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If you have no time to prepare for the crash and you forget some of these instructions, you can find much of the most important information in the safety card in the seat back pocket in front of you. · Remain in the brace position until the plane comes to a complete stop, a secondary impact or bounce will often follow the initial impact. · In the event of a water landing, remove your shoes and excess clothes before or immediately after entering the water. This will make swimming and floating easier. · While it’s essential to stay calm after a crash, you also need to be careful not to succumb to “negative panic.” Negative panic is a strange inability to react assertively and appropriately to the situation. For example, a person may just remain in his or her seat instead of heading toward the exit. Watch out for this in your fellow passengers or travelling companions. · The one exception to the “leave everything behind” rule may be a jacket or blanket, and you should only consider carrying that if you have it ready to go at impact. While having appropriate clothing may save your life if you’re stranded for a while, you first have to get out of the aircraft safely. · If you can find a pillow or something similarly soft to protect your head during impact, use it. · It’s quite common for people to forget how to unbuckle their seatbelts after a crash. It seems easy enough, but in your dazed condition the first instinct is often to try to push a button as you would for a car seatbelt. When that doesn’t work, it’s easy to panic. Before impact, make a mental note to remember how to quickly and easily unbuckle your seatbelt. · Place your baggage beneath the seat in front of you. It can help prevent your legs from snapping under the seat. · Remove sharp objects—pens, pencils, etc.—from your pockets before a crash. Better yet, don’t carry them at all. Nearly any loose object on a plane can become a deadly projectile in the event of a crash. · If you have nothing to moisten a cloth with (in order to protect yourself from smoke inhalation), you can use urine. This sort of breach of decorum is perfectly acceptable in such a situation. Warnings ü Avoid wearing synthetic fabrics while travelling by plane. If a fire breaks out in the cabin, these materials will melt to your skin. ü Avoid excessive alcohol consumption before or during a flight. Alcohol impairs your ability to quickly and methodically react to the crash and evacuate the plane. ü Never hold your infant or toddler on your lap. While it may be cheaper than buying a seat, your child is almost guaranteed not to survive if you are holding him or her. Get a seat for your child and use an approved child restraint system. ü Don’t get down on the floor of the plane. If there is smoke in the cabin, try to stay low, but do not crawl. You will likely be trampled or injured by other passengers attempting to escape in the low-visibility conditions. ü Don’t push other passengers. An orderly exit increases everybody’s chance of survival, and if you panic and start shoving, you may be faced with retaliation. ü When landing in water, do not inflate your life vest until you are outside of the aircraft. If you do, you run the risk of becoming trapped when the aircraft fills with water.
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