PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - MD80 plane crash in Phuket, Sep. 07
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Old 19th Sep 2007, 02:31
  #142 (permalink)  
rmac
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Hong Kong
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View from the ground,

My educated guess from looking at the Swedish video, is that the survivors were mainly in the part of the aircraft, the back, that didn't have to absorb the energy of the crash at whatever speed they were doing. Similar to the SQ crash in taipei, where the lower deck of the 747 acted as a crumple zone in such a way that the cockpit and the upper deck, as well as the rear lower deck produced most of the survivors.

The news reports that many of the dead will need to be identified by DNA, presumably the fire just starting on the front end of the aircraft in the video would go on to consume part of it.

One wonders how many of the dead were trapped or unconscious in the wreckage before the fire started, and what effect a more efficient fire service response would have had on the number of survivors.
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