everyone else.”

The rear of a commercial aircraft is statistically the safest place in a crash, according to an analysis of 35 years of data by Time magazine in 2015.

The study found those at the rear of a plane had a fatality rate of 32 per cent, which rose to 38 per cent at the front and 39 per cent in the middle. The wings of a plane store fuel, which carries a risk of explosion.

Middle seats, which have the benefit of fellow passengers acting as buffers, in the rear had the best outcomes at 28 per cent, compared with the worst-faring aisle seats in the middle of the plane at 44 per cent.

Steven Green, a retired Boeing 737-800 pilot from Vermont, said it was “no surprise” that people in the tail had a better chance of surviving because the area is “structurally very strong”.

Green, who flew commercial airlines for more than 40 years, said there was a safety argument to be had for rolling out harnesses and backward-facing seats to passengers.

“From a safety standpoint, it makes sense,” he said. “The British tried rear-facing seats on Trident [jets] but nobody liked them – it doesn’t feel right.”

The Telegraph, London

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