Free Fall - Surviving Falls

Surviving Falls

The severity of injury increases with the height of a free fall, but also depends on body and surface features and the manner of body impacts on to the surface. The chance of surviving increases if landing on a surface of high deformity, such as snow or water.

Overall, the height at which 50% of children die from a fall is between four and five storey heights above the ground.

JAT stewardess Vesna Vulović survived a fall of 33,000 feet (10,000 m) on January 26, 1972 when she was aboard JAT Flight 367. The plane was brought down by explosives over Srbská Kamenice in the former Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic). The Serbian stewardess suffered a broken skull, three broken vertebrae (one crushed completely), and was in a coma for 27 days. In an interview she commented that, according to the man who found her, "...I was in the middle part of the plane. I was found with my head down and my colleague on top of me. One part of my body with my leg was in the plane and my head was out of the plane. A catering trolley was pinned against my spine and kept me in the plane. The man who found me, says I was very lucky. He was in the German Army as a medic during World War Two. He knew how to treat me at the site of the accident."

In World War II there were several reports of military aircrew surviving long falls: Nick Alkemade, Alan Magee, and Ivan Chisov all fell at least 5,500 metres (18,000 ft) and survived.

Freefall is not to be confused with individuals who survive instances of various degrees of controlled flight into terrain. Such impact forces affecting these instances of survival differ from the forces which are characterized by free fall.

It was reported that two of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing survived for a brief period after hitting the ground (with the forward nose section fuselage in freefall mode), but died from their injuries before help arrived.

Juliane Koepcke survived a long free fall resulting from the December 24, 1971, crash of LANSA Flight 508 (a LANSA Lockheed Electra OB-R-941 commercial airliner) in the Peruvian rainforest. The airplane was struck by lightning during a severe thunderstorm and exploded in mid air, disintegrating two miles up. Köpcke, who was 17 years old at the time, fell to earth still strapped into her seat. The German Peruvian teenager survived the fall with only a broken collarbone, a gash to her right arm, and her right eye swollen shut.

As an example of 'freefall survival' that was not as extreme as sometimes reported in the press, a skydiver from Staffordshire was said to have plunged 6,000 metres without a parachute in Russia and survived. James Boole said he was supposed to have been given a signal by another skydiver to open his parachute, but it came two seconds too late. Mr Boole, who was filming the other skydiver for a television documentary, landed on snow-covered rocks and suffered a broken back and rib. While he was lucky to survive, this was not a case of true freefall survival, because he was flying a wingsuit, greatly decreasing his vertical speed. This was over descending terrain with deep snow cover, and he impacted while his parachute was beginning to deploy. Over the years other skydivers have survived accidents where the press has reported that no parachute was open, yet they were actually being slowed by a small area of tangled parachute. They might still be very lucky to survive, but an impact at 80 mph is much less severe than the 120 mph that might occur in normal freefall.

Another factor to mention is that a falling person will reach terminal velocity after some 12 seconds or so, falling some 450 m (about 1,500 ft) in that time. That person will not then fall any faster, so it makes no difference what distance they fall if it is more than 1,500 ft - they will still reach the ground at the same speed.