I’m a really nervous flier, and I tend to treat the safety drill on each flight as a kind of talisman. The idea, I think, is if I watch carefully, then the gods will ensure I’ll never need to use any of this stuff.
On every flight I’ve taken, I’ve sat through the little demo with the life jacket under the seat, and the toggle and the light, and the whistle and what have you. Every time, the same questions come to me: do these things ever get used? Has anyone ever survived and been rescued after a plane crash, because they were wearing their life jackets?
They are good for when a plane over shoots the runway and skids into a bay or river.
For other off run way landings [controlled crashes], the pilot would typically set down on land [most flights are over land so thats what’s under the plane] rather than look for water to go down in. Also, being in water would make it harder to rescue the survivors.
The NTSB has a searchable database of crash info. I didn’t find any commercial flights that resulted in flotation device usage, but it was a bit tough to use.
I did find many small plane incidents in which flotation devices were instrumental, and some in which a flotation device would have saved lives were it present.
I also recall the airliner that crashed near Africa near some island (the Seychelles?) Remember, it was hijacked and the hijacker didn’t believe there was no fuel and wanted to go to Australia. The pilot tried to ditch but a hijacker wrestled with the controls and the plane broke into three pieces. A few of the pieces were not fully submerged, but IIRC one was and some people drowned, perhaps because they were wearing flotation devices. If you blow it up in the plane, you could be trapped and unable to swim out of the wreckage.
Yeah, they do some good–they mark the crash site so the navy doesn’t have to waste as much time/money looking for the wreck :). It ain’t gonna help you if you’re on a 747 plummeting toward the Atlantic at 600 miles per hour.