如何在空难中幸存下来

Thanks for watching our internet edition of Nightline, I'm Terry Moran.
The increasingly crowded skies present new safety worries every week for air travelers. On Friday, a government study revealed that more than half of US commercial airports don't have an adequate safety margin² at the end of a runway. There were three runway mishaps³ in the last week alone. But too many people think being involved in a plane crash spells certain doom⁴. Most crashes are actually quite survivable, believe it or not. Now one expert has spelt out what it takes to get out alive. Here is ABC's Nick Watt⁵.

Thank you very much.
20 C , just straight down, sir.
Hello, can I check your boarding pass?
Thank you.

You have a, a metal tube, you cram⁶ it full of people, you put limited exits in it so it's difficult to get out. You then, wrap the whole thing with kerosene⁷, fuel, and then you hurl⁸ it down the runway at 150 miles an hour.

That's intrinsically a dangerous environment. Take flight 358 from Paris that touched down in Toronto one stormy afternoon in August last year. 309 people were on board the Air France jet which overshot the runway, slammed into a ravine and burst into flames. A passenger's nightmare.

Why bother watching this report? Why bother listening to the in-flight safety demonstration⁹? I normally just do the crossword¹⁰ or flip¹¹ through the in-flight magazine. I mean, surely if the plane crashes, we are all dead, right?

Wrong. All 309 people on board that flight from Paris to Toronto survived. It became known as the Toronto Miracle. But surviving an air crash is not a miracle. In fact, between 1983 and 2000 more than 95% of people involved in plane crashes in the US survived. So is there anything you can do to avoid being part of that fatal 5%?

Well this plane fire on the tarmac of an English Airport in 1985 set one man on the path to find out. There was no crash, no fatal impact but an engine fire killed nearly half the passengers on board.

Why did 55 people die, why could 55 people not escape?

Professor Ed Galea has pored over interviews with 2000 survivors¹² of 105 plane crashes, analyzing¹³ their behavior, creating computer simulations of that behavior and searching for the keys to survival.

We saw flames, it was just totally orange out the window, we couldn't see where we were going and people started panicking, err¹, we, everyone jumped out of their seat, their seats.

Lauren like 50% of airline passengers was traveling in a group.

If you're traveling in a family group, you should insist that the airline does not separate you err, through the aircraft. You should be seated together. Why? Well it's only natural that if you're involved in that sort of situation, you're gonna want to, reunite the group before you evacuate¹⁴. Now if you do that, that's going to cause havoc¹⁵.

Sit together but be prepared to split apart in a smoke filled cabin.

Perhaps you have one adult is responsible for a particular child and the other adult is responsible for the other child, so now you have, essentially¹⁶ two groups of two people. And the groups should be, err, prepared to evacuate through different exits if necessary, and so, each child should know, you know, which parent is, is gonna be looking after them in that, in that situation.

Mind goes almost into autopilot, and so when you go to release the seat belt, you're not really thinking about that, and, and what's your most, common experience undoing¹⁸ a seat belt? It's in your car. And how do you undo¹⁷ the seat belt in your car? You press a button.
Of course on a plane, you lift a latch¹⁹ rather than pushing a button. Even pilots traveling back here as passengers, have been known to get that wrong.

Oh...
Ten years ago, the pilot of this hijacked²⁰ Ethiopian airliner²¹ ran out of fuel and ditched in the Indian Ocean.

About 5 minutes before we crashed, we came on with the first of two announcements, saying that we're gonna have to ditch, to get ready to ditch. And you are for a water landing, you know, to have everything ready, not, not to inflate²², but have on the life vests.

In the panic, not everyone listened. 123 were killed. Many of them drowned, trapped inside the fuselage....

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mishap:a minor mistake or accident 小灾祸
spell:to show that something is going to happen, usually something bad 预示
kerosene:a clean oil with a strong sell that is used for fuel 煤油
intrinsic:relating to the essential qualities or features of something or someone 内在的 本质的
ravine:a very deep narrow vally with steep sides 沟壑
tarmac:the part of an airport where the planes stop and people walk across to get on a plane 停机坪
pore over:注视

1 err   

vi.犯错误，出差错

参考例句：

• He did not err by a hair's breadth in his calculation.他的计算结果一丝不差。
• The arrows err not from their aim.箭无虚发。

2 margin   

n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘

参考例句：

• We allowed a margin of 20 minutes in catching the train.我们有20分钟的余地赶火车。
• The village is situated at the margin of a forest.村子位于森林的边缘。

3 mishaps   

n.轻微的事故，小的意外( mishap的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a series of mishaps 一连串的倒霉事
• In spite of one or two minor mishaps everything was going swimmingly. 尽管遇到了一两件小小的不幸，一切都进行得很顺利。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

4 doom   

n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定

参考例句：

• The report on our economic situation is full of doom and gloom.这份关于我们经济状况的报告充满了令人绝望和沮丧的调子。
• The dictator met his doom after ten years of rule.独裁者统治了十年终于完蛋了。

5 watt   

n.瓦，瓦特

参考例句：

• The invention of the engine is creditable to Watt.发动机的发明归功于瓦特。
• The unit of power is watt.功率的单位是瓦特。

6 cram   

v.填塞，塞满，临时抱佛脚，为考试而学习

参考例句：

• There was such a cram in the church.教堂里拥挤得要命。
• The room's full,we can't cram any more people in.屋里满满的，再也挤不进去人了。

7 kerosene   

n.(kerosine)煤油，火油

参考例句：

• It is like putting out a fire with kerosene.这就像用煤油灭火。
• Instead of electricity,there were kerosene lanterns.没有电，有煤油灯。

8 hurl   

vt.猛投，力掷，声叫骂

参考例句：

• The best cure for unhappiness is to hurl yourself into your work.医治愁苦的最好办法就是全身心地投入工作。
• To hurl abuse is no way to fight.谩骂决不是战斗。

9 demonstration   

n.表明，示范，论证，示威

参考例句：

• His new book is a demonstration of his patriotism.他写的新书是他的爱国精神的证明。
• He gave a demonstration of the new technique then and there.他当场表演了这种新的操作方法。

10 crossword   

n.纵横字谜，纵横填字游戏

参考例句：

• He shows a great interest in crossword puzzles.他对填字游戏表现出很大兴趣。
• Don't chuck yesterday's paper out.I still haven't done the crossword.别扔了昨天的报纸，我还没做字谜游戏呢。

11 flip   

vt.快速翻动；轻抛；轻拍；n.轻抛；adj.轻浮的

参考例句：

• I had a quick flip through the book and it looked very interesting.我很快翻阅了一下那本书，看来似乎很有趣。
• Let's flip a coin to see who pays the bill.咱们来抛硬币决定谁付钱。

12 survivors   

幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The survivors were adrift in a lifeboat for six days. 幸存者在救生艇上漂流了六天。
• survivors clinging to a raft 紧紧抓住救生筏的幸存者

13 analyzing   

v.分析；分析( analyze的现在分词 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析n.分析

参考例句：

• Analyzing the date of some socialist countries presents even greater problem s. 分析某些社会主义国家的统计数据，暴露出的问题甚至更大。 来自辞典例句
• He undoubtedly was not far off the mark in analyzing its predictions. 当然，他对其预测所作的分析倒也八九不离十。 来自辞典例句

14 evacuate   

v.遣送；搬空；抽出；排泄；大(小)便

参考例句：

• We must evacuate those soldiers at once!我们必须立即撤出这些士兵！
• They were planning to evacuate the seventy American officials still in the country.他们正计划转移仍滞留在该国的70名美国官员。

15 havoc   

n.大破坏，浩劫，大混乱，大杂乱

参考例句：

• The earthquake wreaked havoc on the city.地震对这个城市造成了大破坏。
• This concentration of airborne firepower wrought havoc with the enemy forces.这次机载火力的集中攻击给敌军造成很大破坏。

16 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

17 undo   

vt.解开，松开；取消，撤销

参考例句：

• His pride will undo him some day.他的傲慢总有一天会毁了他。
• I managed secretly to undo a corner of the parcel.我悄悄地设法解开了包裹的一角。

18 undoing   

n.毁灭的原因，祸根；破坏，毁灭

参考例句：

• That one mistake was his undoing. 他一失足即成千古恨。
• This hard attitude may have led to his undoing. 可能就是这种强硬的态度导致了他的垮台。

19 latch   

n.门闩，窗闩；弹簧锁

参考例句：

• She laid her hand on the latch of the door.她把手放在门闩上。
• The repairman installed an iron latch on the door.修理工在门上安了铁门闩。

20 hijacked   

劫持( hijack的过去式和过去分词 )； 绑架； 拦路抢劫； 操纵（会议等，以推销自己的意图）

参考例句：

• The plane was hijacked by two armed men on a flight from London to Rome. 飞机在从伦敦飞往罗马途中遭到两名持械男子劫持。
• The plane was hijacked soon after it took off. 那架飞机起飞后不久被劫持了。

21 airliner   

n.客机，班机

参考例句：

• The pilot landed the airliner safely.驾驶员使客机安全着陆。
• The passengers were shepherded across the tarmac to the airliner.旅客们被引导走过跑道去上飞机。

22 inflate   

vt.使膨胀，使骄傲，抬高（物价）

参考例句：

• The buyers bid against each other and often inflate the prices they pay.买主们竞相投标，往往人为地提高价钱。
• Stuart jumped into the sea and inflated the liferaft.斯图尔特跳到海里给救生艇充气。