How to Survive a Plane Crash: What to Do Before, During, and After

Seat belts

One of the strangest findings of research into crashes and passenger behaviour is that over and over again people struggled with what you'd imagine would be the easiest of tasks – undoing their seat belts. The reason is that in times of stress people revert to learned, normal behaviour and when it comes to seat belts normal and instinctive means a car seat belt. Following a crash, investigators found that many people scrabbled around to find the push-button release on their belts, as this is the release with which they were most familiar. Aircraft seat belts unbuckle.