Unbuckling at impact ?
Gentlemen,
in the QF72 incident, the ATSB report does indeed give an explanation of how a buckled-up passenger could come unbuckled as they suffer vertical accelerations.
It is so that some belts have their buckles located at the leftmost side of one's belly when seated and buckled-up. As a large number of injured passengers on incident flight QF72 did wear their belts and the buckle simply caught and snagged below the left armrest at the moment they experienced a -0.8g pitch excursion. This snagging caused the buckle to open, and subsequently the unfortunate passengers were thrown to the cabin ceiling and injured.
I am quite ready to envision that the recovered bodies of those unfortunate passengers in flight AFR447 were forcibly removed from their seats, likely at impact, through a similar scenario.
Thoughts ?