Seven miraculous rescues in plane crashes. Born again. Who managed to survive after a plane crash? Causes of plane crashes

Now it is already possible to take stock of the Colombian plane crash that occurred on November 29: of the 81 people on board, only six survived. Some of the passengers of the crashed plane were footballers of 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 of survivors: what they remember about the crash, what they thought at that moment and why they feel guilty.

10 days in the jungle

Juliana Koepcke is the only survivor of the 92 passengers after the plane crash in December 1971. Their Lockheed L-188 Electra aircraft 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 was doing 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 20 minutes left before landing, the plane fell into a terrible thundercloud, it began to shake violently. Mom got nervous: "I don't like it." I, without looking up, looked out the porthole, beyond which bright lightning torn the darkness, and saw how the right wing caught fire. Mom's last words: "Now it's over." What followed happened very quickly. The plane banked steeply, began to fall and collapse. I still have incredibly loud screams of people in my ears. Strapped to the chair, I quickly flew down somewhere. The wind whistled in my ears. The seat belts hit hard in my stomach. 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 the forest below. My last thought is that the forest looks like broccoli. Then, apparently, I lost consciousness. The plane crash happened around 1:30 am. When I woke up, the hands of my watch, which, oddly enough, walked, showed about nine. It was light. My head and eyes hurt very badly (then the doctors 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 still in the same chair, saw a little forest and a little sky. It dawned on me that I survived the plane crash, remembered my mother and lost consciousness again. Then she woke up again. This happened several times. And every time I tried to free myself from the seat to which I was fastened. When I finally succeeded, it began to rain heavily. I forced myself to get up - the body was like cotton wool. With great difficulty, she got to her knees. His 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 for my mother, hoping that she was also alive. But no one responded.

For 9 days, the seriously wounded Juliana made her way through the jungle to people on her own: the knowledge received from her father helped her survive. Having reached one of the boats tied to the shore along the river, she fell exhausted, and after that she was 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 to small plane transported to Pucallpa, where she met her father. Later it became known that 14 passengers survived the moment of the plane crash, but they all later died from their injuries.

Fell from the sky for eight minutes

Larisa Savitskaya was 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, together with her husband Vladimir, they were returning from honeymoon trip on board the 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 turned out later, military and civilian dispatchers incorrectly coordinated the movement of both aircraft in space. From the collision, the An-24 lost wings with fuel tanks and the top of the fuselage. The remaining part during the fall broke several times, and part of the hull, together with Savitskaya, planned for a birch grove. During the fall, the girl held on to the seat, losing consciousness several times. As it turned out later, the fall of Savitskaya, along with the wreckage of the aircraft, lasted approximately eight minutes.

Sometimes they say that in one moment the whole life can fly before your eyes. In eight minutes, you probably won't see anything like that. But I didn't have anything like that. In those 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 across from me. At that moment he seemed to say goodbye to me.

Despite many terrible injuries, Savitskaya was able to move around. She built herself a shelter out of aircraft debris, covered herself with seat covers and plastic bags. Rescue planes, which she waved 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 in the Soviet Union was immediately classified, 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 keep quiet." For the first time, Soviet Sport wrote about Savitskaya, but the article said that she fell from a height of five kilometers during the test of a home-made aircraft. Savitskaya was never given a disability, despite the fact that for some time she could not even stand on her feet, and the physical damage was compensated with an amount of 75 rubles. Despite the difficulties, Larisa recovered and even gave birth to a son.

"Why me?"

highest height, from which a person has ever fallen and remained alive, is 10,160 meters. This person is Vesna Vulović, a flight attendant for the Yugoslav airliner McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32. On January 26, 1972, the plane exploded in the air (presumably it was a Yugoslav nationalist bomb). Vesna, a 22-year-old girl, is the only survivor of that disaster. She was thrown out of the plane by an explosive wave, and she miraculously survived. The girl was also lucky that the peasant Bruno Honke, who found her first, was able to give her the first medical care before the rescuers arrive. 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. As if I knew in advance that I would survive. I don't remember how I fell. Later they told me that the inhabitants of the place where the wreckage of the plane, the corpses and I fell, heard my cries: “Help me, Lord, help me!” They went to the voice and they found me. At that time, I had already lost four liters of blood. All crew members and passengers suffered a ruptured lung 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, and I remained alive, I wanted to die, I felt guilty: why am I alive? For 31 years I did not remember anything about the month I had 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 live well. I think miracles do exist.

“I remember what those children were wearing”

Alexandra Kargapolova is one of the five lucky survivors of the Tu-134 plane crash near Petrozavodsk on June 21, 2011. While landing, the pilots overshot (that night there was very poor visibility), hitting a 50-meter pine tree with their wing. The plane caught fire, went through the forest and crashed, 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 was visited by an unpleasant premonition, but she decided to drive him away from her.

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 down in all directions. I sat right behind the business class, on the left in front of the wing. Everything was calm, but at some point I realized that we were falling. At that moment, there was silence in the salon. No screams, no panic. Only scared faces. Many at this moment, thank God, slept. I was saved by an unfastened seat belt - I was thrown out of the plane from the impact. I fell on the plowed ground - as if a duvet, as they say, had been laid. Injuries I had, compared with the scale of the disaster, are minimal. 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 in life is built. And the children at the time of their death still had none of this. Why? For the first few months, this thought gnawed at me...

• On average, the possibility of a passenger getting into a plane crash is 1:10,000,000 departures, 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 capable of sensing danger.

• Every 2-3 seconds a plane lands or takes off in the world. Around the world, more than 3 million people.

In some cases, passengers did not even receive any serious injuries. Some were just late tragic flight, canceled the flight for any reason, while others remained relatively safe and sound after the crash. There were also cases when the victims of the disaster were those who were not present on the death board, but died under its wreckage.

Four-year-old American woman who survived the crash

In August 1989, an American airliner flying along the route Saginaw - Detroit - Phoenix - Santa Ana took off from the airport in Detroit. A few minutes after the plane lifted off the ground, it began to roll sideways, crashed into several lampposts and caught fire. The liner crashed onto the road, drove along it, hit the railway embankment and crashed into the overpass. The plane was completely destroyed. One and a half hundred passengers and crew members died in this disaster. On the ground, two people were killed, who were in cars that crashed the plane.

Four-year-old American Cecilia Sechan suffered significant injuries but survived the crash. A child who survived a plane crash was flying with his parents and older brother. The girl was noticed by firefighter John Tied, who worked at the crash site. Cecilia suffered a skull fracture, third-degree burns, a broken collarbone and leg. The girl underwent several operations, but was able to fully recover. A photo of a girl who survived a plane crash then spread all over America.

Cecilia Sechan was raised by her uncle and aunt. She never gave interviews but broke her silence in 2013 by appearing in the documentary film 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 in the form of an airplane on her arm, which reminds her of that tragic and happy day at the same time.

Larisa Savitskaya, survivor of the crash over Zavitinsky

In 1981, the Soviet student Larisa Savitskaya was returning from her honeymoon with her husband on the Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Blagoveshchensk flight, which was operated by the An-24 aircraft. The newlyweds had tickets to the middle part of the plane, but since there were many empty seats in the cabin, they decided to take seats in the tail.

During the flight, the plane collided with a Tu-16K bomber. There were several reasons for this. These are the mistakes of the ground personnel of the airport, dispatchers, and in general the unsatisfactory organization of flights in the Zavitinsk area, and the non-compliance with the requirements of safety rules, and the unclear interaction between civil and military aircraft. Everyone on board both planes died, except for the only girl who survived the crash.

At the time of the collision of the planes, 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 after a few moments she woke up, got to the nearest chair and pressed herself into it without fastening her seat belt. Larisa Savitskaya, a survivor of the plane crash, later claimed that at that moment she remembered the film “Miracles Still Happen”, the heroine of which miraculously escaped in a crash, shrinking into a chair. But then the girl did not think about salvation, she just wanted to "die without pain."

Part of the plane fell on a birch grove, which softened the blow considerably. Larisa fell on a piece of debris 3 x 4 meters. The fall was subsequently determined to have taken eight minutes. The girl fell to the ground unconscious.

When she woke up, she saw a chair in front of her 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 the corpses and the wreckage of the plane. The girl was in paint that flew off the fuselage, her hair was badly tangled in the wind. She built a temporary shelter out of the rubble, kept warm with seat covers, covered mosquitoes with plastic bags.

All this time it was raining, but search work was still carried on. Larisa waved at a passing helicopter, but the rescuers, not expecting to find survivors, mistook her for a geologist from a nearby camp. 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, arms, spinal injuries, in addition, she lost almost all her teeth. Despite her injuries, she did not receive a 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 survived a plane crash are not uncommon. However, the only survivors are already a one in a million chance. Such a miracle happened to the stewardess of the flight from Copenhagen to Zagreb. The plane exploded in the air over the village of Serbska in Czechoslovakia. The cause of the crash, the investigation called the bomb, which was planted by Croatian terrorists.

When the explosives detonated, the plane exploded into several pieces and began to fall. In the middle compartment then there was a stewardess Vesna Vulovich, who replaced her colleague Vesna Nikolic. The luck of the girl who survived the plane crash was in a soft fall and the fact that she was first discovered by a peasant who worked in a field hospital during the war years 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 passing day. But she still survived. Doctors explained her miraculous salvation with low blood pressure. When a person is at high altitude, his heart breaks from high pressure. But Vesna, who has always had very low pressure, was able to escape death in the air. It also helped that the girl lost consciousness. But how the stewardess managed to survive when hitting the ground, no one knows.

After the tragedy, the flight attendant who survived the plane crash quit and never flew again. She admitted to reporters that even before that disaster she was on the verge of life and death eight times. It was when Vesna was vacationing in Montenegro and met a shark that shouldn't 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 bad case of ectopic pregnancy and etc.

Nine-year-old girl who survived the crash over Cartagena

In January 1995, an American plane flew from Bogota to Cartagena with 5 crew members and 47 passengers on board. During the landing approach, the altimeter failed, the plane crashed in a swampy area. Nine-year-old Erica Delgado flew with her parents and younger brother. A surviving girl after a plane crash said that her mother pushed her out of a falling plane.

The plane exploded on impact and caught fire. Erica fell into the seaweed, which softened her fall. Looting began immediately after the tragedy. The inhabitants of the nearest village tore off the golden necklace from the living girl, ignoring her pleas for help. After some time, the surviving girl after a plane crash was found by a farmer.

A dozen survivors and 72 days of fighting nature

In the fall of 1972, an airplane crash occurred, which followed from Montevideo to Santiago. The survivors had almost no chance of salvation, but they managed to cheat death. Several passengers were left in the snowy mountains, not knowing where they were or if anyone was looking for them. It was cold in the mountains, people tried to somehow warm themselves by hiding in the remains of the fuselage. By morning, several passengers had not woken up. Passengers managed to find some provisions: crackers, liquor, a few chocolates, sardines. Everyone knew that this was not 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 there was an avalanche, some of the people were under the snow blockages. They managed to get out from under the rubble in three days. People waited for salvation for 72 days. Each new day was similar to the previous one. Soon the three survivors decided to go in search of some locality. It was hard 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 that there was no hope, but they decided that it was better to die on the road than near the plane. Moreover, the mother and sister of one of the guys 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, threw it with a stone to the other side. The survivors wrote everything that happened to them. The shepherd threw cheese and bread to the young guys, and he 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 men who went in search of a settlement. The survivors gave their first press conference in the mountains. Young people had to tell everything that happened. But the press turned out to be ruthless, the newspapers were full of headlines “They ate the dead”, “Traces of cannibalism were found” 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 fainted 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 from the blow, her whole body was covered with bruises. The girl was in a dense forest. Her father was a zoologist, as a child he taught Julian the rules of survival, she was able to finish off food, and soon found a stream. Nine days later, Juliana Dealer Koepke herself went out to the fishermen.

Based on the story of Juliana's miraculous rescue, the feature film "Miracles Still Happen" was filmed, which later helped Larisa Savitskaya survive.

Survivor of a plane that crashed into the Indian Ocean

People who survived a plane crash, as a rule, were 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. The girl does not know how exactly she managed to survive, because at the time of the disaster she was sleeping. The girl received fractures and multiple bruises in the fall. But she had to hold out even before the rescuers arrived. She climbed onto one of the wrecks, which 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 the number of victims

In Japan in 1985, there was the largest disaster in terms of the number of victims involving a single aircraft. Boeing flew from Tokyo to Osaka. There were more than 500 passengers and crew members on board. After takeoff, the tail stabilizer came off, depressurization occurred, pressure dropped, and some aircraft systems failed.

The plane was doomed, it became uncontrollable. The pilots managed to keep the liner in the air for more than half an hour. As a result, he crashed a hundred kilometers from the capital of Japan. The plane crashed in the mountains, the rescuers were able to find the wreckage only the next morning, they, of course, did not hope to find the survivors at all.

But the rescue team discovered a whole group of survivors. They were stewardess, passenger Hiroko Yoshizaki and her eight-year-old daughter, twelve-year-old Keiko Kawakami. The last girl was found in a tree. All four survivors were in the tail section of the aircraft, exactly where the liner had ruptured. But more passengers could have survived the crash. Keiko Kawakami later claimed to have heard the voices of the passengers, including her father. Many passengers died already on the ground from their wounds and injuries. 520 people became victims of the tragedy.

The girl who survived the L-410 crash

The surviving girl after a plane crash in Khabarovsk is three-year-old Jasmine Leontieva. The girl was flying with her teacher along the route Khabarovsk - Nelkan, the plane was supposed to land, but went to land, rolled over and fell not far from the runway. Two crew members and four passengers who were on board were killed. The girl, who was found under the wreckage of the plane, was immediately taken to the hospital, and then transported to Khabarovsk on a special board. There, the parents of the surviving girl after the plane crash were already waiting for Jasmine in the hospital.

The flight engineer who survived the Yak-42 crash

A few years ago, a Yak-42 plane crashed with the Lokomotiv hockey team on board. In this terrible tragedy, the flight engineer managed to survive. Survivor of the plane crash ("Lokomotiv") Alexander Sizov testified in court. The case of Vadim Timofeev, who was responsible for security at air transport at Yak Service.

Air transport is one of the safest, but tragedies happen from time to time. Fortunately, even in a plane crash there is a chance to survive, albeit one in a million. Evidence of this is a Soviet stewardess, a survivor of a plane crash, the only survivor of a crash over the Indian Ocean, a tragedy over Cartagena, the "lucky four" in Japan and other people.

Vesna Vulovich, Juliana Margaret Koepke, Lyudmila Savitskaya - these women from different countries combines one incredible circumstance. They all miraculously survived the plane crashes that occurred in different years. The stories of these three women involuntarily make you believe in miracles or in fate.

Vesna Vulovich

Vesna Vulovich is a stewardess of an aircraft that flew on January 26, 1972 on the route Stockholm - Copenhagen - Zagreb - Belgrade. At the time of the disaster, she was in the passenger cabin and instantly lost consciousness, and then for many years she remembered only the moment when she got on board.

The wreckage of the plane was scattered no more than a kilometer near the village of Serbska Kamenice in Czechoslovakia (now it is the territory of the Czech Republic). Later, experts will make the assumption that the plane crashed as a result of a terrorist attack, but the perpetrators will never be found.

Vesna was in a coma when she was found by local resident Bruno. He checked her pulse and immediately went for the rescuers. It was clear: the girl's spine was damaged and it was absolutely impossible to touch her. The stewardess suffered multiple severe injuries that nearly cost her her life.

She was in a coma for 27 days, and then there was a long recovery period, she spent 16 months in the hospital. Doctors were sure that she would remain disabled for life. But Vesna, contrary to all forecasts, got on her feet, after four and a half years she already walked normally and even returned to work at her airline. True, she was denied the right to fly, providing a position in the office. But she remembered the moment of the plane crash 25 years later.

It is believed that she was saved in the air by loss of consciousness and low pressure. Vesna Vulovich is a Guinness World Record holder who survived a fall from 10,120 meters.

Juliana Margaret Koepke

On December 24, 1971, 17-year-old Juliana, together with her mother, flew from Lima Jorge Chavez Airport to Iquitos. The plane was supposed to make an intermediate landing in Pucallpa and go further along the route. There were 92 people on board the LANSA plane. Juliana was looking forward to the Christmas holidays that she would spend with her father, organizing cards for different types of insects.

They were in the tail of the plane, admiring the wonderful views from the porthole. The plane began to enter the storm front, it began to shake violently. In a good way, as soon as danger arose, it was necessary to return to Lima, but both passengers and crew members were in a hurry to celebrate Christmas with their loved ones. The pilot made the wrong decision to continue flying, hoping to safely pass the danger zone.

Juliana was watching the propeller work when lightning hit that part of the plane. Everything that happened later, she recalled, like slow motion in a movie: here the plane falls apart, and she, fastened with a seat belt to her seat, begins her endless fall down. She remembered how she was spinning in the air, how rapidly the ground was approaching, and how she was swallowed along with the debris by the dense green crowns of trees on the ground. And only at the moment of contact with the ground the girl lost consciousness.

It took her a long time to come to her senses, the whole day. And then, being in shock, she did not even feel pain from her serious injuries. She had multiple cuts, she broke her collarbone, she had a torn popliteal ligament, she had all the signs of a concussion. She lost her glasses and could not see properly even with one eye, while the other was completely swollen due to a severe bruise on her face.

But having recovered a little and gathered her strength, Juliana realized that it was pointless to wait for help, the wreckage at the crash site was not visible to the search aircraft because of the dense greenery. She remembered the lessons of survival that her father had given her, and went downstream the stream she discovered in order to go out along it to the river and to people. Later, the examination will establish that at the time of the fall, at least 15 more passengers remained alive, but, unfortunately, they did not wait for the help of rescuers.

Juliana reached the empty lumberjack hut 10 days after the disaster. A day later, she was found under a canopy locals. They even mistook her for a water goddess descended from heaven. She was given first aid, fed and warmed, some of the fly larvae were removed from her wounds and floated down the river to the town of Turnavista, where they began to inject her with an antibiotic and completely cleaned the wounds from the worms that had settled there. From Turnavista, Juliana was transferred to the Pulcapa hospital, where she finally met her father.

In 1974, the feature film Miracles Still Happen will be released about her. This picture will help Larisa Savitskaya survive the plane crash.

Larisa Savitskaya

20-year-old Larisa was returning with her husband from their honeymoon to Blagoveshchensk on August 24, 1981. They sat in the tail of the plane, Larisa dozed off in her chair, then she felt a very strong push, and immediately after it, simply unbearable cold. She flew off a meter from her chair, and the frames of the film that she watched not so long ago appeared before her eyes. The heroine survived the plane crash. Larisa took this memory as a guide to action. She reached the chair by the porthole, clung to it with all her might, and flew down with him. It was this chair that ultimately saved her life. The crash occurred as a result of a collision with a military aircraft.

Her fall lasted 8 minutes. The blow was softened by the crowns of birches. Larisa was found on August 27 with serious injuries in a state of deep shock. She survived, learned to walk, and was even able to give birth to a son in 1986.

She received minimal compensation for damages - only 75 rubles. The very fact of this catastrophe was kept secret for many years. The girl's parents and Larisa herself were ordered not to tell anyone about the incident. Only after twenty the details of the terrible crash were made public, and Larisa Savitskaya was able to tell about that terrible day.

The film that helped Larisa Savitskaya survive - "Miracles still happen"

These three girls can be called almost lucky, they managed to survive. The mystery of the death in a plane crash of a young peacekeeper is still trying to unravel.

People thrown overboard during a crash almost never survive. And those who did it will never forget Asiana Flight 214 after an emergency landing in San Francisco.

In July of this year, a South Korean Asiana Airlines plane made an emergency landing at San Francisco Airport. A moment before the liner touched the runway, its tail fell off, in which there were five people. A teenage girl from Korea nearly finished sixth.

She was sitting in row 41, where a fault line passed, along which the tail section broke away from the rest of the aircraft.

“Everything that was behind me disappeared in an instant,” she told reporters from Mercury News in broken English. She asked not to be named. Two girls and three stewardesses sat behind them in the fallen tail. “Just now there were two toilets and suddenly there was nothing, just blinding light.”

One of the girls fell out of her seat later than the other four and ended up next to the left wing of the plane. Experts believe that it was covered with a layer of fire-fighting foam, and then hit by a fire truck that arrived at the scene.

A second girl from Row 41 died from injuries sustained after she was dragged along the runway for about 400 meters.

Miraculously, all three flight attendants survived, who were dragged along the ground for more than 300 meters. They were found next to a Boeing 747 waiting to take off. The pilot of this plane saw all this from his cockpit:

“The two survivors, albeit with difficulty, but moved ... I saw how one of them got up and walked a few steps, but then squatted down. Another, also a woman, I think, walked, then fell on her side and remained on the ground until rescuers arrived.

They were so far away from the main body of the plane that it took rescuers 14 minutes to find them.

Today's commercial aircraft carry hundreds of people 10 times faster than they could travel in a car, which in turn is 10 times faster than a human can travel on foot.

And although flights have become a familiar part of our lives, it is difficult for us to even imagine the physical forces that the body of the aircraft we sit inside has to withstand. If a person were outside the porthole, he would almost instantly die under the influence of several factors at once: barotrauma, friction, blunt force, hypoxia - they would still compete which of them would kill us.

And yet, very rarely, but those who find themselves on the wrong side of the aircraft skin survive. Some survived being ejected from flying at high altitude. passenger aircraft. Some were thrown back by the explosion, others were torn from their chairs at the place of the faults. It happened that people jumped themselves, it happened that someone pushed them.

There are real reasons why crash survival is becoming more common, even if a person is ejected from a plane at high altitude.

If a commercial airliner crashes, there is a good chance of survival. One widely cited statistic puts the survival rate at around 80 percent, and the numbers are rising with each new generation of aircraft.

The aircraft on Asiana Flight 214 was a Boeing 777, one of the newest and safest aircraft to operate. The 777 seats that the flight attendants "ride" on the runway were designed to withstand up to 16 G's of force before being blown off the floor.

In many previous crashes with less secure seats, these torn-off seats have effectively become rocket launchers in the cabin. The solid bracing was supposed to keep the Asiana seats in place, which probably also made them a safe sled for the Asiana crew.

Oddly enough, the earliest documented case of surviving a jet from a commercial flight bears a striking resemblance to the Asiana crash, even though safety science was then half a century younger.

In April 1965, a British United Airways aircraft was descending towards Jersey, an island off the coast of the Channel Coast of France. The pilot, like the Asiana, misjudged the landing approach. In addition, like the Korean plane, the rear end crashed into an object on the ground, the entire tail section was torn off, and the stewardess was ejected from there. Twenty-two-year-old Dominique Silier was found near the wreckage, badly injured but alive. She is the only one left alive.

In the 48 years between these two accidents, the number of people also thrown out of the liners and survived is less than ten (according to data published by the media and collected in amateur databases).

Society reacts to survivors like, "You're so lucky!" But we cannot even imagine what a terrible trauma it is for them. Survivors tend to be reluctant to share their stories.

It is especially worth highlighting cases when people fell out of flying planes and remained alive. The most famous case was that of Juliane Koepke, a teenage girl from Germany who, on Christmas Eve 1971, was thrown out of a plane that exploded over Peru.

While in her chair, she flew about 3,000 meters before falling into a thicket in the jungle. Bruised and missing one shoe, she walked along streams and rivers for 11 days before finding help.

German director Werner Herzog was also supposed to be on that flight and, after the tragedy, visited the crash site to film his documentary film 2000 Wings of Hope.

Nine-year-old Colombian Erica Delgado survived a similar fall in 1995, when her mother pushed her out of a burning plane that crashed near Cartagena. The exact figures are unknown, but another pilot reported an explosion of the plane, which broke into two parts at an altitude of about 3.5 thousand meters. The Delgados landed in the swamp next to the rest of the wreckage.

In 1985, a Galaxy Airlines plane crashed on takeoff from Reno. A row of 17-year-old Lamson's seats was ripped out completely and landed vertically on a nearby road. The teen unbuckled his seatbelts and started running until the billboard he saw brought him back to reality.

Lamson later tried to figure out how he managed to survive in such a mess. Lamson had been diving for a long time, so he followed his instinct and buried his head in his knees, as if in a somersault when the plane was thrown up for the first time. When a row of seats vomited, his legs protected him, and his father, who was sitting next to him, died from a head injury.

This is the answer to the "how" question. The answer to the question "why", many of them will never be able to get it.

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 liner fell into a vast thunderstorm area, fell apart in the air and fell into the jungle. Only 17-year-old Juliana Dealer Kopka, who was thrown out of the plane, managed to survive in a terrible catastrophe.
Juliana Dealer Kopke“Suddenly there was an amazing silence around me. The plane has disappeared. I must have been unconscious and then I came to. I flew, spinning in the air, and could see the forest rapidly approaching under 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. “Perhaps I survived because I was strapped into a row of seats,” she says. “I was spinning like a helicopter, which probably slowed down the fall. In addition, the place where I landed was thickly 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 gave the girl 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 board followed from Copenhagen to Zagreb, there were 28 people on board. A bomb planted in the luggage compartment detonated at an altitude of 10,160 m. 27 passengers and crew members died, but 22-year-old flight attendant Vesna Vulovich survived 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 crash site, who recognized Vesna's signs of life. Her skull was fractured, both legs and three vertebrae were broken, which left 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 in her airline, but already on the ground. The miraculous rescue of Vesna Vulovich is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the highest jump without a parachute. October 13, 1972 FH-227D/LCD crashed in the Andes. Killed 29 people out of 45 on board. The survivors were not found until December 22, 1972.
On October 13, 1972, the rugby team from Montevideo went to compete in the Chilean capital of Santiago. The Fairchild-Hiller FH-227D/LCD aircraft of the Uruguayan airline Tamu, in addition to them, was also carrying passengers and 5 crew members - a total of 45 people. On the way, they had to make an intermediate landing in Buenos Aires. However, the "side" of the T-571 fell into a strong turbulent zone. In conditions of heavy fog, the pilot made a navigational error: the plane, flying at an altitude of 500 m, headed straight for one of the mountain peaks of the Argentine Andes. The crew reacted too late to the error. A few moments later, the "board" ran into the rocks, piercing the steel skin of the aircraft. The fuselage collapsed; from a terrible blow, several seats were torn off the floor and thrown out together with the passengers. Seventeen out of 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. Found them only on December 22!
“After the disaster, 28 people survived, but after the snow avalanche and the long exhausting weeks of starvation, only sixteen of them remained. Days, weeks passed, and people, without warm clothes, continued to live in forty-degree frost. The food that was stored on board the crashed plane was enough for a short time. Meager supplies had to be divided into crumbs to stretch for a longer time. In the end, only chocolate and a thimble norm of wine were left. But they also ran out. Hunger took its toll on the survivors: on the tenth day they began to eat corpses. " August 24, 1981 on Far East at an altitude of 5 km. passenger plane collided An-24 airline "Aeroflot" and bomber Tu-16 USSR Air Force. Among the 32 people, only a 20-year-old survived Larisa Savitskaya returning with her husband from their honeymoon. Larisa with her husband At the time of the crash, Larisa Savitskaya was sleeping in her chair in the tail section 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 got to the nearest seat, climbed in and pressed herself into it, without wearing her seat belt. Larisa herself subsequently claimed that at that moment she remembered an episode from the film “Miracles Still Happen”, where the heroine pressed herself into a chair during a plane crash and survived. Part of the body of the aircraft was planned on a birch grove, which softened the blow. According to subsequent studies, the entire fall of the aircraft 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 a chair in front of her with the body of her dead husband. She received a number of serious injuries, but was able to move independently. Two days later, rescuers found her, who were very surprised when, after two days they came across only the bodies of the dead, they met a living person. Larisa was all covered with paint flying off the fuselage, and her hair was heavily tangled in the wind. While waiting for rescuers, she built herself a temporary shelter from the wreckage of the plane, warming herself with seat covers and hiding from mosquitoes with a plastic bag. It has been raining all these days. When it ended, she waved to the rescue planes flying by, but those, 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 by the last of all the victims of the disaster. Doctors diagnosed her with a concussion, spinal injuries in five places, fractures of her arm and ribs. She also lost almost all her teeth. Larisa Savitskaya From an interview with Larisa: - How did it really happen?- The planes collided on a tangent. The wings of the An-24 were torn off along with the gas tanks and the roof. For some 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 of air. My husband died immediately - at that moment my life was over. I didn't even scream. From grief did not have time to realize the fear. - Did you fall in this "boat"?- No. Then she broke apart again. The rift passed right in front of our chairs. I ended up in the tail section. I was thrown into the passage, right on the bulkheads. At first I lost consciousness, and when I came to my senses, I lie and think - 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 in a plane crash, pressing herself into a chair. Somehow I got to it... - And buckled up?- I didn't even think about it. Actions outpaced consciousness. I began to look out the window to "catch the earth." It was necessary to depreciate in time. I did not hope to be saved, I just wanted to die without pain. There was very low cloud cover, then a green flash and impact. I fell into the taiga, onto a birch tree - lucky again. - Just don't say that you didn't get any injuries.- Concussion, damage to the spine in five places, broken arms, ribs, legs. Almost all of the teeth were knocked out. But they didn't give me a disability. Doctors said: "We understand that you are disabled in the aggregate. But we can't do anything - each injury individually does not amount to disability. Now, if there was one, but serious - then please." - How much time did you spend in the taiga?- Three days. When I woke up, my husband's body lay 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 could not utter anything except “mu-mu”. I understand them. Three days to remove pieces of bodies from trees, and then suddenly see a living person. Yes, and I still had that vision. I was all the color of prunes with a silvery sheen - the paint from the fuselage turned out to be extremely sticky, then my mother picked it out for a month. And the wind turned her hair into a large piece of glass wool. Surprisingly, as soon as I saw the rescuers, I could no longer walk. Relaxed. Later, in Zavitinsk, I learned that a grave had already been dug for me. They dug through the 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 survived: 24-year-old Japan Airline employee Hiroko Yoshizaki, a 34-year-old passenger on the plane and her eight-year-old daughter Mikiko, and 12-year-old Keiko Kawakami, who was found sitting in a tree. All four lucky people sat in the center row of seats at the very tail of the plane. For the remaining 520 passengers and crew, this flight was the last. In terms of the number of victims, the crash of the Japanese Boeing 747 is second only to the crash in Tenerife in 1977, when two Boeings collided. No other ship has ever lost so many people. August 16, 1987 McDonnell Douglas MD-82 aircraft, 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 point, after which it crashed to 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. A possible cause of this crash is the negligence of the pilot and crew in following the takeoff trajectory. July 28, 2002. at the Moscow airport "Sheremetyevo" collapsed immediately after takeoff IL 86, on board of which there were 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 on the left wing and crashed, after which an explosion occurred.
Only two flight attendants managed to survive: Tatiana Moiseeva and Arina Vinogradova. Vinogradova, some time after being discharged from the hospital and undergoing a rehabilitation course, returned to work, and Moiseeva decided not to tempt fate and stay on earth. June 30, 2009 Plane crashes off the coast of the Comoros A310 Yemeni airline Yemenia flying from the capital of Yemen, Sanaa, to the capital of Comoros, the city of Moroni. There were 153 people on board the A310. The only surviving passenger of the crashed liner was a twelve-year-old girl. Bahia Bakari with French citizenship. Upon hitting the water, she was literally thrown out of the plane. For several hours, the girl, practically unable to 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 subsided. When dawn broke, she realized that she was all alone in the center of an oil puddle on the surface of the water. Luckily, she managed to climb onto the large piece of rock 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 found Bakari only 13 hours after the plane crash. Another 7 hours later, she was 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 Libyan airline Afriqiyah Airways, who arrived from Johannesburg (South Africa), crashed while landing in international airport Tripoli. In foggy conditions, the crew decided to go to the 2nd circle, but did not have time. There were 104 people on board. Only an eight-year-old boy was found among the wreckage, with both legs broken. He was pushed back by a chair, which may have springed the blow. September 6, 2011 In Bolivia, a private airline 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 - a 35-year-old Bolivian cosmetics seller, Minor Vidalyu. 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 a few 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. “When we got closer, he knelt down and began to thank God.”