Interesting article. For me the two most surprising takeaways were that most people survive an accident, and the other was how cheap the plane was.
They paid $400,000 for the plane. By comparison they paid $150,000 each for each of 3 test dummies in the plane. The test dummies cost more than the plane!
It is a little known fact that fully depreciated planes (like the 727 in the example) are cheap, its operating them that is expensive. Adding up the costs of mandatory maintenance, repairs, upgrades, consumables (gas, tires, hydraulic fluid, etc). That is what bites you.
And the 'most people survive' is something of a misnomer. Start trolling through http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/reports_aviation.html and you will see that accidents you would expect to be modestly survivable (low altitude takeoff and landing issues) are, and ones like the Air France jet falling out of the sky over the Atlantic are not.
Other factors that make aircraft like this one dirt cheap are that older aircraft (especially the 727) are very loud which makes it difficult to use them in commercial service to areas with noise restrictions. Hush kits are available but they're expensive and don't quiet the aircraft enough to operate some sensitive jurisdictions.
If the aircraft is also near the point where it has to undergo a D-check -- the most expensive kind of maintenance check where the aircraft is very nearly completely disassembled, inspected, and re-assembled -- it would make more economic sense to sell it for scrap than it would to continue operation. The BBC has a great documentary on a BA 747-400 D-check that has been posted on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_yHtfGH0nI
And the 'most people survive' is something of a misnomer.
So, if we consider only the accidents that are least likely to be survivable (which are a tiny percentage of all accidents), we find that they're not likely to be survivable?
Well, you could pull out two accidents out of the list where everyone died and say "most people die in plane crashes", which would be incorrect as well. Hence the term misnomer :-) As an engineer I would be inclined to say "if you find yourself in a survivable crash, the following things help increase your odds, ..." which keeps the cool bits about back of the plane vs first class, exits vs non-exits, but side-steps the probability question of surviving a gross malfunction in a commercial jet.
I assume they chose a 727 because it's not very useful these days and is therefore available for cheap. It's a decent airplane, but I believe it proved prohibitively expensive to make it meet noise regulations that are getting more common around big airports, and so they're relatively rarely used these days.
The article mentions that the 727 has a rear stairway that one can use to parachute out of the plane during flight, which the pilots did in this crash test. Random trivia: the famous hijacker DB Cooper picked a 727 for the same reason - he parachuted out the back of the plane with ransom money and was never seen again. For the interesting story, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper
They paid $400,000 for the plane. By comparison they paid $150,000 each for each of 3 test dummies in the plane. The test dummies cost more than the plane!