A lot of people are panicly afraid to fly on airplanes, despite the fact that it is the air transport that is the fastest and most convenient. Of course, the false airliner is the greatest fear, and what people feel when the plane falls, can only tell the one who really survived. A clear thing, the crash of air transport can occur, but do not think that only the plane carries a clear threat to human life. And if you consider the experience of those who were able to survive with the fall of air transport, then it can be concluded that it is not so scary as many for themselves presented.
Before refusing the flight, fearing the fall of the airliner, it should be understood that the catastrophe may wait for people everywhere, even in the car, which delivers a person to the airport. According to static data, 30 million flights take place no more than 20 crashes, and not on passengerous courts, but on freight, on board which is the minimum number of people. And in road traffic accidents, much more people die. For example, over a year more than a million people died in road accidents and approximately 45 million received the most difficult injuries.
Analysts argue that people on Earth have much more chances to die than in the sky. After all, danger can wait almost everywhere.
Here are the most common reasons:
- In the subway or in the elevator.
- When communicating with a person infected AIDS.
- Being driving a car or just sitting in a passenger chair.
That is why the airliners are currently much safer, especially since they are becoming more and more perfect every year. And, of course, one should not follow the flight to read articles in which they say that people feel in the fall of the aircraft, as such stories are mainly very embellished.
Feelings for overloading air transport
Scientific studies found out what happens to people when the aircraft fall, or rather with a strong overload of air transport. It turns out that a person practically will not remember anything, since with strong overloads, human consciousness, as they say, "protects". That is, passengers of the incident aircraft feel just the first seconds of fall, and then their consciousness is simply turned off. Studies The aircraft crash has proven that when a carrier cales the airliner with the surface of the earth, no passenger was conscious, which means that he did not realize anything and did not feel. This fact was confirmed by those who could survive after the crash. They told that he would remember only a strong shake and a feeling of overload.
Actions of pilots when crashing the aircraft
The pilot of the aircraft is the same person, during the plane crash, feels the same sensations as all the passengers, but it is simply obliged to be completely concentrated to try to take control of the complex situation. No one in the cabin finds out the relationship, as often can be observed in artistic films, the actions of pilots are professional and cold-blooded, because it is their calm and skills, in some situations, help to successfully plant a faulty aircraft.
There are many modern devices in the cockpit:
- voice warning device;
- the device indicating a sharp change of height;
- monitor indicating a possible collision with another aircraft.
But not always devices can help pilots, especially if events develop very rapidly and the crew simply does not have time to fully realize.
If there is an emergency, professional pilots use only their skills, not trusting electronic technology, and quite often it is such a decision that the plane is saved and all passengers from the crash.
On board you will have access to the instructions for an emergency situation. Be sure to read it!
Is it possible to survive the passenger when crashing the airliner?
Browsing art films, many have already been able to imagine, what scenario the plane falls. In a nutshell, you can say so:
- air transport is in the sky for a long time;
- then it begins to shake it hard;
- the housing is formed a hole in which passengers fly out.
As a result, a strong explosion breaks the air transport and passengers in it, so there are no chance for survival.
But this is just an invented scenario, according to statistics, more than 75% of the plane crash occur on the take-off or landing strip, therefore human victims practically does not happen.
But if still a catastrophe begins on a decent height, passengers to survive, should be clearly fulfilled by all the rules that the stewardess will speak.
Everyone during a plane crash feels panic and fear, they can make it stand up from their own place or disseminate seat belts. And then his example will follow other passengers and the real panic and chaos will begin on board, which will only interfere with the pilot try to plant a lost aircraft.
After all, even if the airliner engines refuse to work at high height, an experienced pilot can try to plant an unmanaged aircraft due to aerodynamics of transport. It is she who allows the hard airliner to soar in the sky and smoothly decrease down, and not instantly fall a huge cargo on the ground.
Studies have proven that, losing 1 meter of height, the aircraft has time to overcome the distance of 15.5 meters, which helps the pilots. But control control will be saved only if the passengers will stop panic on board and fully begin to follow the instructions. Only so pilots will be able to hold an uncontrolled aircraft in the sky, which can fly more than one hundred kilometers to get to the safest landing site.
By summing up, we can say that the flights on modern airliners, which are managed by the real professionals, are not so dangerous as many were able to imagine. Therefore, it is not worth a lot to read the horror stories about what is happening with people when the aircraft falls, because the danger can wait a person everywhere and from fate, as they say, not to run away. Buying air transport tickets can be safely, especially since such a journey is fast and comfortable.
In contact with
Despite the fact that in the car accidents every year, thousands of times more people are dying than in the crashing of aircraft, fear lives in the mass consciousness. First of all, this is due to the scale of tragedies - the false liner is dozens and hundreds of simultaneous deaths. It shocks much stronger than several thousand reports of deadly accidents stretched for a month.
The second cause of fear of the aircraft crash is awareness of its own helplessness and inability to somehow affect the course of events. Almost always it really is. However, the history of the airplane has accumulated a small amount of exceptions, in which people survived, falling along with the aircraft (or its wreckage) from a height of several kilometers without a parachute. There are so few of these cases that many of them have their own pages in Wikipedia.
Rider on the wreckage
The airline of the airline Jugoslovenski Aerotransport (today it is called Air Serbia) in the spring of volovich belongs to the world record for survival in a free fall without a parachute. She fell into the Guinness Book of Records Because Lived after the explosion of the DC-9 aircraft at an altitude of 10 160 meters.
At the time of explosion, Spring worked with passengers. She immediately lost consciousness, so the moments of the catastrophe nor her details did not remember. Because of this, the flight attendants did not appear by fear of flights - she perceived all the circumstances with other people's words. It turned out that at the time of the destruction of the aircraft, the Volovich pushed between the seat, the body of another crew member and the trolley from the buffet. In such a form, the debris fell on the mountains covered with snow and slid over it until a complete stop.
Spring remained alive, although he received severe injuries - broke the base of the skull, three vertebra, both legs and pelvis. Within 10 months, the girl was paralyzed by the lower part of the body, in general, the treatment took almost 1.5 years.
After recovery, Volovich tried to return to the previous work, but she was not allowed to fly and gave her position in the office of the airline.
Choosing a goal
Survive as Spring Highness in a cocoon of debris is much easier than in solitary free flight. However, in the second case there are amazing examples. One of them dates back to 1943, when a military pilot from the USA Alan Magi flew over France on a heavy four-dimensional bomber B-17. At an altitude of 6 km, it was thrown out of the aircraft, and the drop slowed down the glass roof of the station. As a result, MEGI fell on the stone floor, he was alive and immediately captured by the Germans.
A great goal of falling will be a big haystack. A few cases are known when people survived in plane crash, if there was a tightly growing shrub on their way. A dense forest also gives some chances, but here the risk appears to evaporate.
An ideal option for a falling person will be snow or swamp. A soft and compressive medium absorbing in flight to the center of the Earth inertia with a good coincidence of circumstances can make injuries compatible with life.
Almost there is no chance of survival when falling on a water surface. Water is practically not compressed, so the result of contact with it will be the same as when a collision with concrete.
Salvation can sometimes bring the most unexpected objects. One of the main things to learn lovers of parachute jumps is to stay away from power lines. However, the case is known when it is the high-voltage line that saved the life of Skydaywer, who was in a free flight due to an unseen parachute. He fell straight on the wires, sipped and fell to the ground from a height of several tens of meters.
Pilots and children
Survival statistics in the plane crash shows that much more chances to deceive death from members of the crew and passengers who have not reached the age of majority. With pilots, the situation is understandable - in their cabin of passive security system more reliable than the rest of the passengers.
Why more often do children survive - it is not clear to the end. However, several reliable reasons for the researchers of this issue were established:
- increased bone flexibility, general muscle relaxation and a larger percentage of subcutaneous fat that protects internal injuries from injuries like a pillow;
- a small increase, due to which the head closes the back of the chair from flying fragments. This is extremely important, since the main cause of deaths under air crashes - brain injuries;
- a smaller body size, which reduces the likelihood to evaporate at the time of landing on some sharp object.
An invincible power of the spirit
A successful landing does not always mean a positive outcome. Not every miracle of the survivor instantly find benevolent locals. For example, in 1971, over an amazon at an altitude of 3,200 meters due to a fire caused by the zipper in the wing with a fuel tank, the Lockheed Electra was collapsed. Julian's 17-year-old German came to himself in the jungle, fastened to the chair. She was wounded, but could move.
The girl remembered the words of the father-biologist, who told that even in the impassable jungle you can always find people if you go over the flow of water. Juliana went along the forest streams, gradually turned into a river. With a broken clavicle, a package of candies and a stick, which she accelerates on shallow water of the skates, a girl went out to people in 9 days. In Italy, on this story, the film "Miracles still happens" (1974).
On board, including Copf, 92 people flew. Subsequently, it was established that in addition to her, the fall was experiencing another 14 people. However, over the next few days, they all died even before they were found rescuers.
The episode from the film "Miracles is still happening" saved Larisa Savitskaya's life, which in 1981 flew along with her husband from a wedding trip by Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Blagoveshchensk. At an altitude of 5,200 meters, the passenger An-24 collided with the Tu-16K bomber.
Larisa and her husband sat in the tail of the aircraft. The fuselage broke right in front of her chair, and the girl threw into the pass. At that moment, she remembered the film about Julian's Coppe, which when crashed I got to the chair, joined him and survived. Savitskaya did the same. Part of the hull of the aircraft in which the girl remained, fell on a mitigating blow to the birch grove. In the fall she was about 8 minutes. Larisa was the only survivor, she received serious injuries, but remained in consciousness and retained the ability to move independently.
Surname Savitskoy twice inscribed in the Russian version of the Guinness Book of Records. It is a man who survived after falling with the greatest height. The second record is rather sad - Larisa became the one who received the minimum compensation for physical damage. She paid only 75 rubles - it was so much on the norms of the Statestrak then he was supposed to survive in a plane crash.
"Pulse speed below the explosion speed"
In the village of Stepanovskoye Ramensky district of the Moscow region, search works on the site of the crash of the An-148 aircraft of Saratov Airlines continue. Locals, meanwhile, organized a memorial here and lit 71 candles - by the number of dead passengers and crew members. The answer to the question: "Why did the catastrophe occur?" After deciphering the data of onboard recorders will be given experts. But after each such state of native victims and many other people who often climb the aircraft, and other questions are tormented: "What did a person feel at the time of the catastrophe? Was it hurt? Did he understand what dies? ". We asked for them to answer the head of the Laboratory for the Development of the Nerv System of Human Morphology of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergey Savelyev.
salon An-148.
- Sergey Vyacheslavovich, tell me when a person's brain explosion has time to transfer painful feelings?
Since all this is happening very quickly, I can say that, most likely, the victim of a plane crash does not have time to feel pain. Everything is very simple. The speed of the pulses in our body around the nerves to the receptors is much lower than the speed of the explosion. It's just instant death.
- Does the brain manage to understand that the death is about to come?
Again, it all depends on the situation. If you mean, again the explosion, then, of course, no. And if we consider that a person flies in the aircraft management of a few seconds, then everything happens on another scenario. The fact is that we are programmed in such cases on a positive outcome of the case. A person always hopes that he will get out and will remain alive. Resists until the latter, while the brain alone. And he dies last. This is due to our blood supply system.
Sergey Vyacheslavovich, and the truth is that before the flight the intuition of some people can tell them not to sit in the airliner, which is waiting for a crash?
There is no intuition in this regard. Well, imagine, you approach the plane and see that everything is in order with him. What do you think will tell you life experience in this case? Nothing. And sometimes you approach the plane (I had such a case), and he had one of the engines smoke. Sell \u200b\u200band flew. Everything went fine. Astral tails do not help here.
Is it possible to deceive the brain during the flight, if it is too scary? Suppose to close your eyes and imagine what are you going on the train?
The original is taken from
Outside the black box
Dennis Shanagan works in a spacious room on the second floor of the house in which he lives with his wife Maureen, a ten minute drive from the Carlsbad business district in California. He has a quiet and sun-lit office, according to whose mind can not be guessing about what horrible work is performed here. Shanagan is an expert on injuries. It devotes a significant part of the time to the study of wounds and fractures in living people. It is invited to consult the company producing cars, whose clients are submitted to the court on the basis of dubious arguments ("Safety belt broke", "I didn't have a steering wheel", etc.), which can be checked by the nature of their damage. But in parallel with this, he deems with dead bodies. In particular, he participated in the investigation of the circumstances of the flight of 800 Trans World Airlines.
The aircraft flew from John Kennedy International Airport on July 17, 1996 to Paris, exploded in the air over the Atlantic Ocean in the city of East Morich, New York. Evidence evidences were contradictory. Some claimed to have seen how the rocket hit the plane. In the wreckage, traces of explosive were discovered, but did not find traces of the projectile. (Later, it turned out that the explosives were laid on the plane long before the crash - as part of the training program of dogs-Nyukhach.) The versions of involvement in the explosion of public services were distributed. The investigation was delayed in connection with the lack of an answer to the main question: what (or who) dropped the plane from the sky to the ground?
Shortly after the crash, Shanagan flew into New York to inspect the bodies of the dead and make possible conclusions. Last spring, I went to Karlsbad to meet him. I wanted to know how a person performs this kind of work - in scientific terms and in terms of emotional.
I had other questions. Shanagan knows all the subset nightmare. He in merciless medical details can tell what happens with people with various catastrophes. He knows how they usually die if they know about what is happening, and how (when crawling at a small height), they could increase their chances of salvation. I said that he takes time from his time, but he stayed five hours.
A broken aircraft can usually tell your story. Sometimes this story can be heard literally as a result of decrypting records of votes in the crew cabin, sometimes it is possible to draw conclusions as a result of the inspection of broken and burnt fragments of the fallen aircraft. But when the plane collapses into the ocean, his story may be incomplete and incomparable. If at the point of falling is particularly deep or a course too strong and chaotic, the black box may not find at all, and the fragments raised to the surface may not be enough to definitely find out the aircraft in a few minutes before the catastrophe. In such situations, experts appeal to the fact that in the textbooks on aviation pathological anatomy they call "human fragments", that is, the bodies of passengers. Unlike the wings or fragments of the fuselage, the bodies float to the surface of the water. The study of the injuries received by people (what is the type, the severity, which side of the body is amazed) allows the expert to fold together the fragments of the terrible picture of what happened.
Shanagan is waiting for me at the airport. There are Dockers shoes, short-sleeved shirt and glasses in a frame like a pilot. Hair neatly combed on the sample. They look like a wig, but they are real. He is polite, discreet and very pleasant, reminds me of my friend Pharmacy T-shirt.
He is not at all like a portrait that I am in my head. I imagined an intense, insensitive, perhaps a verbal man. I planned to interview in the field, on the site of the crash of some aircraft. I imagined us two in the morgue temporarily built in the dance hall of a small town or in a sports hall of some university: he is in an evaporated laboratory coat, I am with my notebook. But it was before I realized that Shanagan was not personally engaged in opening tel. This makes a group of medical experts from the morgue, located near the disaster. Sometimes he still leaves in place and explores the body with one purpose or another, but still it works with the finished results of autopsy, correlating them with the landing scheme of passengers to identify the location of the damage source. He tells me what to see him at work. At the crash site, it is likely to wait for several years, since the causes of most disasters are quite obvious and for their clarification are not required to study the bodies of the dead.
When I tell him about my disappointment (since I have no opportunity to report from the disaster room), Shaanagan gives me a book called "Aerospace Pathology" (Aerospace Pathology), in which he assures me, there are photos of such things that I could Would see on the site of the fall of the aircraft. I open the book in the section "Location Tel". On the diagram reflecting the location of the aircraft fragments, small black dots are scattered. These points conducted lines to the descriptions made outside the scheme: "Brown leather shoes", "Second pilot", "spine fragment", "Stewartes". Gradually, I get to the chapter, which describes the work of Shanagan ("The nature of the damage to people in the plane crash"). Signatures for photos are reminded by researchers, for example, that "a strong heating can lead to the formation inside the cranial box of the steam, leading to the tile break, which can be confused with damage from impact. It becomes clear to me that black dots with signatures give me a sufficient idea of \u200b\u200bthe consequences of the catastrophe, as if I visited the place of falling the aircraft.
In the case of the crash of the TWA 800 aircraft, Shanagan suspected that the cause of the disaster served as an explosion of a bomb. He analyzed the nature of the defeat of the body to prove that an explosion occurred in the plane. If he had found traces of explosives, they would try to establish where a bomb was laid in the plane. It pulls out a thick folder from the drawer and pulls out the report of his group out of it. Here - chaos and bored blood, the result of the largest aircraft crash of the passenger aircraft in numbers, diagrams, and charts. The nightmare is transformed into something that can be discussed by a cup of coffee at the morning meeting of the National Committee on Transport Safety. "4:19. In the victims of the prevalence of right-sided damage over left-handed ". "4:28. Fractures of hips and horizontal damage to the base of the seats. " I ask Shanagan, whether a business and detached look at the tragedy to suppress natural, as it seems to me, an emotional experience. He looks down, on his hands with woven fingers, which rest on the folder with a business about the flight of the flight 800.
"Morin can tell you that I didn't cope with him in those days. Emotionally it was extremely difficult, especially in connection with a large number of youth on that plane. The French club of one of the universities flew to Paris. Young couple. We all were very hard. " Shanagan adds that this is an atypical state of experts on the site of the death of the aircraft. "In general, people do not want to dive into the tragedy too deep, so jokes and free communication are a rather ordinary behavior manner. But not in this case. "
For Shanagan, the most unpleasant in this matter turned out that most bodies were practically integer. "The intact of the bodies bothers me more than her absence," he says. Such things for which most of us is difficult to watch, - sliced \u200b\u200bhands, legs, pieces of body - for Shanagan is a fairly familiar spectacle. "In this case, it's just a fabric. You can force your thoughts to flow through the necessary channel and perform your work. " This is blood, but it does not cause sorrow. You can get used to working with blood. And with broken lives - no. Shanagan works just like any pathologist. "Concentrate on individual parts, not on a person as a person. When opening, you describe the eyes, then the mouth. You do not stand next to him and do not think that this person is the father of four children. Only thus you can suppress your emotions. "
It's funny, but it is an intact bodies that can serve as a key to a randering of that was an explosion or not. We are at the Sixteenth Report page. Clause 4.7: "Fragment of Tel". "People who are near the epicenter of the explosion are broken into parts," Dennis says quietly. This person has an amazing ability to talk about such things so that it does not look unnecessarily patronically or overly colorfully. If a bomb was located in the plane, Shaanagan would have to discover the cluster of "highly fragmented bodies", corresponding to the passengers who were in the explosion focus. But most bodies have been going on, which is easy to see from the report, if you know the color code used by experts. To facilitate the work of people like Shanagan, which should analyze a large amount of information, medical experts apply such a code. In particular, the Passenger Bodies of the flight 800 were marked with a green (intact body), yellow (broken head or there is no one limb), blue (there are no two limbs, the head is broken or net) or red (there are no three or more limbs or complete body fragmentation).
Another way, with which you can confirm the presence of an explosion, is to study the number and trajectory of the "foreign bodies" movement, stuck in the body of the victims. This routine analysis, which is performed using an X-ray apparatus as part of the investigation of the causes of any aircraft crash. In the explosion, fragments of the bomb itself, as well as the objects nearby objects fly away to the sides, hitting people sitting around. The nature of the spread of these foreign bodies can shed light to the question, was the bomb, and if so, then where. If the explosion occurred, for example, in the toilet on the right side of the aircraft, people sitting face to the toilet would be injured by the front of the body. Passengers from the passage from the opposite side would be injured in the right side. However, the wounds of this kind of Shanagan did not find.
On some bodies there were traces of chemical burns. It served as the basis for the emergence of the version that the cause of the catastrophe was a collision with a rocket. It is true that chemical burns in air crashes are usually caused by contact with very caustic fuel, but Shanagan suspected that burns were obtained by people after the aircraft hit the water. Spilled on the surface of the water fuel feeds the back of the floating on the surface of the bodies, but not face. To finally be established in the correctness of your version, Shanagan checked that the chemical burns were only among the bodies surfaced and only on the back. If the explosion occurred in an airplane, splashing fuel would have fallen people and sides, but not back, which were protected by the backs of the chairs. So, no evidence of collision with a rocket.
Shanagan also drew attention to thermal burns caused by a flame. The report was attached to the report. Exploring the nature of the location of burns on the body (in most cases, the front of the body was burned), he was able to trace the movement of fire by plane. Then he found out how much the chairs of these passengers burned down - it turned out, much stronger than the passengers themselves, and this meant that people pushed out of their places and threw out of the aircraft literally after a second after a fire arose. The version began to take shape that the fuel tank exploded in the wing. The explosion occurred far enough from the passengers (and therefore the body remained integer), but he was strong enough to disrupt the integrity of the aircraft to such an extent that he fell apart, and people pushed overboard.
I asked why passengers made out of the plane, because they were fastened. Shanagan replied that with violation of the integrity of the aircraft, huge forces begin to act. Unlike the breaking of the projectile, the body usually remains a whole, but a powerful wave is capable of pulling a person from the chair. "Such aircraft fly at a speed of over five hundred kilometers per hour," continues Shanagan. - When the crack appears, the aerodynamic properties of the aircraft change. Motors are still pushing it forward, but it loses stability. It begins to rotate with a monstrous force. The crack increases, and for five or six seconds the aircraft falls apart. According to my theory, the plane fell apart quickly quickly, the backs of the seats fell off, and people slipped out of their belts fixing.
The nature of the injuries from flight passengers 800 confirmed his theory: most people had a massive inner injury, which is usually observed by saying the words of Shanagan, with "extremely strong blows about water". Falling from the height of a person hits the surface of the water and almost immediately stops, but its internal organs continue to move on some fraction of a second longer, until they hit the wall of the corresponding body cavity, which at this point began a return movement. Often, when the aorta is gap, as one part is fixed in the body (and stops moving along with the body), and the other part located closer to the heart is free and stops moving a little later. Two parts of the aortic are moving in opposite directions, and the shear force arising from this lead to its rupture. 73% of the flight passengers 800 have identified serious damage to the aorta.
In addition, when you hit the water of the body falling from a high height, the edge of the ribs often occurs. This fact was documented by former employees of the Civil Aerdisci Institute Richard Snyder and Clyde Snow. In 1968, Snyder studied the results of the autopsy of 169 suicides, relieved from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. In 85%, the ribs were broken, in 15% - the spine, and only a third - limb. By itself, the fracture of the ribs is not hazarded, but with a very strong impact of the ribs can flow what is under them: the heart, lung, aorta. In 76% of cases studied by Snyder and Snow, the ribs pierced the lung. Statistics in the case of a flight crash 800 was very similar: most of the dead had certain damage related to a strong blow to the surface of the water. All have been distinguished by damage accompanying a stupid punch, 99% were broken ribs, 88% are lungs, and 73% there was a gap of aorta.
If most passengers died as a result of a strong blow to the surface of the water, it means that they were alive and understood that with them occurs during a three-minute fall from height? Alive, possibly. "If under life you understand heartbeat and breathing," says Shanagan. - Yes, there must have been a lot. " Did they understand? Dennis believes that it is unlikely. "I think it is unlikely. Seats and passengers fly out in different directions. I think people completely lost orientation. " Shanagan interviewed hundreds of people who survived in auto and air crashes, about what they saw and felt during the accident. "I came to the conclusion that these people did not understand to the end, which is seriously injured. I found them fairly detached. They knew that some events occur around, but they gave some inconceivable answer: "I knew that something was happening around, but I did not know what it was. I did not feel that it concerns me, but, on the other hand, I understood that I was part of the events. "
Knowing how many passengers of the flight 800 fell out of the aircraft during the accident, I asked if someone had some of them even a small chance to survive. If you enter the water like a diver athlete, is it possible to survive after falling off the plane from a high height? At least one day it happened. In 1963, Richard Snyder studied cases when people survived, falling from a huge height. In the work of "survival of people with a free fall", he leads the case when one person fell out of the plane at an altitude of 10 km and survived, although he lived only half a day. And the poor fellow is not lucky - he was not in the water, but to the ground (however, when the difference is already small with such a height). Snyder found that the speed of the person's movement when he hit the ground does not predict uniquely heaviness. He spoke with the escaped lovers who received more serious injury, falling from the stairs than a thirty-sest suicide, rushed to a concrete coating from a height of twenty meters. This man got up and went, and he did not need anything but a patch and a visit to a psychotherapist.
Generally speaking, people falling from aircraft usually no longer fly. In accordance with the Snidder Article, the maximum speed in which a person has a tangible chance to survive when the water is immersed in the water (this is the most secure position), is about 100 km / h. Given that the final rate of the incident body is 180 km / h and that such a speed is achieved by falling from a height of 150 meters, few people will fall from the height of 8,000 meters from the exploded aircraft, survive and then give interviews Dennis Shanagan.
Was Shanagan rights regarding what happened to the 800 flight? Yes. Gradually found all the main details of the aircraft, and its hypothesis was confirmed. The final conclusion was like this: sparks from spoiled electrical wiring ignited fuel vapors, which led to an explosion of one of the tanks with a flammable.
Incommunicative science of human injuries appeared in 1954, when British aircraft "Comet" for an incomprehensible reason began to fall into the water. The first aircraft disappeared in January in the Elba Island area, the second - near Naples three months later. In both cases, due to the sufficiently large immersion depth of the fragments of many parts of the fuselage, it was not possible to extract, so the experts had to study "medical evidence", that is, to examine the body discovered on the surface of the body of twenty-one passengers.
Studies were conducted at the Institute of Aviation Medicine of the British Royal Air Fleet in Farnborough under the leadership of Captain V. K. Stewart and Sir Harold E. Whittingham - Director of the Medical Service of the National British Airlines. Since Sir Harold had more all sorts of ranks (at least five, not counting the noble rank, the article was marked in published on the results of the study), I decided that it was he who led the work.
Sir Harold and his group immediately drew attention to the peculiarity of body damage. All bodies had enough external injections and at the same time very serious damage to the internal organs, especially the lungs. It was known that such damage to the lungs, which were found in the "Comets" passengers, can be caused by three reasons: a bomb explosion, a sharp decompression (which occurs when the sealing of the aircraft cabin is disturbed), as well as a drop with a very large height. In such a catastrophe, like this, all three factors could play a role. Up to this point, the dead did not strongly help to solve the riddle of the crash of the aircraft.
The first version that began to be considered was associated with a bomb explosion. But none of the body burned, none in one did not find fragments of objects that could operate on the side of the explosion, and not a single body, as Dennis Shanaga drew attention, was not broken into pieces. So the idea of \u200b\u200bthe insane and fulfilled hatred of the former airline employee, a familiar with the action of explosives, was quickly discarded.
Then a group of researchers reviewed the version of the sudden depressurization of the cabin. Could this lead to such a serious damage to the lungs? To answer this question, the experts used guinea pigs and checked their reaction to the rapid change in atmospheric pressure - from pressure at sea level to pressure at an altitude of 10,000 m. According to Sir Harold, "Guinea pigs were somewhat surprised by what was happening, but did not show signs respiratory failure. " Other experimental data obtained by both animals and a person, similarly demonstrated only a slight negative impact of changes in pressure, which did not at least reflect the state of the lungs of the comet.
As a result, only the latest version of the passengers of the aircraft could be considered as the cause of the death of passengers - "Extremely strong blow of water", and as the cause of the catastrophe - the collapse of the body at high height, possibly due to some structural defect. Since Richard Snyder wrote a book "Deadly damage as a result of an extremely strong blow of water" (Fatal Injuries Resulting from Extreme Water Impact) only 14 years after those events, the group of researchers in Farnborough again had to seek help from guinea pigs. Sir Harold wanted to establish exactly what is happening with the lungs when the body is hit on the water at the limit speed. When I first met the mention of animals in the text, I imagined Sir Harold, heading for Dudrock cliffs with a cage with rodents and throwing innocent little animals into the water, where his comrades were expected in a boat with placed networks. However, Sir Harold made a more meaningful thing: he and his assistants created a "vertical catapult", allowing you to achieve the necessary speed on a much shorter distance. "Guinea pigs," he wrote, they attached the adhesive tape to the lower surface of the carrier, so when he stayed at the bottom position of his trajectory, the animals flew out the belly forward from the height of about 8 o cm and fell into the water. " I have a good idea that Sir Harold was in childhood.
In short, the lungs of the catapulty guinea pigs very much resembled the lungs of Comets. Researchers came to the conclusion that the aircraft disintegrated into parts at high altitude, as a result of which most passengers had fallen out of them and fell into the sea. To understand where the fuselage cracked, the researchers paid attention to whether the passengers raised from the surface of the water were dressed. According to the theory of Sir Harold, a person hitting the water with a height of a few kilometers, was to lose his clothes, but a person falling into the water from the same height inside the large fragment of the fuselage was supposed to stay dressed. Therefore, researchers tried to establish a line of collapse of the aircraft along the border passing between bare and dressed passengers. In cases with both aircraft, people whose places were in the caudal part of the aircraft were to be found dressed, and passengers who were closer to the cockpit would be naked or lost most of the clothes.
To prove this theory, Sir Harold lacked one: there was no data that, in the fall in water from a high height, a person loses clothes. Sir Harold reached a pioneer study. Although I would love to tell you how guinea pigs dressed in woolen suites and a dress in fashion 1950s, took part in the next cycle of trials in Farnborough, unfortunately, in this part of the research guinea pigs were not used. From the aircraft of the Royal Aviation Center, several completely dressed mannequins were dropped in the sea *. As Sir Harold and expected, when hitting the water, they lost their clothes, and this fact was confirmed by the investigator Gary Erickson, who made the autopsy of the suicide, rushed into the water from the bridge Golden Gate. As he told me, even when dropping from a height of only 75 meters, "usually flies shoes, the pants are broken by the lasty, the rear pockets will come off."
* Perhaps you will be interested in how I am interested in me, whether the human corpses ever were used to reproduce the results of the fall of people from a high height. The closest to this topic let me down the manuscripts of two articles: J. K. Earli "Body Terminal Velocity), dated 1964, as well as J. S. Cotton" Analysis of the effect of air resistance to the rate of falling human bodies " Analysis of Air Resistance Effects on the Velocity of Falling Human Bodies) from 1962 Both articles, unfortunately, were not published. However, I know that if J. K. Earli used in the study of mannequins, he would have written the word mannequin ("dummies") in the title of the article, so I suspect that the bodies donated for scientific purposes did not actually make a jump in water with Heights. - Note. Auto
Ultimately, a significant part of the comet fragments was raised to the surface, and Sir Harold theory was confirmed. The collapse of the fuselage in both cases really occurred in the air. We will remove the hats in front of Sir Harold and marine pigs from Farnborough.
Dennis and I dinner in the Italian restaurant on the shore. We are the only visitors and therefore we can calmly talk at the table. When the waiter is suitable for pouring us water, I will silent, as if we are talking about something secret or very personal. Shanagan seems to be all the same. The waiter tries infinitely for a long time for my salad, and Dennis at this time says that "a specialized trawler used to extract small remains."
I ask Dennis, as he may know what he knows, and seeing what he sees, still flying on airplanes. He responds that not all accidents happen at an altitude of 10,000 m. Most accidents occur when take-off, when landing or near the surface of the Earth, and at the same time, in his opinion, the potential probability of survival ranges from 80 to 85%.
For me, the key word here is the word "potential." This means that if everything happens according to the evacuation plan approved by the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA), with a probability of 80-85% you will survive. The federal legislation requires that aircraft manufacturers provide for the possibility of evacuating all passengers after half the aircraft emergency exits in 90 seconds. Unfortunately, in the real situation, evacuation rarely occurs on the planned plan. "If we consider cases of a disaster in which people can be saved, even half of emergency exits are rarely open," says Shanagan. "Plus, chaos and panic reigns on the plane." Shanan gives an example of a disaster aircraft of the company Delta in Dallas. "In this crash, it was quite possible to save all people. People received a very small amount of injuries. But many died on fire. They fixed emergency exits, but could not open them. " Fire is a killer number one in a plane crash. It does not require a strong blow to the fuel tank exploded and the fire covered the entire aircraft. Passengers die from choking, since the air becomes burning hot and filled with a toxic smoke emanating from the burning plane. People die also, because they break their legs, cutting into the standing chair in front, and can not try to exit. Passengers cannot follow the evacuation plan in the desired order: they run in a panic, pushed and trap each other *.
* It lies the secret of survival in such catastrophes: you need to be a man. As the analysis of the events of the three plane crash with the use of an emergency evacuation system conducted in 1970 by the Institute of Civil AeroMedicine, the most important factor contributing to human survival is its floor (this is the second most important factor that follows the proximity of the passenger's chair for emergency exit). Adult men have a significantly higher chance to escape. Why? Probably because they are able to sleep from the rest of all the others. - Note. Auto
Can manufacturers make that their planes become less fire hazard? Of course, they can. They can design more emergency exits, but they don't want to do this, because it will lead to a reduction in seats in the cabin and reducing income. They can set water sprinklers or shock-resistant systems to protect fuel tanks as in military helicopters. But this doesn't want to do this, as it will take it with a plane, but a larger weight of the machine means a greater fuel consumption.
Who decides to sacrifice human lives, but save money? Allegedly federal aviation agency. The problem is that most of the improvements in the aircraft safety system are estimated in terms of cost profitability. To quantify "benefits", each saved life is expressed in dollar equivalent. As calculated in 1991 at the Institute of Urban Development of the United States, each person costs 2.7 million dollars. "This is the financial expression of the death of a person and its impact on society," the representative of FAA Van Gouda said in a conversation. Although this figure significantly exceeds the cost of raw materials, the figures in the "Benefit" column rarely rise to such values \u200b\u200bto exceed the cost of producing aircraft. To explain your words, Gouda used an example with three-point safety belts (which, as in the car, throw out and through the waist, and over the shoulder). "Well, well, agency will say, we will improve the seat belts and will thus send fifteen lives in the next twenty years: fifteen times two million dollars equals thirty million. Manufacturers will come and say: to introduce such a security system, we will need six hundred sixty-nine million dollars. " Here you have shoulder seat belts.
Why FAA does not say: "expensive pleasure. But you still begin to release them? " For the same reason, in which the government took 15 years to demand the installation of aircraft in cars. The state regulation authorities have no teeth. "If FAA wants to introduce new rules, it should provide industrial expenses for the profitability of costs and wait for an answer," says Shanagan. - If the industrialists do not like the alignment, they go to their congressman. If you represent the company "Boeing", you have a huge influence in Congress "*.
* For this reason, there are no aircraft in modern aircraft. Believe it or not, but the airbag system for aircraft (the so-called Airstop Restraint System) was designed; It consists of three parts that protect legs, the seat from the bottom and chest. In 1964, FAA even tested this system on the DC-7 aircraft with mannequins, forcing the aircraft to crash into the ground in the city of Phoenix in Arizona. While the control mannequin, fastened by the belt seat belt, was crushed and lost his head, a mannequin, equipped with a new security system, was preserved perfectly. Designers used the stories of pilots of combat aircraft, the times of World War II, who immediately before the accident managed to inflate their life jackets. - Note. Auto Starting from 2001, to improve the safety of passengers on aircraft still began to install shoulder seat belts and airbags. According to the end of 2010, airbags are installed on airbags 6O aircraft lines, and this figure is constantly growing. - Note. Per.
In defense of the FAA, it should be said that the agency recently approved the introduction of a new system by pumping air-enriched with nitrogen-enriched air, which reduces the content in the oxygen fuel and, therefore, the probability of an explosion, which led, for example, to the TWA 800 disaster.
I ask Dennis to give some advice to those passengers who, after reading this book, each time sits on a plane, will think that they will not finish their life with flooded other passengers at the emergency exit door. He says that the best advice is to adhere to common sense. Sit closer to emergency exit. In case of fire, bends as low as possible, fleeing hot air and smoke. As you can hold the breath as long as possible, so as not to burn the lungs and do not breathe to toxic gases. Shanagan himself prefers places by the window, since the passengers sitting at the passage with a greater probability can get a blow on head with bags falling from the separation seats for things that can open even with a minor jog.
While we are waiting for a waiter with a score, I ask Shanagan the question that is asked on every cocktail over the past twenty years: chances to survive in a plane crash above the passengers sitting in front or from behind? "It depends on whether he is patiently responsible," as a type of accident is a question. " I will reformulate the question. If he has the opportunity to choose a place in the plane, where he sits down?
"In the first grade," he answers.
"No." Izvestia "found several people who survived in plane crash either in serious flight accidents ...
"I somehow immediately realized that the husband was dead"
The story of Larisa Savitskaya is listed in the Guinness Book of Records. In 1981, at an altitude of 5220 meters, the An-24 plane, in which she flew, faced a military bomber. 37 people died in that catastrophe. Survive managed only Larisa.
I was then 20 years old, "says Larisa Savitskaya. - We are with Volodya, my husband, flew from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Blagoveshchensk. Returned from a wedding trip. First sat on the front armchairs. But I did not like ahead, and we moved to the middle. I immediately fell asleep after takeoff. And woke up from the roar and screams. The face burned cold. Then I was told that our plane cut the wings and demolished the roof. But I do not remember the sky above your head. I remember was fog, like in a bath. I looked at Volodya. He did not move. Blood whipped his face. I somehow immediately understood that he was dead. And prepared too to die. Then the plane collapsed, and I lost consciousness. When I came to myself, I was surprised that still alive. I felt that I was lying on something hard. It turned out in the aisle between seats. And next to the whistling abyss. There were no thoughts in my head. Fear too. In such a state, in which I was - between sleep and say, there is no fear. The only thing that was remembered is to be an episode from the Italian film, where the girl after the crash of the plane Paris in the sky among the clouds, and then, falling into the jungle, remained alive. I did not hope to survive. I just wanted to die without torment. Noticed the crossbar of the metal floor. And thought: if you drop sideways, it will be very painful. I decided to change the situation and grouped. Then I was fingered until the next row of seats (our row stood about faults), I sat down in a chair, clung to the armrests and rested the foot to the floor. All this did automatically. Then I watch - the Earth. Very close. Most of all clung to the armrests and pushed off the chair. Then - as a green explosion from larch branches. And again fail in memory. Waking up, again saw her husband. Volodya sat, putting his hands on his knees, and looked at me who stopped his eyes. It was raining that bleeding blood from his face, and I saw a huge wound from his forehead. Under the seats lay dead man and a woman ...
Later they found that a piece of aircraft is four meters long and three in the width, on which Savitskaya fell, planned, like an autumn leaf. He fell on a soft swampy glade. Larisa lasted unconscious seven hours. Then another two days sat in the chair in the rain and waited for death. On the third day I got up, I started looking for people and came across the search detachment. Larisa received several injuries, shaking the brain, hand fracture and five cracks in the spine. With such injuries it is impossible to go. But Larisa refused to give up the helicopter herself.
A plane crash and her husband's death remained with her forever. According to her, she has a feeling of pain and fear. She is not afraid of death and still calmly flies on airplanes. But her son, who was born four years after the catastrophe, is afraid of panic.
"Consciousness instantly sailed somewhere"
Arina Vinogradova is one of the two airline survivors of the IL-86 aircraft, which in 2002, barely take off, fell into Sheremetyevo. On board were 16 people: four pilots, ten flight attendants and two engineers. Alive only two flight attendants were left: Arina and her girlfriend Tanya Moiseeva.
They say, in recent seconds, all life is scrolled before your eyes. There was no such thing with me, "Arina says" Izvestia. - We sat in the first row of the third salon in the first row, an emergency exit, but not on service chairs, but on passenger. Tanya in front of me. The flight was technical - we just needed to return to Pulkovo. At some point, the plane shook. This happens to "IL-86". But for some reason I realized that we fell. Although nothing seems to have happened, there was no siren or roll. I did not have time to get frightened. Consciousness instantly sailed somewhere, and I fell into a black emptiness. I woke up from a sharp push. At first I did not understand anything. Then I understood little. It turned out that I was lying on a warm engine littered with armchairs. Herself could not disgusted. I started screaming, knocking on the metal and brake Tanya, which then raised her head, then again lost consciousness. We were pulled out firefighters and drained in different hospitals.
Arina is still working by the editorial. A plane crash, according to her, did not leave injury in the soul. However, Tatyana Moiseev had a very strong effect. Since then, she no longer flies, although it did not leave the aviation. Still working in the detachment of flight attendants, but already the dispatcher. The fact that she survived does not even tell close friends.
"Someone kissed the Earth, someone fledged with tears of happiness ..."
The group "Lyceum" is known to the whole country. But few know that two singers from this group are Anna Plenev and Anastasia Makarevich - also experienced a fall in the plane.
This happened five years ago, "says Anna Plenev" Izvestia ". "I have always been panicked by a fly by plane, and then it ruled." Flew with Nastya Makarevich to Spain. Rested perfectly. In the merry mood, returned to Moscow on Boeing 767. Neighbors were with a child. At that moment, when we started to decline and the flight attendants were ordered to fasten the belts, the child was in my hands. And then the plane went down sharply. Things sprinkled on the head, stewardess shouted: "Keep the children! Mass!" I realized that we fell, and pressed the baby to myself. The head flashed: "Is it all?" Previously, it seemed to me that when so scary, the heart should be pounded. But in fact, hearts do not feel. You do not feel, but you look at everything as if from the side. The worst is despair. You can not affect anything. But panic is the one that is shown in the movie - it was not. Coffin silence. Everything, as if in a dream, fastened and froze. Someone prayed, someone rushed with relatives.
Anna does not remember how much time has passed. Maybe seconds ... or minutes.
Suddenly, the plane launched a little on the little, "she recalls," I looked around: did it really seem to me? But no, others were also fixed ... Even when we stopped on the band, I could not believe that everything ended well. The commander announced: "Congratulations to all! We were born in a shirt. Now everything will be fine in your life."
What is surprising, I stopped being afraid to fly on airplanes, "she says. - And on the charter flights, the pilots often let us in the cabin and give it to charging. So I like it that I want to buy my own small plane in the near future. We will fly on it on tour.
"I really wanted to wind film back"
Survived the fall and our colleague, the "News" journalist Georgy Stepanov.
This happened in the summer of 1984, he recalls. - I flew on the aircraft Yak-40 from Batumi in Tbilisi. When entered the plane, there was a feeling that I got into the Gypsy Tabor, "there were so many things there. They were clogged with all compartments from above, as well as the passage of the cabin. Do not pour. Passengers, of course, was also more than it is. We took off, scored a height. Below the sea. Pulled in Drema. But here on the fuselage, as if they hit a sledgehammer, the turbine hum was another, and the plane sharply, almost vertically, went down. Everyone who was not fastened, flew from the chairs and rolled around the cabin ahead of the things. Screams, scream. Stared terrible panic. I was fastened. I still remember my condition - horror. In me, everything broke out, the body as if observed. The feeling was that everything happens not with me, and I am somewhere on the side. The only thing thought was the poor parents, what will happen to them? I could neither scream or move. Near all were completely white from fear. They hit their dead, motionless eyes, as if they were already in another world.
We have fallen not more than a minute. The plane leveled: passengers began to recover, raise things. Then, when we were already twisted to Tbilisi, a pilot came out of the cabin. He was like zombies. We began to ask: what happened? In response, he wanted to stick together, but somehow it suggested it, it became embarrassing for him.
This fall is still angry. When I sit on a plane, I feel a completely helpless creature in an unreliable shell.
The world knows more than a dozen cases of happy salvation.
No matter how much experts, referring to statistics, neither assured us that air transport is the safest, many are afraid to fly. The Earth leaves hope, height - no. What did those who did not survive the aircraft crash? This we will never know. According to studies of the Interstate Aviation Committee, the consciousness of a person in a falling plane is turned off. In most cases, in the first seconds of the fall. At the time of the collision from the ground there is not a single person who would be in consciousness. As claimed, the body's protective reaction is triggered.
The ancient Greek poet Feognid wrote: "What is not destined for fate, it will not happen, and what is destined - that I am not afraid." After all, there are cases of wonderful salvation. Larisa Savitskaya is not the only one who survived a plane crash. In 1944, the English pilot Stephen, hit by the Germans, fell from a height of 5,500 meters and stayed alive. In 2003, Boeing 737 collapsed in Sudan. Survived a two-year-old child, although the plane almost completely burned down. The world knows more than a dozen such cases.
