In some cases, passengers did not even receive any serious injuries. Some were simply late for the tragic flight, canceled the flight for any reason, while others remained relatively safe and sound after the crash. There were also cases when those who were not present on the fatal board, but died under its rubble, became victims of the disaster.
Four-year-old American girl who survived the disaster
In August 1989, an American airliner flying the route Saginaw - Detroit - Phoenix - Santa Ana took off from the airport in Detroit. A few minutes after the plane left the ground, it began to roll sideways, crashed into several lamp posts and burst into flames. The airliner crashed onto the road, drove along it, hit a railway embankment and crashed into an overpass. The plane was completely destroyed. One hundred and fifty passengers and crew members died in this disaster. Two people who were in the cars that were crashed by the plane died on the ground.
Four-year-old American Cecilia Sechan suffered significant injuries but survived the disaster. The child who survived the plane crash was flying with his parents and older brother. The girl was noticed by firefighter John Tied, who was working at the crash site. Cecilia suffered a fractured skull, third-degree burns, a broken collarbone and a broken leg. The girl underwent several operations, but was able to fully recover. Photos of the girl who survived the plane crash then spread all over America.
Cecilia Sechan was raised by her uncle and aunt. She has never given interviews, but broke her silence in 2013 by appearing in the documentary Sole Survivor. The girl says that she is not afraid to fly on airplanes. She is guided by the principle: if it happened once, it will not happen again. In addition, the girl got a tattoo of an airplane on her arm, which reminds her of that both tragic and happy day.
Larisa Savitskaya, survivor of the crash over Zavitinsk
In 1981, Soviet student Larisa Savitskaya was returning from a honeymoon with her husband on a Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Blagoveshchensk flight operated by an An-24 aircraft. The newlyweds had tickets for the middle part of the plane, but since there were many empty seats in the cabin, they decided to take seats in the back.
During the flight, the plane collided with a Tu-16K bomber. There were several reasons for this. These include errors by airport ground staff and dispatchers, and generally unsatisfactory organization of flights in the Zavitinsk area, and non-compliance with safety regulations, and unclear interaction between civilian and military aircraft. Everyone on board both planes died, except for the only girl who survived the crash.
At the time of the plane collision, Larisa was sleeping in her chair. The girl woke up from a burn caused by depressurization of the cabin, cold air (the temperature dropped to -30 degrees) and a strong blow. After the fuselage broke, the girl was thrown into the aisle, she lost consciousness, but a few moments later she woke up, reached the nearest seat and squeezed into it without wearing a seat belt. Larisa Savitskaya, who survived the plane crash, later claimed that at that moment she remembered the film “Miracles Still Happen,” the heroine of which miraculously escaped from the crash by squeezing into a chair. But the girl did not think about salvation then, she just wanted “to die without pain.”
Part of the plane fell on a birch grove, which significantly softened the blow. Larisa fell on a piece of debris 3 x 4 meters. It was subsequently determined that the fall took eight minutes. The girl fell to the ground unconscious.
When she woke up, she saw in front of her a chair with the body of her dead husband. Larisa was injured, but was still able to move independently. The girl had to spend two days in the forest, alone, among corpses and the wreckage of the plane. The girl was wearing paint that was flying off the fuselage, and her hair was very tangled in the wind. She built a temporary shelter from the rubble, kept warm with seat covers, and protected herself from mosquitoes with plastic bags.
It was raining all this time, but search work was still carried out. Larisa waved at a passing helicopter, but rescuers, not expecting to find survivors, mistook her for a geologist from a camp nearby. Larisa Savitskaya, as well as the bodies of her husband and two other passengers, were the last to be found. She was the only survivor.
Doctors determined that the girl had a concussion, broken ribs, broken arms, spinal injuries, and in addition, she had lost almost all her teeth. Despite her injuries, she did not receive disability. Later Larisa was paralyzed, but she was able to recover. Larisa became the person who received the minimum amount of compensation, that is, only 75 rubles.
Serbian flight attendant who survived a plane crash in 1972.
Flight attendants who survive a plane crash are not uncommon. However, the only survivors are already a one in a million chance. Such a miracle happened to a flight attendant on a flight from Copenhagen to Zagreb. The plane exploded in mid-air over the village of Serbska in Czechoslovakia. The investigation named the cause of the crash as a bomb planted by Croatian terrorists.
When the explosives detonated, the plane exploded into several pieces and began to fall. In the middle compartment at that time there was flight attendant Vesna Vulović, who was replacing her colleague Vesna Nikolic. The luck of the girl who survived the plane crash was that she had a soft fall and that she was first discovered by a peasant who worked in a field hospital during the war and knew how to provide first aid.
The girl, who was soon taken to the hospital, spent 27 days in a coma, then 16 months in a hospital bed. She had amnesia, the girl for some time forgot every day that passed. But she still survived. Doctors attributed her miraculous salvation to low blood pressure. When a person finds himself at a high altitude, his heart breaks from high pressure. But Vesna, who always had very low blood pressure, was able to escape death in the air. It also helped that the girl lost consciousness. But no one knows how the flight attendant managed to survive hitting the ground.
After the tragedy, the flight attendant who survived the plane crash quit and never flew on planes again. She admitted to reporters that even before that disaster she was on the verge of life and death eight times. This was when Vesna was on vacation in Montenegro and met a shark that should not have been in those waters at all, when she was arguing with her mentally ill neighbor about politics (the man took a knife and tried to attack), when she had a severe case of ectopic pregnancy and etc.
Nine-year-old girl who survived the crash over Cartagena
In January 1995, an American plane was flying from Bogota to Cartagena with 5 crew members and 47 passengers on board. During landing, the altimeter failed and the plane crashed in a swampy area. Nine-year-old Erica Delgado was flying with her parents and younger brother. A girl who survived the plane crash said that her mother pushed her out of the falling plane.
The plane exploded and caught fire as it fell. Erica fell into the seaweed, which softened her fall. Immediately after the tragedy, looting began. Residents of a nearby village tore off a gold necklace from a living girl, ignoring her pleas for help. Some time later, the girl who survived the plane crash was found by a farmer.
One and a half dozen survivors and 72 days of struggle with nature
In the fall of 1972, a plane crashed while flying from Montevideo to Santiago. The survivors had virtually no chance of salvation, but they managed to cheat death. Several passengers were left in the snowy mountains, not knowing where they were or whether anyone was looking for them. It was cold in the mountains, people tried to somehow warm up, hiding in the remains of the fuselage. By morning, several passengers still had not woken up. The passengers managed to find some provisions: crackers, liqueur, several chocolates, sardines. Everyone understood that this would not be enough. The survivors later found a radio and heard that the rescue operation had been called off. Then they decided to eat the dead.
The next day, an avalanche occurred and some people were trapped under snow debris. They managed to get out from under the rubble three days later. People waited 72 days for salvation. Each new day was similar to the previous one. Soon the three survivors decided to go in search of some settlement. It was difficult for them to breathe and move in the snow; soon one of the group decided to return back to the plane.
When they reached the top of the mountain, they saw only snow-capped mountains around. They thought there was no hope, but decided that it was better to die on the road than near the plane. Moreover, the mother and sister of one of the guys had died earlier, and he knew that if he returned, he would have to eat their meat.
On the ninth day of the journey, the young people found a river, on the other side they saw a shepherd. He brought paper and a pen and threw it with a stone to the other side. The survivors wrote down everything that happened to them. The shepherd threw cheese and bread to the young guys, and he himself went to the nearest settlement, which was 10 hours away. He returned back with the military.
The rescue operation took two days. First, the military rescued two young people who went in search of the settlement. The survivors gave their first press conference in the mountains. The young people had to tell everything that happened. But the press turned out to be merciless, the newspapers were full of headlines “They ate the dead”, “Traces of cannibalism discovered” and so on. But both the rescuers and the survivors themselves understood that they had no other opportunity to survive.
Seventeen-year-old schoolgirl Juliana Diler Kepke
The plane crash happened at night. When the girl woke up, the hands of her watch were moving; the time was about nine in the morning. The surviving girl later said that her eyes and head hurt very much. She was sitting in the same chair. Juliana lost consciousness several times. The girl saw rescue helicopters, but could not give any signal.
Seventeen-year-old Juliana broke her collarbone, she had a deep wound on her leg, scratches, her right eye was swollen shut from the blow, and her whole body was covered in bruises. The girl found herself in a deep forest. Her father was a zoologist; as a child, he taught Juliana the rules of survival, she was able to get food, and soon found a stream. Nine days later, Juliana Diler Kepke herself came out to the fishermen.
Based on the story of Juliana’s miraculous rescue, the feature film “Miracles Still Happen” was made, which later helped Larisa Savitskaya survive.
Survivor of a plane that crashed into the Indian Ocean
People who survived a plane crash were usually able to fully recover from the tragedy. In 2009, a flight from Paris to the Comoros crashed into the Indian Ocean. Thirteen-year-old Bahia Bakari flew with her mother to visit her grandparents in the Comoros Islands. The girl does not know how exactly she managed to survive, since she was sleeping at the time of the disaster. The girl received fractures and multiple bruises from the fall. But she needed to hold out even before the rescuers arrived. She climbed onto one of the fragments, which was kept afloat. Bakari was found only fourteen hours after the disaster. The girl was taken to Paris on a special flight.
"Lucky Four" in the largest disaster in terms of number of victims
In Japan in 1985, the largest disaster involving a single aircraft occurred in terms of the number of victims. The Boeing took off from Tokyo to Osaka. There were more than five hundred passengers and crew members on board. After takeoff, the tail stabilizer came off, depressurization occurred, pressure dropped, and some of the airliner systems failed.
The plane was doomed; it became uncontrollable. The pilots managed to keep the plane in the air for more than half an hour. As a result, he crashed one hundred kilometers from the capital of Japan. The plane crashed in the mountains, rescuers were able to find the wreckage only the next morning; of course, they did not at all hope to find survivors.
But a rescue team discovered a whole group of survivors. They were flight attendant and passenger Hiroko Yoshizaki and her eight-year-old daughter, twelve-year-old Keiko Kawakami. The last girl was found on a tree. All four survivors were in the rear of the plane, exactly where the plane's skin ruptured. But more passengers could have survived the disaster. Keiko Kawakami later claimed that she heard the voices of passengers, including her father. Many passengers died on the ground from their wounds and injuries. The victims of the tragedy were 520 people.
Girl who survived the L-410 plane crash
The girl who survived the plane crash in Khabarovsk is three-year-old Jasmina Leontyeva. The girl was flying with her teacher along the route Khabarovsk - Nelkan, the plane was supposed to land, but it started to land, tilted and fell not far from the runway. Two crew members and four passengers on board were killed. The girl, who was found under the wreckage of the plane, was immediately taken to the hospital, and then transported by a special plane to Khabarovsk. There, the parents of the girl who survived the plane crash were already waiting for Jasmine at the hospital.
Flight technician who survived the Yak-42 crash
A few years ago, a Yak-42 plane crashed with the Lokomotiv hockey team on board. The flight engineer managed to survive this terrible tragedy. Alexander Sizov, a survivor of the plane crash (Lokomotiv), testified in court. The case of Vadim Timofeev, who was responsible for air transport security at the Yak Service company, was considered.
Air transport is one of the safest, but tragedies occur there from time to time. Fortunately, even in a plane crash there is a chance of survival, albeit one in a million. Evidence of this is a Soviet flight attendant who survived a plane crash, the only survivor of a crash over the Indian Ocean, the tragedy over Cartagena, the “lucky four” in Japan and other people.
Despite the fact that thousands of times more people die in car accidents every year than in airplane crashes, the fear of flying lives in the public consciousness. First of all, this is explained by the scale of the tragedies - a fallen airliner means tens and hundreds of simultaneous deaths. This is much more shocking than several thousand reports of fatal accidents spread over a month.
The second reason for fear of a plane crash is the awareness of one’s own helplessness and inability to somehow influence the course of events. This is almost always true. However, the history of aeronautics has accumulated a small number of exceptions in which people survived falling with the plane (or its debris) from a height of several kilometers without a parachute. These cases are so few that many of them have their own Wikipedia pages.
Wreck Rider
Vesna Vulović, a flight attendant at Jugoslovenski Aerotransport (today called Air Serbia), holds the world record for surviving a free fall without a parachute. She entered the Guinness Book of Records because she survived the explosion of a DC-9 plane at an altitude of 10,160 meters.
At the time of the explosion, Vesna was working with passengers. She immediately lost consciousness, so she did not remember either the moment of the disaster or its details. Because of this, the flight attendant did not develop a fear of flying - she perceived all the circumstances from other people’s words. It turned out that at the time of the destruction of the plane, Vulovich was pinned between the seat, the body of another crew member and the buffet cart. In this form, the debris fell onto the snow-covered mountainside and slid along it until it came to a complete stop.
Vesna remained alive, although she received serious injuries - she broke the base of her skull, three vertebrae, both legs and her pelvis. For 10 months, the girl’s lower body was paralyzed; in total, treatment took almost 1.5 years.
After recovery, Vulovich tried to return to her previous job, but she was not allowed to fly and was given a position in the airline office.
Target selection
Surviving like Vesna Vulovich in a cocoon of debris is much easier than in solo free flight. However, the second case also has its own surprising examples. One of them dates back to 1943, when US military pilot Alan Magee flew over France in a heavy four-engine B-17 bomber. At an altitude of 6 km he was thrown out of the plane, and the glass roof of the station slowed his fall. As a result, Magee fell on the stone floor, remained alive and was immediately captured by the Germans, shocked by what he saw.
A great fall target would be a large haystack. There are several known cases of people surviving plane crashes if densely growing bushes got in their way. A dense forest also gives some chances, but there is a risk of running into branches.
The ideal option for a falling person would be snow or a swamp. A soft and compressible environment that absorbs the inertia accumulated during the flight to the center of the earth, under a successful combination of circumstances, can make injuries compatible with life.
There is almost no chance of survival if you fall onto the surface of the water. Water is practically not compressed, so the result of contact with it will be the same as in a collision with concrete.
Sometimes the most unexpected objects can bring salvation. One of the main things skydiving enthusiasts are taught is to stay away from power lines. However, there is a known case when it was a high-voltage line that saved the life of a skydiver who found himself in free flight due to a parachute that did not open. It hit the wires, bounced back and fell to the ground from a height of several tens of meters.
Pilots and children
Statistics on survival in plane crashes show that crew members and passengers under age are much more likely to cheat death. The situation with pilots is clear - the passive safety systems in their cockpit are more reliable than those of other passengers.
Why children survive more often than others is not completely clear. However, researchers have established several reliable reasons for this issue:
- increased bone flexibility, general muscle relaxation and a higher percentage of subcutaneous fat, which protects internal organs from injury like a pillow;
- short stature, due to which the head is covered by the back of the chair from flying debris. This is extremely important, since the main cause of death in plane crashes is brain injury;
- smaller body size, reducing the likelihood of running into some sharp object at the moment of landing.
Invincible fortitude
A successful landing does not always mean a positive outcome. Not every miraculously surviving person is instantly found by well-disposed local residents. For example, in 1971, over the Amazon at an altitude of 3,200 meters, a Lockheed Electra aircraft collapsed due to a fire caused by lightning striking a wing with a fuel tank. 17-year-old German Juliana Kopke came to her senses in the jungle, strapped to a chair. She was injured, but could move.
The girl remembered the words of her biologist father, who said that even in the impenetrable jungle you can always find people if you follow the flow of water. Juliana walked along the forest streams, which gradually turned into rivers. With a broken collarbone, a bag of sweets and a stick with which she dispersed stingrays in shallow water, the girl came out to people 9 days later. In Italy, the film “Miracles Still Happen” (1974) was made based on this story.
There were 92 people on board, including Kopke. It was subsequently established that besides her, 14 more people survived the fall. However, over the next few days, they all died before rescuers found them.
An episode from the film “Miracles Still Happen” saved the life of Larisa Savitskaya, who in 1981 was flying with her husband from their honeymoon on a flight from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Blagoveshchensk. At an altitude of 5,200 meters, a passenger An-24 collided with a Tu-16K bomber.
Larisa and her husband were sitting in the back of the plane. The fuselage broke right in front of her seat, and the girl was thrown into the aisle. At that moment, she remembered the film about Julian Kopka, who during the crash reached a chair, pressed herself into it and survived. Savitskaya did the same. Part of the plane's body, in which the girl remained, fell onto a birch grove that softened the blow. She was in the fall for about 8 minutes. Larisa was the only survivor; she received serious injuries, but remained conscious and retained the ability to move independently.
Savitskaya's surname is included twice in the Russian version of the Guinness Book of Records. She is listed as the person who survived the fall from the greatest height. The second record is rather sad - Larisa became the one who received minimal compensation for physical damage. She was paid only 75 rubles - that’s exactly how much, according to State Insurance standards, survivors of a plane crash were then entitled to.
Flight attendant Vesna Vulović became famous throughout the world in the early seventies. In 1972, an event occurred after which her life completely changed. Vulovich’s name was included in the Guinness Book of Records, she met with political and public figures, met the idol of her youth, Paul McCartney, and other world-famous stars. What happened in the early seventies? What event made an ordinary flight attendant famous?
Plane crash
A terrible accident occurred on January 26, 1972. The McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 airliner was flying from Stockholm to Belgrade. At an altitude of more than ten thousand meters the liner exploded. Its debris fell on the Czechoslovakian city of Ceska Kamenice. All passengers and crew members were killed, with the exception of flight attendant Vesna Vulović.
On this day, all the world's media reported about the explosion of the plane. The cause of the tragedy that occurred over a small Czechoslovakian town was a bomb that was hidden on board an airliner by terrorists from Croatia. The chances of surviving such accidents are negligible. Reports of disasters in the sky usually end with the tragic phrase: “Everyone on board died.” But this time, news appeared in the media that shocked the world: Yugoslav Airlines flight attendant Vesna Vulović managed to survive. However, this case cannot be called absolutely unprecedented in
So, more than forty years ago, a sensation spread around the world - twenty-two-year-old flight attendant Vesna Vulovich remained alive after falling from a height of ten thousand meters. What saved her life? The planting was softened by the snow-covered tree crowns. However, the heroine of this amazing story herself could not tell about her flight. Stewardess Vesna Vulovich, who survived the terrible accident, remembered that terrible day vaguely. She came to her senses only two months later. What is known from the biography of the flight attendant?
Stewardess Vesna Vulovich
She became a flight attendant by accident. Vesna was born in Yugoslavia in 1950. She graduated from high school and entered university. Like many other young people of the sixties, the girl was a fan of the Beatles, and therefore dreamed of mastering the English language perfectly. In 1968, she could not imagine that she would ever meet Paul McCartney himself.
Vesna chose the English department for herself and began to study the language in which famous vocalists sang. After the first year of study, our heroine went for an internship in England. When she returned home, something happened that radically changed her whole life.
The girl met her school friend. By that time he had flown on airliners of a large Yugoslav company. A childhood friend advised Vesna to enroll in a flight attendant course. Working on international airlines gave me the opportunity to regularly visit the beautiful, foggy city of London. In addition, the salary of a flight attendant was several times higher than the income of an English teacher.
First flight
Vesna successfully completed her courses. In 1971, the girl took to the skies for the first time. When the tragedy occurred, which became the main event in her life, she was still a university student. She did not have a permanent job.
The last hours before the disaster
On that day, the crew in which Vesna interned arrived in Copenhagen. In the Danish capital, he replaced the pilots of the plane that flew in from Stockholm. Subsequently, Vesna Vulovich - the flight attendant who killed all her colleagues - recalled that the crew members, more experienced people, seemed to have a presentiment of something. They constantly talked about their families, went shopping a lot, and bought souvenirs for relatives.
Later, in the hospital, Serbian flight attendant Vesna Vulović tried to remember all the smallest events of that day. Who planted the bomb? Shortly before takeoff, she noticed one of the loaders. This man differed in both appearance and behavior from his colleagues. Outwardly, he looked like a resident of the Balkan Peninsula. The man’s behavior contrasted sharply with the behavior of the other loaders. He spoke loudly, was nervous, and fussed. According to Vulovich, it was he who planted the bomb on the plane. However, this realization came too late.
Bruno Honke
What happened to flight attendant Vesna Vulović in 1972 can safely be called a miracle. She was incredibly lucky twice. The first time was when she did not die in the explosion. In the second - when she managed to survive the fall.
However, the girl was saved not only by the fact that the dilapidated liner fell on snow-covered trees. The fact is that the first at the scene of the disaster was a local resident, Bruno Honke. This man worked in a German field hospital during the Second World War. He provided the girl with first aid. It is worth saying that Honka miraculously managed to discover a barely breathing young flight attendant among many dead bodies. He probably saved her life.
Treatment
The story of Vesna Vulović, a flight attendant from Yugoslavia who survived an accident that claimed 27 lives, instantly spread throughout the world. She was taken to the hospital. A long period of rehabilitation began. For about two months, Spring did not come to her senses. For a long time, doctors did not believe that the girl would survive after such a terrible accident. But she still came to her senses. It is noteworthy that when I opened my eyes, the first thing I did was ask for a cigarette.
As the days passed, the young body coped with the injuries received from the fall more and more confidently. However, Vesna never remembered the last hours spent on board the plane. She could not say what she was doing at the time of the explosion. Most likely, at those minutes the girl was in the passenger compartment.
For ten months, Vesna was paralyzed. Doctors feared she would never be able to walk. However, another miracle happened - the only survivor of the McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 plane crash got to her feet.
After the disaster
Flight attendant Vesna Vulović, whose photo was shown on television almost every day in February 1972, was sent by plane to Belgrade two months after the accident. Doctors feared that the flight would negatively affect her mental state. A fall from such a height cannot pass without leaving a trace. However, everything turned out well. Moreover, Vesna had no fear of flying. She was not afraid of airplanes even later.
She spent some more time in a Belgrade hospital. A policeman was on duty at the entrance to Vulovich’s room day and night. She did not remember anything about the events of the last hours before the accident. However, she remained the only witness to the crime, which, by the way, was never solved. The authorities feared that terrorists would try to kill the surviving crew member.
The miraculous rescue of the flight attendant overshadowed the other details of the accident. Vesna was included in the Guinness Book of Records as the person who made the highest jump without a parachute. In the mid-eighties, Spring arrived in London. Paul McCartney was present at the ceremony for presenting the certificate of entry into the Guinness Book of Records. Spring finally met the idol of her youth.
In the early autumn of 1972, Vulovich was discharged from the hospital. Surprisingly, she not only did not develop a fear of flying, but did not even lose the desire to work as a flight attendant. Vesna tried to get a job at the airline again. She was not hired as a flight attendant, but was offered a position in the office. Vesna Vulovich worked for the airline for many years: she was involved in the preparation of cargo contracts. The former flight attendant left her place of work eighteen years later due to disagreement with the policies of the Yugoslav leader S. Milosevic.
A flight attendant who survived a 1972 plane crash has become a national heroine. She was given a reception by Marshal Tito himself, which for a citizen of Yugoslavia at that time was considered a great honor. Songs were dedicated to Spring, and she was invited to various television shows. Girls were named after her. To survive such a catastrophe, a lucky break is not enough. You need strength, an extraordinary desire to live. Vulovich became a symbol of good luck and optimism.
The former flight attendant used her fame for social and political purposes. She took an active part in protests against Milosevic’s rule and campaigned for one of the parties in the elections.
Death
Vesna Vulovich lived to be 66 years old. On December 23, 2016, she was found dead in her own apartment. Relatives and friends could not reach her for a long time. The police were called and they opened the door. The cause of death of the famous flight attendant is unknown. Friends claim that the woman’s health has recently deteriorated sharply.
The record of a flight attendant from Yugoslavia has not yet been broken. Not a single person has managed to fall from such a height and survive. However, history knows several equally interesting cases.
In 1942, a Soviet military plane was shot down, the pilot of which fell without a parachute. His life was saved by snow cover.
Another amazing event occurred many years after World War II ended. In December 1971, a passenger plane crashed near Peru. Half an hour after departure, the airliner ran into a thunderstorm. The plane caught fire and broke into pieces. The 17-year-old passenger survived. When she woke up, she found herself sitting in a chair hanging from a tree.
In August 1981, a collision occurred between An-24 and Tu-16 aircraft. Student Larisa Savitskaya and her husband were present on board the passenger airliner. There were several reasons for the disaster, including poor coordination between civilian and military dispatchers. Everyone died except Larisa.
She fell from a height of five kilometers. She received many injuries, but, according to Soviet laws, she was not entitled to disability. The woman spent her entire life doing odd jobs and sometimes went hungry. She also became a record holder in some way. Unlike Vulovich, Savitskaya did not become famous in her homeland. She received compensation from the state in the amount of 75 rubles, after which the story of the amazing fall was forgotten.
It is now possible to sum up the results of the Colombian plane crash that occurred on November 29: of the 81 people on board, only six survived. Some of the passengers on the crashed plane were football players from the Brazilian club Chapecoense. Of the entire team, only one player survived - defender Alan Ruschel. Surely, when he recovers, he will tell a lot about that fateful flight - as those who were lucky enough not to die in other plane crashes have already done. We have collected several monologues from survivors: what they remember about the crash, what they were thinking about at that moment and why they feel guilty.
10 days in the jungle
risk.ruJuliane Köpke is the only survivor of 92 passengers from the plane crash in December 1971. Their Lockheed L-188 Electra plane was caught in a thundercloud and lightning damaged its wing. At the time of the disaster, Juliana was 17 years old.
My father Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke was a famous zoologist. That year he conducted research in Peru, in the Amazon jungle. My mother and I flew to him from Lima to celebrate Christmas together. Almost at the very end of the flight, when there were about 20 minutes left before landing, the plane fell into a terrible thundercloud and began to shake violently. Mom got nervous: “I don’t like this.” I, without looking up, looked out the window, behind which the darkness was torn by bright lightning, and saw how the right wing caught fire. Mom's last words: "It's all over now." What happened next happened very quickly. The plane tilted steeply, began to fall and collapse. I still have the incredibly loud screams of people in my ears. Fastened to the chair, I quickly flew down somewhere. The wind whistled in my ears. The seat belts cut into my stomach very hard. I fell headfirst. Perhaps the most inexplicable thing is that at that moment I was not afraid. Maybe I just didn't have time to be scared? Flying through the clouds, I saw a forest below. My last thought is that the forest is like broccoli. Then, apparently, I lost consciousness. The plane crash occurred around 1:30 am. When I woke up, the hands of my watch, which, oddly enough, were running, showed about nine. It was light. My head and eyes hurt very badly (the doctors later explained to me that at the time of the accident, due to the difference in pressure inside and outside the plane, the eye capillaries burst). I sat in the same chair, saw a little of the forest and a little of the sky. It dawned on me that I had survived the plane crash, remembered my mother, and lost consciousness again. Then I woke up again. This happened several times. And every time I tried to free myself from the chair to which I was fastened. When I finally succeeded, it began to rain heavily. I forced myself to get up - my body was like cotton wool. With great difficulty she got to her knees. My eyes turned black again. It must have been half a day before I finally managed to get up. The rain had stopped by then. I started screaming, calling my mother, hoping that she was also alive. But no one responded.
For 9 days, the seriously wounded Juliana independently made her way through the jungle to the people: the knowledge she received from her father helped her survive. Having reached one of the boats tied to the shore along the river, she fell exhausted, and was later found by local fishermen. The girl was brought to the nearest village, where her wounds were treated, then to the nearest village, and only then transported on a small plane to Pucallpa, where she met her father. Later it became known that 14 passengers survived the plane crash, but all of them later died from their injuries.
Fell from the sky for eight minutes
Larisa Savitskaya is twice included in the Russian Guinness Book of Records: as a person who survived a fall from a height of 5220 meters, and as a person who received the minimum amount of compensation for physical damage in a plane crash - 75 rubles. On August 24, 1981, she and her husband Vladimir were returning from a honeymoon on board an An-24PB from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Blagoveshchensk. Their plane at an altitude of 5220 meters was rammed from above by a Tu-16 military bomber: as it later turned out, military and civilian controllers incorrectly coordinated the movement of both aircraft in space. The An-24 lost wings with fuel tanks and the top of the fuselage from the collision. The remaining part broke several times during the fall, and part of the hull, together with Savitskaya, landed on a birch grove. During the fall, the girl held on to the seat, losing consciousness several times. As it turned out later, Savitskaya’s fall along with the wreckage of the plane lasted approximately eight minutes.
Sometimes they say that in one moment your whole life can fly by before your eyes. In eight minutes you probably won’t see anything like this. But I had nothing like that. At these moments, I mentally whispered to my husband about how scared I was to die alone. The first thing I saw when I woke up on the ground was him, dead, sitting in a chair opposite me. At that moment he seemed to be saying goodbye to me.
Despite many terrible injuries, Savitskaya was able to move. She built herself a shelter from airplane debris and covered herself with seat covers and plastic bags. The rescue planes she waved to from below mistook her for one of the geologists whose camp was nearby. The girl spent three days in the taiga before she was found. Since the double plane crash was immediately classified in the Soviet Union, there was not a single news about the crash at that time. Savitskaya’s ward was guarded by people in civilian clothes, and her mother was “advised to remain silent.” Soviet Sport first wrote about Savitskaya, but the article said that she fell from a height of five kilometers during testing of a homemade aircraft. Savitskaya was never given a disability, despite the fact that for some time she could not even stand on her feet, and physical damage was compensated in the amount of 75 rubles. Despite the difficulties, Larisa recovered and even gave birth to a son.
"Why me?"
EsoReiter.ru
The highest height from which a person has ever fallen and remained alive is 10,160 meters. This person is Vesna Vulović, a flight attendant on the Yugoslav McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 airliner. On January 26, 1972, the plane exploded in the air (presumably it was a Yugoslav nationalist bomb). The 22-year-old girl Vesna is the only survivor of that disaster. She was thrown out of the plane by a blast wave, and miraculously survived. The girl was also lucky in that the peasant Bruno Honke, who found her first, was able to provide her with first aid before the rescuers arrived. Once in the hospital, Vesna fell into a coma. And as soon as she got out of it, she asked for a smoke.
I didn't have any premonitions. It was as if I knew in advance that I would survive. I don’t remember how I fell. Later they told me that the residents of the town where the plane wreckage, the corpses and I fell, heard my screams: “Help me, Lord, help me!” They followed the voice and found me. At that time, I had already lost four liters of blood. All crew members and passengers suffered lung ruptures while still in the air, and none of them could survive. They all died before they hit the ground. When I found out that everyone died, but I remained alive, I wanted to die, I felt guilty: why am I alive? For 31 years I didn’t remember anything about the month I lived after the accident, and about my problems: paralysis, broken arms, legs, fingers. All this had to be endured. I had to get up. And heal normally. I think miracles do exist.
“I remember what those children were wearing.”
spb.kp.ru
Alexandra Kargapolova is one of the five lucky ones who survived the Tu-134 plane crash near Petrozavodsk, which happened on June 21, 2011. While approaching to land, the pilots missed (there was very poor visibility that night), hitting a 50-meter pine tree with their wing. The plane caught fire, plowed through the forest and fell, breaking in half. Alexandra recalls that initially they were supposed to fly from Moscow to Petrozavodsk on a Bombardier plane, and only at the landing they were told that they would fly on a Tu-134. Even then, the girl had an unpleasant premonition, but she decided to drive it away from herself.
If I had known about this in advance, I would have gone by train... I flew from Moscow to Karelia, home to my son and parents. Due to the change of board, passengers began to sit in different places. I sat right behind business class, on the left in front of the wing. Everything was calm, but at some point I realized that we were falling. At this moment there was silence in the salon. No screams, no panic. Only frightened faces. Many were asleep at that moment, thank God. I was saved by my unfastened seat belt - the impact threw me out of the plane. I fell on the plowed ground - as if a feather bed, as they say, had been laid down. My injuries were minimal compared to the scale of the disaster. I was very lucky. After what happened, it was very difficult to realize that I was alive, but the children who were sitting next to me were not. I don't remember their faces, but I remember how they were dressed. I had a marriage, a child, something built in my life. But the children did not have any of this at the time of their death. Why? For the first months, only this thought gnawed at me...
- On average, the possibility of a passenger getting into a plane crash is 1:10,000,000 flights, that is, the risk is minimal.
- There are statistics that show that during a disaster, a much smaller number of passengers are registered on a fatal flight than usual. This allows some mystics to believe that some people are able to sense danger.
- Every 2-3 seconds an airplane lands or takes off around the world. Around the world, more than 3 million people.
On July 7, an Air Canada passenger plane flying from Toronto mistakenly headed not onto the runway, but onto the taxiway, where four other airliners were at that moment. The controllers managed to stop the pilot in time, give the command to go around, after which the plane landed safely on the correct runway.
According to the head of Aero Consulting Experts and former United Airlines pilot Ross Eimer, the incident threatened to become the largest disaster in aviation history: “Imagine a huge Airbus crashing into four passenger airliners with full tanks.”
Let's remember the most famous and unusual cases of survival in plane crashes.
Boeing 777 crash in San Francisco
On July 6, 2013, a Boeing 777 crashed in San Francisco. The Asiana Airlines Boeing 777-28EER was flying OZ-214 on the Seoul-San Francisco route, but when landing at San Francisco airport, it crashed into an embankment in front of the runway and collapsed.
The NTSB commission blamed the cause of the crash on the erroneous actions of the crew: the plane was descending too quickly. The pilots noticed that the rate of descent and airspeed were not adequate when the aircraft was 60 meters from the ground, but did not take action for a missed approach. More precisely, 1.5 seconds before the collision the crew decided to go around, but there was no longer an opportunity for this. 
The impact tore off the plane's tail and left engine; the fuselage slid along the runway for about 600 meters and described an almost complete circle - it was turned 330 degrees. 
Of the 307 people on board (291 passengers and 16 crew members), 3 schoolgirls died (two at the scene of the disaster, one died in the hospital), 187 people were injured. “Only three people” - it’s hard to believe when looking at the photographs of the wrecked liner. 
This plane crash showed that serious damage to an aircraft does not mean large casualties. There is another interesting circumstance: contrary to the popular theory that the safest seats are in the back of the plane, all three crash victims were sitting there.
The cabin of flight 214 after the disaster: 
Miracle in Toronto 2005
It was a high-profile case when all the people survived a completely destroyed liner.
On August 2, 2005, an Air France A340 aircraft, operating flight AFR358 on the Paris-Toronto route, crashed near Toronto International Airport. There were 12 crew members and 297 passengers on board. 
The approach was carried out in difficult weather conditions with large thunderstorms over the airport in heavy rain and lightning flashes on the runway. The landing was carried out in manual mode with the autopilot and autothrottle disabled. 
Having flown over the end of the runway significantly higher than set, the airliner landed more than a third from the beginning of the runway length. The pilots applied reverse, but were unable to stop within the runway, as a result of which the plane left the runway and rolled into a ravine. A fire broke out, which in a few minutes engulfed the airliner and destroyed it, but all 309 people on board were evacuated in time.
The evacuation of 309 people took less than 2 minutes, which many, including Canadian Transport Minister Jean Lapierre, later called a “miracle.” 
Survive falling from 5 km height
Young student Larisa Savitskaya and her husband Vladimir were returning from their honeymoon. On August 24, 1981, the An-24 plane on which the Savitsky spouses were flying collided with a Tu-16 military bomber at an altitude of 5220 m. After the collision, the crews of both aircraft died. As a result of the collision, the An-24 lost wings with fuel tanks and the top of the fuselage. The remaining part broke several times during the fall.
Passenger aircraft An-24: 
At the time of the disaster, Larisa Savitskaya was sleeping in her seat at the rear of the plane. I woke up from a strong blow and a sudden burn (the temperature instantly dropped from 25 °C to? 30 °C). After another break in the fuselage, which passed right in front of her seat, Larisa was thrown into the aisle, waking up, she reached the nearest seat, climbed in and pressed herself into it, without having buckled herself in. Larisa herself subsequently claimed that at that moment she remembered an episode from the film “Miracles Still Happen,” where the heroine squeezed into a chair during a plane crash and survived.
Bomber Tu-16K: 
Part of the plane's body landed on a birch grove, which softened the blow. According to subsequent studies, the entire fall of the plane fragment measuring 3 meters wide by 4 meters long, where Savitskaya ended up, took 8 minutes. Savitskaya was unconscious for several hours. Waking up on the ground, Larisa saw in front of her a chair with the body of her dead husband. She received a number of serious injuries, but could move independently. 
Two days later, she was discovered by rescuers, who were very surprised when, after two days of coming across only the bodies of the dead, they met a living person. She later learned that a grave had already been dug for both her and her husband. She was the only survivor of 38 people on board. The causes of the aircraft collision were unsatisfactory organization and management of flights in the area of the Zavitinsk airfield.
Larisa Savitskaya was twice included in the Russian edition of the Guinness Book of Records:
like a person who survived a fall from a maximum height,
as a person who received the minimum amount of compensation for physical damage - 75 rubles. According to Gosstrakh standards in the USSR, 300 rubles were required. compensation for damages for the dead and 75 rubles. for survivors of plane crashes.
Larisa Savitskaya with her son Georgy. 
Survive falling from a height of 10 km without a parachute
The DC-9 crash over Hermsdorf was an aircraft accident that occurred on January 26, 1972. The McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 airliner of Yugoslav Airlines was operating flight JAT367 on the route Stockholm - Copenhagen - Zagreb - Belgrade, but 46 minutes after departure from Copenhagen the liner exploded in the air. According to some reports, a Croatian group of extremists left a bomb in the luggage compartment of the airliner.
JAT DC-9-32, identical to the one blown up: 
The explosion of the airliner occurred over the German city of Hermsdorf, and the wreckage of the plane fell near the city of Ceska Kamenice (Czechoslovakia). Of the 28 people on board (23 passengers and 5 crew members), only one survived - 22-year-old flight attendant Vesna Vulovich, who fell without a parachute from a height of 10,160 meters. She is the holder of the world altitude record for surviving a free fall without a parachute, according to the Guinness Book of Records.
Vesna was in a coma and received many injuries: fractures of the base of the skull, three vertebrae, both legs and the pelvis. The treatment took 16 months, of which for 10 months the girl’s lower body was paralyzed (from the waist to the legs). 
Miracle on the Hudson: A320 Emergency Landing
This aircraft accident occurred on January 15, 2009. The US Airways Airbus A320-214 was operating flight AWE 1549 on the route New York-Charlotte-Seattle, and there were 150 passengers and 5 crew members on board. 1.5 minutes after takeoff, the plane collided with a flock of birds and both engines failed. Commander Chesley Sullenberger, a former US Air Force pilot, decided that the only option to save the 155 people on board was to land on the Hudson River. The splashdown turned out to be successful. 
The crew landed the plane safely on the waters of the Hudson River in New York. All 155 people on board survived, 83 people were injured - 5 seriously (one flight attendant was the most injured) and 78 minor.
In the media, the incident is known as the “Miracle on the Hudson.” In total, 11 cases of controlled forced landings of passenger airliners on water are known; this case is the fourth without casualties.
By the way, yesterday, July 17, 2017, a Ural Airlines plane (flight U6-2932 Simferopol - Yekaterinburg) collided with a flock of birds, resulting in damage to the nose cone. It would seem like such a colossus and some birds, but... the plane ended up being repaired for 12 hours.
Here's what a bird strike looks like from the pilot's seat and from outside: 
Tu-124 landing on the Neva
This splashdown event occurred in Soviet aviation in the skies over Leningrad on August 21, 1963. As a result of a combination of circumstances, the engines of the Tu-124 passenger plane failed, and the airliner began gliding from a height of half a kilometer above the city center. The crew had no choice but to try to splash down on the surface of the Neva. All 52 people on board survived.
Initially, the commission investigating the circumstances of the accident placed responsibility for the emergency on the crew. But later it was decided not to punish the pilots. 
Il-12 splashdown in Kazan
And 10 years earlier, on April 30, 1953, an Il-12 P aircraft from Aeroflot operated flight 35 on the route Moscow - Kazan - Novosibirsk. There were 18 passengers and 5 crew members on board. At 21:37, at the moment when the airliner, preparing to land in Kazan, was flying over the Volga, a very strong impact occurred. The crew members recalled that their vision darkened. Both engines lost power and flames appeared from the exhaust pipes.
Aeroflot IL-12: 
The ship's commander decided to make an emergency splashdown. The IL-12 splashed down in the area of the Kazan river port, after which the car began to rapidly fill with river water. the evacuation could not be carried out in time. The crew told passengers that the plane splashed down in shallow water, which is why many were concerned about taking personal belongings. In fact, the depth of the river in this place reached about 20 meters. As a result, people who had put on outerwear ended up in the water and began to drown. Of the 22 people, one passenger drowned. The investigation commission found that the cause of the emergency was a collision between the plane and a flock of ducks.
Miracle in the Andes
On October 13, 1972, an FH-227 plane crash occurred, which was called the “Miracle in the Andes.” The Uruguayan Air Force Fairchild FH-227D was operating charter flight FAU 571 on the Montevideo-Mendoza-Santiago route, carrying 5 crew members and 40 passengers (members of the Old Cristians rugby team, their relatives and sponsors). While approaching Santiago, the airliner was caught in a cyclone, crashed into a rock and crashed at the foot of the mountain.
Aircraft Fairchild FH-227D board T-571: 
The survivors had minimal food supplies and no heat sources necessary to survive in the harsh cold climate at an altitude of 3,600 meters. Desperate from hunger and a radio message that “all efforts to find the missing plane are being stopped,” people began to eat the frozen bodies of their dead comrades. Rescuers learned about the survivors only after 72 days... 
12 passengers died when they fell and collided with a rock, another 5 died later from wounds and cold. Then, of the remaining 28 survivors, 8 more died in an avalanche that covered their “home” from the fuselage of the plane, and later three more died from their wounds.
Boeing 737 accident over Kahului
This accident occurred on April 28, 1988. The Aloha Airlines Boeing 737-297 was operating domestic flight AQ 243 on the Hilo-Honolulu route, with 6 crew members and 89 passengers on board. But 23 minutes after takeoff, a significant part of the fuselage structure in the nose suddenly tore off the plane. According to the report, the causes of the accident were metal corrosion, poor epoxy bonding of fuselage parts, and rivet fatigue. 
94 out of 95 people survived. Senior flight attendant Clarabelle Lansing died - at the moment a part of the fuselage was torn off, she was in the middle of the plane, and she was thrown out by the air flow. Search teams could not find her body, as well as the detached fragment of the fuselage, about 5.4 meters long. 
