The flight attendant who survived. What do people who have somehow survived plane crashes say? Stories from plane crash survivors

Every day people die around the world. Countless lives are taken by wars, diseases, natural disasters, car accidents and plane crashes. Some crashes end fatally for all passengers on the falling planes, but there are also miraculous exceptions that you can learn about right now.

1. Francesca Lewis - 12-year-old girl, sole survivor of a plane crash over Panama

In 2007, the sole survivor of a plane crash, Francesca Lewis, cheated death in the middle of the frozen Panamanian mountains. She was saved due to the fact that during the plane's crash, luggage fell on her, saving the child from frostbite and sheltering her from the harsh weather that reigned outside the crashed aircraft. The girl survived, but the other three participants in the flight were much less fortunate - they all died in the crash of a light single-engine Cessna model aircraft that flew into a volcanic mountain.

Francesca not only miraculously survived the fall of the ship itself, but also spent 2 and a half days without water or food, chained upside down to her chair in only a T-shirt and shorts. The three other people on board the plane were Francesca's best friend Talia Klein, 13, her millionaire father Michael Klein, 37, and pilot Edwin Lasso, 23. Experts believe they died instantly. The crash of the Cessna was a tragic and sudden end to the journey of girlfriends who went to the same prestigious school in Santa Barbara, California (Santa Barbara, California), and decided to spend their holidays together in Panama.

2. Bahiya Bakari – 14-year-old girl and the only survivor of the Yemenia Airways flight crash

Bahia Bakari is a French schoolgirl who became famous after she became the only survivor of the Yemenia Airways plane crash. She was on flight number 626, which fell directly into the Indian Ocean near the northern coast of the island of Grande Comore, part of the Comoros archipelago (Grande Comore, Comoros).

The tragedy occurred on June 30, 2009, and 152 people died in the disaster. Bakari barely knew how to swim and was not wearing a life jacket, but she managed to climb onto the wreckage of the plane and survive 13 hours without food or water. She spent most of this time in pitch darkness until she was rescued by the crew of the private boat Sima Com 2. As soon as the girl was spotted, a life preserver was thrown to her, but the water was so choppy and the child was so exhausted that she simply was not able to grab hold of her. for an inflatable.

One of the sailors, Maturaffi Sélémane Libounah, jumped into the water and helped Bahia into the life ring, after which they were both pulled aboard the ship Sima Com 2. The mother, who was flying with the girl from Paris for a summer holiday in the Comoros Islands , died in the plane crash, like all the other passengers and crew of the airliner.

3. Mohammed el Fateh Osman - 3-year-old boy, the only survivor of 116 passengers on the crashed plane

In 2003, Mohammed el-Fateh Osman was the sole survivor of a Sudan Airways flight that crashed into a slope shortly after takeoff from the coastal city of Port Sudan. The three-year-old suffered injuries that resulted in the loss of his left leg and severe burns, but he was the only survivor of the Boeing 737-200C crash. That day, 105 passengers and all 11 crew members of the ship died. The child was found lying on a fallen tree, and a random nomad became his savior.

4. Cecilia Sichan is the only survivor of one of the worst plane crashes in US history.

In 1987, Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashed just minutes after takeoff from Detroit Airport. The crash claimed the lives of 154 people, but 4-year-old Cecelia Cichan was the only survivor of this terrible accident. Her mother Paula, father Michael and 6-year-old brother David (Paula, Michael, David) were also among those killed on the flight. The family was going home after the holidays, but they were never destined to return back.

The girl's identity remained a mystery for several days until her grandmother learned from news reports that the discovered baby's nails were painted with purple polish and her front tooth was specially chipped. Pauline Ciamaichela recalled that before the family left, she herself painted Cecilia's nails lavender.

5. Ruben Van Assu - Danish boy, the only survivor of a terrible plane crash

Incredible, but true - 9-year-old Dane Ruben van Assouw was found with broken legs in the middle of the Libyan desert in the seat of a crashed plane among the wreckage of the aircraft. He was unconscious, but breathing, unlike all the other passengers on this ship. The Afriqiyah Airways flight crashed on May 12, 2010, on approach to its final destination of Tripoli, killing 103 people, including the airbus crew. The boy was flying home from a safari with his entire family. Ruben learned that he was the only survivor of the accident only a few days after his hospitalization.

Libyan authorities circulated a photo of the wounded child, and Danish journalists managed to sneak into his room and conduct an interview before Ruben learned that his entire family was dead and he was an orphan. Now the boy is being looked after by his uncle and aunt, who said that the child hopes to one day return to the scene of the accident and find out its cause.

6. Erica Delgado - Plane Crash Survivor Thanks to Her Mother's Heroism

In 1995, a dazed 10-year-old girl with a broken arm became the only survivor of a plane that crashed in northern Colombia. In addition to her, there were 47 more passengers and 5 crew members on board, but all of them died. Authorities said the DC-9 intercontinental airliner exploded in mid-air, but witnesses in the town of Maria La Baja, 800 km northwest of Bogota, said the plane crashed into an embankment and crashed into lagoon without any signs of fire in the air.

Erika Delgado, who was flying with her parents and younger brother from Bogota to the Caribbean resort city of Cartagena, was hospitalized in a state of shock and with a broken arm.

A local farmer said he heard cries for help and found the girl on a mound of seaweed. He also said that Erica remembered how her mother pushed her out of the plane, which then broke apart and burst into flames.

7. Paul Ashton Vick is the world's youngest plane crash survivor

This plane crash happened a long time ago - in January 1947, but since then Paul Ashton Vick is still the smallest child in the world to survive a plane crash, and the only survivor of all the passengers on board the crashed ship. The flight was operated by China National Airlines, and the boy was only 16 months old at the time. Paul's father, Robert Vick, was a Baptist minister from Connecticut, USA, who took part in missionary work in China after the end of World War II.

Robert, his wife and 2 sons (2-year-old Theodore, and 16-month-old Paul) boarded a flight to Changking in Shanghai. During the flight, one of the plane's engines caught fire, and the fire quickly spread throughout the cabin. When it became absolutely clear that the plane could not avoid a crash, 23 passengers in panic managed to jump out of the burning airliner. Mr. and Mrs. Vick were among them, each holding a child in their arms. Robert and his 16-month-old son Paul were the only survivors of the crash.

Unfortunately, the pastor succumbed to his injuries 40 hours later, but before he died, he was able to tell the hospital staff the names and addresses of his son's grandparents, where the child was sent after he received the necessary treatment. Paul himself broke several leg bones during the accident.

8. Wong Yu - the world's first hijacker, who crashed an aircraft, and became the only survivor of a terrible accident

And this is a story about one of the most controversial “heroes” of our selection – Wong Yu. A man tried to hijack Cathay Pacific's Miss Macao in 1948, but his daring attempt ended in a plane crash and the death of 25 innocent passengers and crew.

A PBY Catalina seaplane carrying very wealthy passengers became the first commercial flight in aviation history to be hijacked. Two fishermen saw the plane crash and pulled the unconscious man out of the water. It turned out to be Wong Yu, who was soon identified as one of the hijackers and sentenced to 3 years in prison in a local prison.

Click " Like» and get the best posts on Facebook!

December 23, 1971 aircraft Lockheed L-188A airline LANSA with 92 passengers on board took off from the capital of Peru, Lima, and headed for the city of Pucallpa. 500 km northeast of the country's capital, the airliner fell into a vast thunderstorm area, broke up in the air and fell into the jungle. Only 17-year-old Juliana Diler Kopka, who was thrown out of the plane, managed to survive the terrible crash.
Juliana Dealer Kopke“Suddenly an amazing silence reigned around me. The plane disappeared. I must have been unconscious and then came to. I flew, spinning in the air, and could see the forest rapidly approaching below me.” Then the girl, falling, lost consciousness again. When falling from a height of about 3 km. she broke her collarbone, injured her right arm, and her right eye was covered with swelling from the impact. “I probably survived because I was strapped into a row of seats,” she says. “I was spinning like a helicopter, which may have slowed my fall. In addition, the place where I landed was densely covered with vegetation, which reduced the force of the impact." For 9 days, Juliana wandered through the jungle, trying not to leave the stream, believing that sooner or later it would lead her to civilization. The stream also provided the girl with water. Nine days later, Juliana found a canoe and a shelter in which she hid and waited. Soon she was found in this shelter by lumberjacks. January 26, 1972 Croatian terrorists blew up a passenger plane over the Czech town of Serbska Kamenice McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32, owned by JAT Yugoslav Airlines. The plane was traveling from Copenhagen to Zagreb, with 28 people on board. A bomb planted in the luggage compartment detonated at an altitude of 10,160 m. 27 passengers and crew members were killed, but 22-year-old flight attendant Vesna Vulovich remained alive after falling from a height of more than 10 km. Vesna Vulovich The plane crashed into snow-covered trees, and a few hours after the tragedy, a qualified physician turned up at the scene of the disaster and recognized Vesna’s signs of life. Her skull was fractured, both legs and three vertebrae were broken, leaving her lower body paralyzed. Quick help saved the girl's life. She was in a coma for 27 days, and after another 16 months she was in the hospital. After leaving it, Vulovich continued to work for her airline, but on the ground. The miraculous rescue of Vesna Vulović is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the highest altitude jump without a parachute. October 13, 1972 year, an FH-227D/LCD plane crashed in the Andes. 29 people out of 45 on board were killed. Survivors were not found until December 22, 1972.
On October 13, 1972, a team of rugby players from Montevideo went to compete in the capital of Chile, Santiago. In addition to them, on the Fairchild-Hiller FH-227D/LCD plane of the Uruguayan airline Tamu there were also passengers and 5 crew members - a total of 45 people. Along the way, they had to make an intermediate landing in Buenos Aires. However, the T-571 “board” found itself in a strong turbulent zone. In heavy fog, the pilot made a navigation error: the plane, flying at an altitude of 500 m, headed straight towards one of the mountain peaks of the Argentine Andes. The crew reacted too late to the error. A few moments later, the “board” hit the rocks, puncturing the steel skin of the aircraft. The fuselage collapsed; from the terrible impact, several seats were torn off the floor and thrown out together with the passengers. Seventeen of the 45 people died instantly when the Fairchild Hiller crashed into the snow. As a result of the plane crash, people spent two months in a snowy hell - at an altitude of 4 thousand meters, at a temperature of minus 40 degrees. They were discovered only on December 22!
"After the disaster, 28 people survived, but after an avalanche and long grueling weeks of starvation, only sixteen of them remained. Days and weeks passed, and people, without warm clothes, continued to live in forty-degree frost. The food that was stored on board the crashed "The plane didn't last long. The meager supplies had to be divided up bit by bit in order to stretch them out over a longer period of time. In the end, only chocolate and a thimble's worth of wine remained. But then they ran out, too. For the survivors, hunger took its toll: on the tenth day, they began to eat corpses." August 24, 1981 in the Far East at an altitude of 5 km. passenger plane collided An-24 of Aeroflot airlines and bomber Tu-16 USSR Air Force. Among the 32 people, only a 20-year-old woman survived Larisa Savitskaya, returning with her husband from a honeymoon. Larisa with her husband 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 later 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. 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 they came across only the bodies of the dead, they met a living person. Larisa was covered in paint flying off the fuselage, and her hair was very tangled in the wind. While waiting for rescuers, she built herself a temporary shelter from the wreckage of the plane, keeping warm with seat covers and covering herself from mosquitoes with a plastic bag. It rained all these days. When it ended, she waved to rescue planes flying past, but they, not expecting to find survivors, mistook her for a geologist from a nearby camp. Larisa, the bodies of her husband and two other passengers were discovered as the last of all the victims of the disaster. Doctors determined she had a concussion, spinal injuries in five places, and broken arms and ribs. She also lost almost all her teeth. Larisa Savitskaya From Larisa's interview: - How did this really happen?- The planes collided tangentially. The wings of the An-24 were torn off along with the gas tanks and roof. In a fraction of a second the plane turned into a “boat”. At that moment I was sleeping. I remember a terrible blow, a burn - the temperature instantly dropped from plus 25 to minus 30. Terrible screams and whistling air. My husband died immediately - at that moment my life ended. I didn't even scream. Because of grief, I didn’t have time to realize my fear. - Did you fall in this “boat”?- No. Then it broke in two. The rift passed right in front of our chairs. I ended up in the tail section. I was thrown into the passage, straight onto the bulkheads. At first I lost consciousness, and when I came to my senses, I lay there and thought - but not about death, but about pain. I don't want it to hurt when I fall. And then I remembered one Italian film - “Miracles Still Occur.” Just one episode: how the heroine escapes from a plane crash, huddled in a chair. Somehow I got to it... - And did you buckle up?- I didn’t even think about it. Actions were ahead of consciousness. I started looking out the window to “catch the ground.” It was necessary to depreciate on time. I didn’t hope to be saved, I just wanted to die without pain. There was very low cloudiness, then a green flash and a blow. Fell into the taiga, on a birch forest - lucky again. - Don’t say that you didn’t receive a single injury.- Concussion, spinal injury in five places, broken arm, rib, leg. Almost all of the teeth were knocked out. But they never gave me disability. The doctors said: “We understand that you are collectively disabled. But we can’t do anything - each injury individually does not qualify as a disability. Now, if there was only one, but a serious one, then please.” - How much time did you spend in the taiga?- Three days. When I woke up, my husband’s body was lying right in front of me. The state of shock was such that I did not feel pain. I could even walk. When the rescuers found me, they couldn’t say anything except “moo-moo.” I understand them. Three days of removing pieces of bodies from trees, and then suddenly seeing a living person. Yes, and I still had the same view. I was all the color of prunes with a silver tint - the paint from the fuselage turned out to be extremely sticky, my mother spent a month picking it out. And the wind turned my hair into a large piece of glass wool. Surprisingly, as soon as I saw the rescuers, I could no longer walk. Relaxed. Then, in Zavitinsk, I found out that a grave had already been dug for me. They were dug according to lists. August 12, 1985 Boeing 747SR-46 Japanese airline Japan Airlines crashed near Mount Takamagahara, 100 km from Tokyo in the mountain area (Gunma Prefecture). Of the 520 people, only four women managed to survive: 24-year-old Japan Airline employee Hiroko Yoshizaki, 34-year-old plane passenger and her eight-year-old daughter Mikiko, and 12-year-old Keiko Kawakami, who was found sitting in a tree. All four lucky ones were sitting in the center row of seats at the very rear of the plane. For the remaining 520 passengers and crew members, this flight was the last. In terms of the number of victims, the crash of the Japanese Boeing 747 is second only to the disaster in Tenerife in 1977, when two Boeings collided. Never before have so many people died on any liner. August 16, 1987 McDonnell Douglas MD-82 While taking off from Metro Airport, the plane lost control and first hit power lines located 800 meters from the runway with its left wing, then the roof of a car rental shop, after which it crashed on the ground.
There were 155 people on board. 4-year-old Cecelia Sichan was found by rescuers in her chair, a few meters from the bodies of her parents and 6-year-old brother. Until now, not a single specialist can explain how, and with the help of what miracle, she was able to survive. The possible cause of this plane crash is considered to be the negligence of the pilot and crew in following the takeoff trajectory. July 28, 2002. crashed at Moscow Sheremetyevo airport immediately after takeoff IL 86, which carried 16 people: four pilots, 10 flight attendants and two engineers. 200 m after the plane took off from the ground, there was a loss of engine power, the plane fell onto the left wing and crashed, after which an explosion occurred.
Only two flight attendants managed to survive: Tatyana Moiseeva and Arina Vinogradova. Vinogradova, some time after being discharged from the hospital and completing a rehabilitation course, returned to work, and Moiseeva decided not to tempt fate and stay on earth. June 30, 2009 A plane crashed off the coast of the Comoros Islands A310 Yemen airline Yemenia, making a flight from the capital of Yemen, Sana'a, to the capital of Comoros, Moroni. There were 153 people on board the A310. The only surviving passenger on the crashed plane was a twelve-year-old girl. Bahia Bakari, having French citizenship. When she hit the water, she was literally thrown out of the plane. For several hours, the girl, who practically could not swim, without a life jacket and in complete darkness, tried to hold on to the wreckage of the plane so as not to drown. At first she tried to navigate by the voices of other passengers, but they soon died down. When dawn broke, she realized that she was completely alone in the center of an oil puddle on the surface of the water. Fortunately, she managed to climb onto a large piece of debris and fall asleep, despite being overtired and thirsty. At some point, she saw a ship on the horizon, but it sailed too far and she was not noticed. The crew of the private ship Sima Com 2 discovered Bakari only 13 hours after the plane crash. Another 7 hours later she found herself on land, where she was sent to the hospital. The girl received numerous bruises, her collarbone was broken and her knees were burned. May 12, 2010 Airbus-330 The Libyan airline Afriqiyah Airways, arriving from Johannesburg (South Africa), crashed while landing at Tripoli International Airport. In foggy conditions, the crew decided to go for the 2nd circle, but did not have time. There were 104 people on board. Among the wreckage, the only survivor found was an eight-year-old boy with fractures in both legs. He was pushed back by the chair, which may have absorbed the blow. September 6, 2011 In Bolivia, a private airline plane crashed in the Amazon jungle. As a result, it was initially believed that all 9 people on board were killed. After 3 days of searching, a miraculously surviving passenger was found - 35-year-old Bolivian cosmetics seller Minor Vidal. He escaped with head bruises and broken ribs. Minor Vidallo said that he was under the wreckage of the plane for more than 15 hours, and when he managed to get out, he went deep into the forest in search of people.
A plane crash survivor was found several kilometers from the crash site. “We saw a man on the river bank giving us signals,” said Captain David Bustos, who led the rescue operation. “As we got closer, he knelt down and began to thank God.”

To Khabarovsk. As previously reported, doctors diagnosed her with a compound fracture of her ankle and suspected a traumatic brain injury. Let us remind you that the child is the only surviving passenger of the L-410 plane, which crashed near the village of Nelkan on Wednesday afternoon. Besides her, there were six more people on board - all died.

The rescue of a girl who literally fell from the sky is already called a miracle. Meanwhile, this is far from an isolated case. The history of aviation knows many other times when people managed to survive the most monstrous disasters. Even if the chance of salvation was one in a million.

One of the last: when on June 20, 2011, a Tu-134 crashed near Petrozavodsk. There were 52 people on board. We flew at night, visibility was poor. During the landing approach, the plane hit a 50-meter pine tree. A couple of seconds later he was torn into pieces. But five survived. Including Alexander Kargopolov. Thrown out of the cabin by a monstrous force, she fell onto the arable land. It saved a life. I recovered quickly physically, but I couldn’t find peace of mind for several years. “You can’t cope with grief alone,” she admitted. “You always need someone to be nearby.”

One of the largest disasters occurred on August 12, 1985 in Japan. A Japan Airlines Boeing 747 carrying 524 passengers and crew took off from Tokyo to Osaka. 12 minutes after takeoff, the plane's tail came off. With incredible efforts, the pilots held the uncontrollable car for another 32 minutes... The airliner crashed in the mountains. Rescuers did not even hope to see survivors. The greater the shock when we discovered four (!) at once. They were all sitting where the casing had been torn apart.

On August 16, 1989, a Northwest Airlines DC-9 took off from Detroit Airport. There are 154 people on board, including 4-year-old Secilia Sichan, who was flying with her parents and older brother. As it took off, the plane began to rock. It hit the lighting mast and part of the left wing was torn off. DC-9 crashed to the ground...

One of the firefighters heard a thin squeak among the smoldering debris. Little Cecilia, who received severe fractures and burns, was the only one who managed to escape. She underwent four operations. The girl was taken into the family by her aunt and uncle. When Cecilia grew up, she got a tattoo of an airplane on her wrist. She admits that she is not at all afraid of flying: she is convinced that such horror simply cannot happen again.

And, of course, the story of the Russian woman Larisa Savitskaya is amazing. On August 24, 1981, a 20-year-old student was returning from a honeymoon with her husband Vladimir. We flew on an An-24 from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Blagoveshchensk. Over the city of Zavitinsk at an altitude of 5200 meters, their plane collided with a Tu-16 bomber.

Larisa was sleeping when she felt a strong blow. And she sank into a chair. For eight minutes she fell from a height of 5200 meters on a piece of aircraft 3 meters wide and 4 meters long. The only one of 38 people who survived. I spent two days before the rescuers arrived. She also managed to survive on earth. Doctors diagnosed her with a concussion, spinal injuries, and fractures. Then they wrote that compensation to the relatives of the victims amounted to 300 rubles. Larisa received... 75 rubles. Because she survived.

She got married and gave birth to a son. I was sick a lot. She said: she’s not at all afraid of flying on an airplane. “But when I talk about what happened, I am then tormented by insomnia,” Larisa admitted. That's why I avoided journalists.

More from the history of miracles

On January 26, 1972, a Yugoslav DC-9 exploded at an altitude of 10,160 meters. He was torn to pieces. In the middle section was 22-year-old flight attendant Vesna Vulovic. Along with the debris, it fell onto the forest, which softened the blow. Vesna spent 27 days in a coma and 16 months in the hospital, but survived.

On January 11, 1995, a DC-9-14 was flying from Bogota to Cartagena with 47 passengers and 5 crew members on board. During landing, the plane crashed into a swamp. 9-year-old Erica Delgado was thrown from the plane. She escaped with a broken arm. No one else was saved.

On June 30, 2009, a Yemeni A-310 was flying from Paris to the Comoros Islands. There were 153 people on board, including 13-year-old Bahia Bakari. A few minutes before landing, the plane crashed into the Indian Ocean. Bahiya was thrown through the porthole. With bruises and a broken collarbone, she managed to climb onto one of the pieces that remained afloat. The girl spent 9 hours on it.

Is it very typical for Russian planes to fall from Ukrainian missiles? Have you already counted a lot?

It sounds blasphemous to mention a Ukrainian missile after such events:

1 Malaysian Boeing shot down by a beech tree (the report of the Dutch prosecutor's office proves this irrefutably)

2 On the night of June 14, 2014, a military transport aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force Il-76 was shot down by a shot from an anti-aircraft missile system and a long burst from a heavy machine gun while landing at the airfield in Lugansk. There were 40 Ukrainian military personnel and 9 crew members on board the Il-76. They all died. This feat was celebrated Wagnerians, who were in Ukraine at that time. The Ukrainian special service has documentary information that part of the “Wagnerites” fired at the Lugansk airport almost every day in the summer of 2014.

What if we remember history?

On September 1, 1983, a tragedy occurred in the skies over the Pacific Ocean, which some Russian sources bashfully call an “incident” to this day: a Soviet air defense fighter shot down a South Korean civilian airliner that violated the air border of the USSR. All 269 people on board, including 23 children, were killed.

Boeing 707 crash in Karel II

Everyone is now hearing about the crash of the Malaysian Boeing over the Donbass. Less known, but nevertheless known about it, is the story of how a South Korean Boeing was shot down over the Soviet Far East on September 1, 1983. It turns out that this is not the first South Korean Boeing shot down over the Soviet Union. There was one more.

On April 20, 1978, in the area of ​​the Kola Peninsula over the territory of the USSR, another South Korean Boeing 707 was shot down, flying on the route Paris - Anchorage - Seoul
On April 20, 1978, in the area of ​​the Kola Peninsula, the USSR border was crossed by a diverted passenger Boeing-707-321B (HL7429) of Korean Air Lines (KAL), operating flight 902 - Paris-Anchorage-Seoul.
The Korean Boeing continued to fly towards Severomorsk. Dmitry Tsarkov, who in 1978 held the position of commander of the 21st Air Defense Corps of the USSR, reports to Vladimir Dmitriev, who at that time held the position of commander of the 10th Air Defense Army of the USSR, that the air defense is ready to shoot down the intruder. Dmitriev did not give permission, saying that we could shoot down our plane; the exact identity of the plane was not yet clear. The offender was walking at a speed of 15 kilometers per minute (900 km/h). At this time, the intruder crossed the border of the USSR. A flight of fighters was lifted into the sky.
The plane was detected by Soviet air defense radars and initially identified as a Boeing 747. The anti-aircraft missile system was put on alert. A Su-15TM fighter ("Flegon-F") under the control of Captain A. Bosov was sent to intercept.

According to the testimony of the captain of the airliner, Kim Chang Kee, the interceptor approached his plane from the right side (and not from the left, as required by the rules of the international civil aviation organization - ICAO). The captain states that he reduced his speed and turned on his navigation lights, indicating that he was ready to follow the Soviet fighter for landing. Attempts by Captain Kim Chang Kee to contact the interceptor pilot on frequency 121.5 were detected by the air traffic control tower in Rovaniemi, Finland. According to the official statement of the Soviet side, the airliner evaded the requirement to land. When the interceptor pilot reported that the intruder was in fact not a 747, but a Boeing 707, the command decided that it was an RC-135 electronic reconnaissance aircraft (produced on the basis of the Boeing 707 airliner) and gave the order to destroy goals.

According to American radio intercepts, the interceptor pilot tried for several minutes to convince the command to cancel the order, because he saw the KAL airline emblem on the airliner and inscriptions in hieroglyphs, however, after confirming the order, he fired two P-60 missiles at the liner. The first of them missed the target, and the second exploded, tearing off part of the left wing, causing depressurization of the aircraft and killing two passengers with fragments.

Due to depressurization of the cabin, the airliner began an emergency descent and disappeared from the radar screens of the Soviet air defense system. The interceptor pilot also lost the damaged airliner in the clouds.

Over the next hour, emergency flight 902 flew at low altitude across the entire Kola Peninsula, looking for a place for an emergency landing and, after several unsuccessful attempts, landed in the gathering dusk on the ice of Lake Korpiyarvi, already on the territory of Karelia. Throughout this entire time, the air defense had no information about the fate and location of the aircraft.

The USSR refused to cooperate in the investigation of this incident with international experts and did not provide data from the black boxes seized from the plane. The plane itself was dismantled and removed in parts. The Korean airline refused it so as not to pay for the evacuation of the plane. 95 passengers were taken to Kem, and then to Murmansk airport. On April 23, 1978, they were handed over to representatives of the US Consulate General in Leningrad and Pan American Airlines and sent to Helsinki. Su-15 pilot Captain A. Bosov was awarded the Order of the Red Star for completing a combat mission.

The Boeing commander, the highest-class pilot Lee Chang Hui, a former military pilot, managed to land a barely controllable 200-ton aircraft on a frozen lake. This saved the lives of the remaining passengers. The Boeing commander was later questioned. He said that he fought as a fighter pilot back in Vietnam. Finished fighting with the rank of colonel. Then he worked for 10 years in a civil airline, and also had 10 years of experience flying along the route of flight 902. He has been flying with this crew for 7 years. The last flight before this flight on this route was a week ago. The weather during the flight was good. When asked how you could have gone so off course, the commander replied that the navigation equipment had allegedly failed.

Years later, a flight map of Flight 902 was released based on declassified black box data, showing that the plane began a smooth, wide right turn shortly after reaching Iceland on the Amsterdam-Anchorage leg. This turn was too smooth to be done by hand, and The only explanation can be a malfunction of the navigation equipment.

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

Juliane 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?"

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.”

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.