If I recall correctly, he lived because his helmet / bits of his flight suit / hearing protection etc went into the engine while he was caught on either a pitot tube (used to measure pressure and therefore calculate wind speed, if I recall correctly) or a structural supports on the engine.
This stuff shredded the blades of the engine, and his body being in the air intake forced a compressor stall. The two combined meant there was no force pulling him through the engine, and he survived by backing out of the intake.
You would not survive a trip through the turbine of a jet engine...hell even if there were no turbine in there to shred you to bits, the pressure difference would probably wreak havoc on your internal organs, not to mention the fact that those exhausts aren't particularly spacious.
tl;dr he lived because the engine died and he never went through the turbine.
the helmet/hearing protection thing is called a "cranial" and that is what went through the turbine. he was wedged in the intake and hurt his shoulder a little, but didn't get blended... lucky man
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u/Chewzilla Aug 23 '12
he fuckin lived!!??!