People who are thrown overboard during a shipwreck almost never survive. And those who succeeded will never forget Asiana Flight 214 after its emergency landing in San Francisco.
In July this year, a plane of the South Korean airline Asiana Airlines flew emergency landing at the San Francisco airport. A moment before the plane touched the runway, its tail fell off, with five people inside. A teenage girl from Korea almost finished sixth.
She was sitting in the 41st row, where there was a fault line along which the tail section broke away from the rest of the plane.
“Everything that was behind me disappeared in an instant,” she told reporters from the Mercury News in broken English. And she asked not to use her name. In the fallen tail sat two girls and three flight attendants sitting behind them. “Just now there were two toilets and suddenly there was nothing, just a blinding light.”
One of the girls fell out of her seat later than the other four and ended up near the left wing of the plane. Experts believe she was covered in firefighting foam and then hit by a fire truck arriving 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, having been 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, although with difficulty, moved... I saw one of them get up and walk a few steps, but then squat down. The other, also a woman, seemed to be walking, then fell on her side and remained on the ground until rescuers arrived.”
They were so far from the main part of the plane that it took rescuers 14 minutes to find them.
Modern commercial aircraft transport hundreds of people 10 times faster than they could travel in cars, which in turn is 10 times faster than a person can travel on foot.
And although flying has 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 are sitting inside has to withstand. If a person were outside the porthole, he would die almost instantly under the influence of several factors at once: barotrauma, friction, impact with a blunt object, hypoxia - they would still compete to see which one would kill us.
And yet, very rarely, those who find themselves on the wrong side of the plane’s skin survive. Some survived being thrown out of flying aircraft. high altitude passenger aircraft. Some were thrown back by the explosion, others were torn out of their chairs in the area of the faults. It happened that people jumped on their own, and sometimes that someone pushed them.
There are real reasons why surviving a crash is becoming increasingly common, even when thrown from an airplane at high altitude.
If a commercial airliner crashes, there is a good chance of survival. One widely cited statistic puts the survival rate at about 80 percent, and the numbers rise with each new generation of aircraft.
The plane on Asiana Flight 214 was a Boeing 777, one of the newest and safest aircraft to fly. The 777 seats in which the flight attendants "drove" along the runway were designed to withstand up to 16 Gs of force before being lifted off the floor.
In many previous accidents with less secure seats, these detached seats actually became missiles in the cabin. The substantial bracing would have held the Asiana's seats in place, likely also making them a safe "sled" for the Asiana's crew.
Ironically, the earliest documented case of surviving a commercial flight ejection is strikingly similar to the Asiana accident, even though the science of safety was half a century younger.
In April 1965, a British United Airways plane was descending toward Jersey, an island off the coast of France's Normandy Coast. The pilot, as on the Asiana, misjudged the approach. In addition, like the Korean plane, the rear part crashed into an object on the ground, the entire tail section was torn off, and the flight attendant was thrown out. Twenty-two-year-old Dominique Sillier was found near the wreckage, seriously 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 airliners and surviving is less than ten (according to data published by the media and collected in amateur databases).
Society reacts to survivors with things like, “You’re so lucky!” But we cannot even imagine what a terrible trauma this is for them. Survivors are generally not very willing to share their stories.
Particularly worth highlighting are cases where people fell out of flying airplanes and remained alive. Most famous case happened to Juliane Kepke, a German teenager who was thrown from a plane that exploded over Peru on Christmas Eve 1971.
While in her seat, she flew about 3,000 meters before falling into 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 2000 documentary Wings of Hope.
Nine-year-old Colombian Erica Delgado survived a similar fall in 1995, when her mother pushed her from a burning plane that crashed near Cartagena. The exact numbers are unknown, but another pilot reported an explosion of the plane, breaking into two parts at an altitude of about 3.5 thousand meters. The Delgados landed in the swamp next to the rest of the debris.
In 1985, a Galaxy Airlines plane crashed on takeoff from Reno. Lamson, 17, had his row of seats ripped out completely and landed upright on a nearby road. The teenager unfastened his seat belts and began to run until the billboard he saw brought him back to reality.
Later, Lamson tried to figure out how he managed to survive such a scrape. Lamson had been diving for a long time, so he followed his instinct and buried his head in his knees, as if he had somersaulted when the plane tossed 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. Many of them will never be able to get an answer to the question “why”.
December 23, 1971 A LANSA Lockheed L-188A aircraft with 92 passengers on board took off from the capital of Peru, Lima, and headed for the city of Pucallpa. 500 km northeast of the country's capital, the airliner fell into a vast thunderstorm area, broke up in the air and fell into the jungle. Only 17-year-old Juliana Diler Kopka, who was thrown out of the plane, managed to survive the terrible crash.
Juliana Dealer Kopke
“Suddenly an amazing silence reigned around me. The plane disappeared. I must have been unconscious and then came to. I flew, spinning in the air, and could see the forest rapidly approaching below me.” Then the girl, falling, lost consciousness again. When falling from a height of about 3 km. she
she broke her collarbone, injured her right arm, and her right eye was covered with swelling from the impact.
“I probably survived because I was strapped into a row of seats,” she says. “I was spinning like a helicopter, which may have slowed my fall. In addition, the place where I landed was densely covered with vegetation, which reduced the force of the impact."
For 9 days, Juliana wandered through the jungle, trying not to leave the stream, believing that sooner or later it would lead her to civilization. The stream also provided the girl with water. Nine days later, Juliana found a canoe and a shelter in which she hid and waited. Soon she was found in this shelter by lumberjacks.
January 26, 1972 Croatian terrorists blew up a passenger plane over the Czech town of Serbska Kamenice McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32, owned by JAT Yugoslav Airlines. The plane was traveling from Copenhagen to Zagreb, with 28 people on board. A bomb planted in the luggage compartment detonated at an altitude of 10,160 m. 27 passengers and crew members were killed, but 22-year-old flight attendant Vesna Vulovich remained alive after falling from a height of more than 10 km.
Vesna Vulovich
The plane crashed into snow-covered trees, and a few hours after the tragedy, a qualified physician turned up at the scene of the disaster and recognized Vesna’s signs of life. Her skull was fractured, both legs and three vertebrae were broken, leaving her lower body paralyzed. Quick help saved the girl's life. She was in a coma for 27 days, and after another 16 months she was in the hospital. After leaving it, Vulovich continued to work for her airline, but on the ground. The miraculous rescue of Vesna Vulović is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the highest altitude jump without a parachute.
October 13, 1972 year, an FH-227D/LCD plane crashed in the Andes. 29 people out of 45 on board were killed. Survivors were not found until December 22, 1972.
On October 13, 1972, a team of rugby players from Montevideo went to compete in the capital of Chile, Santiago. In addition to them, on the Fairchild-Hiller FH-227D/LCD plane of the Uruguayan airline Tamu there were also passengers and 5 crew members - a total of 45 people. Along the way, they had to make an intermediate landing in Buenos Aires.
However, the T-571 “board” found itself in a strong turbulent zone. In conditions of heavy fog, the pilot made a navigation error: the plane, flying at an altitude of 500 m, headed straight towards one of the mountain peaks Argentine Andes.
The crew reacted too late to the error. A few moments later, the “board” hit the rocks, puncturing the steel skin of the aircraft. The fuselage collapsed; from the terrible impact, several seats were torn off the floor and thrown out together with the passengers. Seventeen of the 45 people died instantly when the Fairchild Hiller crashed into the snow.
As a result of the plane crash, people spent two months in a snowy hell - at an altitude of 4 thousand meters, at a temperature of minus 40 degrees. They were discovered only on December 22!
“After the disaster, 28 people survived, but after an avalanche and long grueling weeks of starvation, only sixteen remained.
Days and weeks passed, and people, without warm clothes, continued to live in forty-degree frost. The food that was stored on board the crashed plane did not last long. Meager supplies had to be divided up bit by bit in order to stretch them out over a longer period of time. In the end, all that was left was chocolate and a thimble's worth of wine. But now they are over. For the survivors, hunger took its toll: 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 of Aeroflot airlines and bomber Tu-16 USSR Air Force.
Among the 32 people, only a 20-year-old woman survived Larisa Savitskaya returning with her husband from honeymoon.
Larisa with her husband
At the time of the disaster, Larisa Savitskaya was sleeping in her seat at the rear of the plane. I woke up from a strong blow and a sudden burn (the temperature instantly dropped from 25 C to −30 C). After another break in the fuselage, which passed right in front of her seat, Larisa was thrown into the aisle, waking up, she reached the nearest seat, climbed in and pressed herself into it, without having buckled herself in. Larisa herself later claimed that at that moment she remembered an episode from the film “Miracles Still Happen,” where the heroine squeezed into a chair during a plane crash and survived.
Part of the plane's body landed on a birch grove, which softened the blow. According to subsequent studies, the entire fall of the plane fragment measuring 3 meters wide by 4 meters long, where Savitskaya ended up, took 8 minutes. Savitskaya was unconscious for several hours. Waking up on the ground, Larisa saw in front of her a chair with the body of her dead husband. She received a number of serious injuries, but could move independently.
Two days later, she was discovered by rescuers, who were very surprised when, after two days they came across only the bodies of the dead, they met a living person. Larisa was covered in paint flying off the fuselage, and her hair was very tangled in the wind. While waiting for rescuers, she built herself a temporary shelter from the wreckage of the plane, keeping warm with seat covers and covering herself from mosquitoes with a plastic bag. It rained all these days. When it ended, she waved to rescue planes flying past, but they, not expecting to find survivors, mistook her for a geologist from a nearby camp. Larisa, the bodies of her husband and two other passengers were discovered as the last of all the victims of the disaster.
Doctors determined she had a concussion, spinal injuries in five places, and broken arms and ribs. She also lost almost all her teeth.
Larisa Savitskaya
From Larisa's interview:
- How did this really happen?
The planes collided tangentially. The wings of the An-24 were torn off along with the gas tanks and roof. In a fraction of a second the plane turned into a “boat”. At that moment I was sleeping. I remember a terrible blow, a burn - the temperature instantly dropped from plus 25 to minus 30. Terrible screams and whistling air. My husband died immediately - at that moment my life ended. I didn't even scream. Because of grief, I didn’t have time to realize my fear.
- Did you fall in this “boat”?
No. Then it broke in two. The rift passed right in front of our chairs. I ended up in the tail section. I was thrown into the passage, straight onto the bulkheads. At first I lost consciousness, and when I came to my senses, I lay there and thought - but not about death, but about pain. I don't want it to hurt when I fall. And then I remembered one Italian film - “Miracles Still Occur.” Just one episode: how the heroine escapes from a plane crash, huddled in a chair. Somehow I got to it...
- And did you buckle up?
I didn't even think about it. Actions were ahead of consciousness. I started looking out the window to “catch the ground.” It was necessary to depreciate on time. I didn’t hope to be saved, I just wanted to die without pain. There was very low cloudiness, then a green flash and a blow. Fell into the taiga, on a birch forest - lucky again.
- Don’t say that you didn’t receive a single injury.
Concussion, spinal injury in five places, broken arm, rib, leg. Almost all of the teeth were knocked out. But they never gave me disability. The doctors said: “We understand that you are collectively disabled. But we can’t do anything - each injury individually does not qualify as a disability. Now, if there was only one, but a serious one, then please.”
- How much time did you spend in the taiga?
Three days. When I woke up, my husband’s body was lying right in front of me. The state of shock was such that I did not feel pain. I could even walk. When the rescuers found me, they couldn’t say anything except “moo-moo.” I understand them. Three days of removing pieces of bodies from trees, and then suddenly seeing a living person. Yes, and I still had the same view. I was all the color of prunes with a silver tint - the paint from the fuselage turned out to be extremely sticky, my mother spent a month picking it out. And the wind turned my hair into a large piece of glass wool. Surprisingly, as soon as I saw the rescuers, I could no longer walk. Relaxed. Then, in Zavitinsk, I found out that a grave had already been dug for me. They were dug according to lists.
August 12, 1985 Boeing 747SR-46 Japanese airline Japan Airlines crashed near Mount Takamagahara, 100 km from Tokyo in the mountain area (Gunma Prefecture). Of the 520 people, only four women managed to survive: 24-year-old Japan Airline employee Hiroko Yoshizaki, 34-year-old plane passenger and her eight-year-old daughter Mikiko, and 12-year-old Keiko Kawakami, who was found sitting in a tree.
All four lucky ones were sitting in the center row of seats at the very rear of the plane. For the remaining 520 passengers and crew members, this flight was the last. In terms of the number of victims, the crash of the Japanese Boeing 747 is second only to the disaster in Tenerife in 1977, when two Boeings collided. Never before have so many people died on any liner.
August 16, 1987 McDonnell Douglas MD-82, while taking off from Metro airport, the plane lost control and first hit power lines with its left wing, located 800 meters from runway, then onto the roof of a car rental shop before crashing 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. The possible cause of this plane crash is considered to be the negligence of the pilot and crew in following the takeoff trajectory.
July 28, 2002. crashed at Moscow Sheremetyevo airport immediately after takeoff IL 86, which carried 16 people: four pilots, 10 flight attendants and two engineers. 200 m after the plane took off from the ground, there was a loss of engine power, the plane fell onto the left wing and crashed, after which an explosion occurred.
Only two flight attendants managed to survive: Tatyana Moiseeva and Arina Vinogradova. Vinogradova, some time after being discharged from the hospital and completing a rehabilitation course, returned to work, and Moiseeva decided not to tempt fate and stay on earth.
June 30, 2009 A plane crashed off the coast of the Comoros Islands A310 Yemen airline Yemenia, making a flight from the capital of Yemen, Sana'a, to the capital of Comoros, Moroni. There were 153 people on board the A310.
The only surviving passenger on the crashed plane was a twelve-year-old girl. Bahia Bakari, having French citizenship. When she hit the water, she was literally thrown out of the plane. For several hours, the girl, who practically could not swim, without a life jacket and in complete darkness, tried to hold on to the wreckage of the plane so as not to drown. At first she tried to navigate by the voices of other passengers, but they soon died down. When dawn broke, she realized that she was completely alone in the center of an oil puddle on the surface of the water. Fortunately, she managed to climb onto a large piece of debris and fall asleep, despite being overtired and thirsty. At some point, she saw a ship on the horizon, but it sailed too far and she was not noticed. The crew of the private ship Sima Com 2 discovered Bakari only 13 hours after the plane crash. Another 7 hours later she found herself on land, where she was sent to the hospital. The girl received numerous bruises, her collarbone was broken and her knees were burned.
May 12, 2010 Airbus-330 Libyan airline Afriqiyah Airways, arriving from Johannesburg (South Africa), crashed while landing in international airport Tripoli. In foggy conditions, the crew decided to go for the 2nd circle, but did not have time. There were 104 people on board. Among the wreckage, the only survivor found was an eight-year-old boy with fractures in both legs. He was pushed back by the chair, which may have absorbed the blow.
September 6, 2011 In Bolivia, a private airline plane crashed in the Amazon jungle. As a result, it was initially believed that all 9 people on board were killed. After 3 days of searching, a miraculously surviving passenger was found - 35-year-old Bolivian cosmetics seller Minor Vidal. He escaped with head bruises and broken ribs. Minor Vidallo said that he was under the wreckage of the plane for more than 15 hours, and when he managed to get out, he went deep into the forest in search of people.
A plane crash survivor was found several kilometers from the crash site. “We saw a man on the river bank giving us signals,” said Captain David Bustos, who led the rescue operation. “As we got closer, he knelt down and began to thank God.”
The chance of dying during air travel is very low: one in 9 million. A lot can happen more than 10km above the ground, and if you're unlucky enough to find yourself on board a plane when something goes wrong, it's a matter of life and death depending on the decisions you make. Almost 95% of plane crashes have survivors, so even in the worst case scenario, your chances aren't as bad as you might think. You can take precautions before you fly, stay calm when you fall, and stay alive.
Steps
Part 1
Preparing for a Safe Flight- Loose or loose clothing can be dangerous on board an aircraft as there is a chance that the clothing may get caught on something and prevent you from moving freely. If your flight route takes you over cold areas, dress appropriately. It is advisable to have a jacket with you.
- Clothing made from cotton or wool is also suitable, since they contain components that are difficult to ignite. When flying over water, wool clothing is preferred because wool does not lose its insulating properties if it gets wet, just like cotton.
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Wear practical shoes. While you might want to fly in comfort or look professional on board, your sandals or high heels can make it difficult to move quickly when necessary. High heels are not recommended to be worn during the flight. You can find information about this on the evacuation slides.
It's better to sit in the back of the plane. Passengers who sit in the rear are 40% more likely to survive a fall. Being able to get out quickly gives you a better chance of survival, so the best places These are seats near the aisles, close to the exit and at the end of the plane.
Read the passenger advisory and listen carefully to the safety instructions that are announced before takeoff. Yes, you may have heard all this before and perhaps this information was never useful to you. However, the information you miss because you're wearing headphones can be vital if you fall.
Count the number of seats between your seat and the emergency exit. Find your nearest emergency exit and count the number of seats you need to pass. During a fall, there may be smoke, noise, or chaos in the cabin. You may have to feel your way to the emergency exit, and it will be easier if you know where the exit is and how far it is from you.
- You can even write down the number of seats on your hand. In case the number slips out of your head, the reminder will be in an easily accessible place.
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Keep your seat belt fastened throughout the flight. Every inch of loose seat belt increases the force of gravity during a fall by three times. Therefore, it is better to fasten your seat belt as tightly as possible while on board the aircraft.
- Slide the belt as low as possible so that it is in the pelvic area. The belt should fit around the ilium so that its top protrusion is above the top edge of the belt. In this case, you will be much better protected than if the belt was in the abdominal area.
- Do not unfasten your seat belt, even if you are sleeping. If something happens while you're sleeping, you'll be glad your seat belts were fastened.
Part 2
Preparing for a collision-
Assess the situation. Try to determine what surface the plane will land on so you can prepare accordingly. If the plane hits water, for example, you will need to wear a life jacket, which does not need to be inflated while you are on the plane. If you land in cold water, you should wear a jacket to stay as warm as possible.
- Divide the flight path by the time flown to determine where you are when you crash. If you're flying exclusively over land, you can be sure you won't fall into the ocean.
- Use the time before you fall to find a way out. If a plane goes down, you almost always have some time to prepare. Use this time to re-locate the exit.
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Prepare your area as much as possible. If you know the plane is going down, return your seat to an upright position and remove any items that could be dangerous if possible. Button up your jacket and make sure your shoes are laced tightly. Then adopt the safety postures used to survive a plane crash and try to remain calm.
- Another safety position is that your feet should be flat on the floor and slightly further away from your knees (not at a right angle). This will help prevent damage to your legs, which will be useful to you in order to make your way to the exit after the crash. Move your feet under the seat as far as possible to avoid breaking your tibia.
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Lean against the front seat. If it is located at arm's length, lean on your hand and place your other hand on top of your palm. Tilt your head towards your hands. Don't intertwine your fingers.
Try to remain calm. In the moments leading up to the fall, there is panic and turmoil on board. The main thing is not to lose your head and you may increase your chances of survival. Remember that even in the most difficult situation there is a chance of survival. It is necessary to think rationally and methodically to increase this chance.
If you fall into the water, wear a life jacket, but do not inflate it. If you do decide to inflate it when the cabin begins to fill with water, the life jacket will lift you to the ceiling of the cabin and make it more difficult for you to swim back. Thus you will fall into a trap. Better hold your breath and swim out, when you find yourself outside the plane, you can inflate it.
Put on your oxygen mask before helping others. You've probably heard this before every flight, but it's still worth repeating. If the interior is breached, you only have 15 seconds or less to put on an oxygen mask before losing consciousness.
Part 3
Surviving a Crash- When moving, try to bend down to be below the smoke level. It may not seem important to you, but one of the most dangerous factors during a crash can be exposure to smoke if you inhale it.
Protect yourself from smoke. Fire and smoke, as a percentage, cause the greatest number of deaths during a plane crash. Smoke from airplane fires can be very thick and contain many toxic substances, so try to cover your mouth and nose with a tissue to avoid inhaling toxic substances. If possible, wet the handkerchief for added protection.
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You need to get out of the plane as quickly as possible. According to the National Transportation Safety Administration, 68% of deaths in plane crashes are caused by fire that ignites after the fall. It is very important to leave the plane without delay. If there is already fire or smoke, then you have less than two minutes to leave the aircraft.
- Make sure the exit you choose is safe. Look out the porthole to see if there is fire or other possible risks beyond the exit. If the exit is not safe, try to find another exit.
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Listen to guidance on what to do after the crash. Flight attendants undergo rigorous training, so you can trust that they know what to do in the event of a crash. If a flight attendant is able to help you, listen carefully and cooperate to increase the chances of survival for all passengers.
Leave your things. Don't try to save your property. This is a simple truth, but there are still people who cannot accept it. Leave it all behind. Trying to save your belongings will only delay you.
- If you need to save things that are in the area of the plane, take care of it later. Now you need to make sure that you have found a safe escape route and a reliable shelter. Leave now!
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You need to move at least 150 meters away from the wreckage. If you get stuck in nearby areas, it's best to wait for rescuers, even though you won't want to stay close. A fire or explosion can be sudden, so you still need to maintain some distance from the aircraft. If you find yourself in open water, swim as far away from the wreckage as possible.
Stay in one place, but be aware of what is happening. It is indeed very important to remain calm after a crash, but you also need to understand when you need to act and act quickly. Help people who are in distress and provide first aid to injured people.
- Take care of your wounds if possible. Examine yourself for cuts and abrasions; if necessary, apply pressure to the wound. Try not to move so as not to aggravate internal injuries.
- Panic can only prevent you from acting effectively and appropriately in the current situation. For example, a passenger can remain in his seat, but needs to move towards the exit. Be attentive to such passengers.
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Wait for the rescuers. You will have a better chance of survival if you stay where you are. You shouldn’t look for help and run away somewhere. If your plane goes down, people will probably be on the scene soon and you need to be there to get help. Just stay where you are.
Wear comfortable clothes. If you survive a plane crash, you will need to stay warm. Even if this factor is not taken critically, you will still get fewer burns and be able to avoid numerous injuries if your body is covered as much as possible with clothing. Wear a long-sleeve T-shirt, pants, and sturdy lace-up shoes.
- Remove sharp objects such as pens, pencils, etc. from your pockets before falling. It will be better if you don’t take them with you at all. Almost every item in the cabin of an airplane can cause death during a crash.
- If you can find a pillow or something soft to protect your head during a fall, by all means use it.
- Save your life before helping others!
- Listen carefully to the instructions and do not think of anything yourself, as this may put your life at risk. Proceed in accordance with the instructions received from the guides. Only get up from your seat when it is safe to do so and you are allowed to leave your seat.
- If you have mobile phone, try contacting emergency services for help.
- It is quite common for passengers to forget how to unfasten their seat belt after a crash. It seems quite easy, but under the circumstances, the first instinct is to tighten the belt, as is the case with car seat belts. It's easy to panic when it doesn't work out. Before you fall, make a mental note of how to unbuckle your seat belt.
- If you have nothing to wet a handkerchief with to protect your airways from smoke, use urine. This kind of violation of decency is acceptable in emergency situations.
- Remain in safe areas until the aircraft has come to a complete stop. Usually the main blow is followed by a secondary one.
- If you don't have time to prepare for a crash or have forgotten some of these tips, you may be able to find the information you need in the passenger advisory located in the front seat pocket.
- Keep calm.
(Collected from various Internet sites)
Alexander Andryukhin
If what happens in the cockpit during a disaster can be judged from the records of the flight recorders, then there are no “black boxes” in the cabin. Izvestia tracked down several people who survived plane crashes or were involved in serious flight accidents...
The story of Larisa Savitskaya is included in the Guinness Book of Records. In 1981, at an altitude of 5220 meters, the An-24 plane in which she was flying collided with a military bomber. 37 people died in that disaster. Only Larisa managed to survive.
I was 20 years old then,” says Larisa Savitskaya. - Volodya, my husband, and I were flying from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Blagoveshchensk. We were returning from our honeymoon. First we sat in the front seats. But I didn’t like the front, so we moved to the middle. After takeoff, I immediately fell asleep. And I woke up from noise and screams. My face burned with cold. Then they told me that our plane’s wings were cut off and the roof was blown off. But I don’t remember the sky above my head. I remember it was foggy, like in a bathhouse. I looked at Volodya. He didn't move. Blood was gushing down his face. I somehow immediately realized that he was dead. And she prepared to die too. Then the plane fell apart and I lost consciousness. When I came to my senses, I was surprised that I was still alive. I felt like I was lying on something hard. It turned out to be in the aisle between the chairs. And next to it is a whistling abyss. There were no thoughts in my head. Fear too. In the state I was in - between sleep and reality - there is no fear. The only thing I remembered was an episode from an Italian film, where a girl, after a plane crash, soared in the sky among the clouds, and then, falling into the jungle, remained alive. I didn't expect to survive. I just wanted to die without suffering. I noticed the rungs of the metal floor. And I thought: if I fall sideways, it will be very painful. I decided to change position and regroup. Then she crawled to the next row of chairs (our row was near the rift), sat down in the chair, grabbed the armrests and rested her feet on the floor. All this was done automatically. Then I look - the ground. Very close. She grabbed the armrests with all her might and pushed herself away from the chair. Then - like a green explosion from larch branches. And again there was a loss of memory. When I woke up, I saw my husband again. Volodya sat with his hands on his knees and looked at me with a fixed gaze. It was raining, which washed the blood from his face, and I saw a huge wound on his forehead. Under the chairs lay a dead man and woman...
Later it was established that the piece of the plane, four meters long and three meters wide, on which Savitskaya fell, glided like an autumn leaf. He fell into a soft, marshy clearing. Larisa lay unconscious for seven hours. Then for two more days I sat in a chair in the rain and waited for death to come. On the third day I got up, started looking for people and came across a search party. Larisa received several injuries, a concussion, a broken arm and five cracks in the spine. You can’t go with such injuries. But Larisa refused the stretcher and walked to the helicopter herself.
The plane crash and the death of her husband remained with her forever. According to her, her feelings of pain and fear are dulled. She is not afraid of death and still flies calmly on airplanes. But her son, who was born four years after the disaster, is terrified of flying.
Arina Vinogradova is one of the two surviving flight attendants of the Il-86 plane, which in 2002, barely taking off, crashed into Sheremetyevo. There were 16 people on board: four pilots, ten flight attendants and two engineers. Only two flight attendants survived: Arina and her friend Tanya Moiseeva.
They say in last seconds Your whole life plays out before your eyes. This didn’t happen to me,” Arina tells Izvestia. - Tanya and I were sitting in the first row of the third cabin, at the emergency exit, but not in service chairs, but in passenger seats. Tanya is opposite me. The flight was technical - we just needed to return to Pulkovo. At some point the plane began to shake. This happens with IL-86. But for some reason I realized that we were falling. Although nothing seemed to happen, there was no siren or roll. I didn't have time to get scared. Consciousness instantly floated away somewhere, and I fell into a black void. I woke up from a sharp jolt. At first I didn’t understand anything. Then I gradually figured it out. It turned out that I was lying on a warm engine, littered with chairs. I couldn't unfasten myself. She started screaming, pounding on the metal and disturbing Tanya, who then raised her head and then lost consciousness again. The firefighters pulled us out and took us to different hospitals.
Arina still works as a flight attendant. The plane crash, she said, did not leave any trauma in her soul. However, what happened had a very strong impact on Tatyana Moiseeva. Since then, she no longer flies, although she has not left aviation. She still works in the flight attendant squad, but now as a dispatcher. She doesn’t even tell her close friends about what she experienced.
The Lyceum group is known throughout the country. But few people know that two singers from this group - Anna Pletneva and Anastasia Makarevich - also survived the fall on the plane.
This happened about five years ago,” Anna Pletneva tells Izvestia. “I was always terrified of flying by plane, but now I became brave.” I flew with Nastya Makarevich to Spain. We had a great time. In a cheerful mood we returned to Moscow on a Boeing 767. The neighbors were with the child. The minute we started descending and the flight attendants told us to fasten our seat belts, the child was in my arms. And then the plane went down sharply. Things fell on their heads, the flight attendants shouted: “Hold the children! Bend down!” I realized that we were falling and hugged the baby to me. A thought flashed through my head: “Is this really all?” I used to think that when it’s so scary, my heart should be pounding. But in reality you don’t feel the heart. You don’t feel yourself, but you look at everything as if from the outside. The worst thing is hopelessness. You can't influence anything. But there was no panic like they show in the movies. Deathly silence. Everyone, as if in a dream, buckled up and froze. Some prayed, some said goodbye to their relatives.
Anna doesn't remember how much time has passed. Maybe seconds... Or minutes.
“Suddenly the plane gradually began to level out,” she recalls, “I looked around: was it really just me? But no, others also perked up... Even when we stopped on the runway, I couldn’t believe that everything ended well. The commander announced: “Congratulations to everyone! We were born in a shirt. Now everything will be fine in your life.”
“What’s surprising is that I’m no longer afraid of flying on airplanes,” she says. - And on charter flights pilots often let us into the cockpit and let us taxi. I like it so much that I want to buy my own small plane in the near future. We will fly it on tour.
Izvestia journalist Georgy Stepanov also survived the fall.
This happened in the summer of 1984, he recalls. - I flew on a Yak-40 plane from Batumi to Tbilisi. When I entered the plane, I felt like I was in a gypsy camp - there were so many things there. They filled all the compartments on top, as well as the passage of the cabin. Don't overcrowd. There were, of course, also more passengers than expected. We took off and gained altitude. Below is the sea. I felt drowsy. But then it was as if the fuselage had been hit with a sledgehammer, the noise of the turbine became different, and the plane went down sharply, almost vertically. Everyone who was not wearing a seat belt flew off their seats and rolled around the cabin, interspersed with their things. Screams, squeals. A terrible panic began. I was wearing a seat belt. I still remember my state - horror. Everything in me broke down, my body seemed numb. I had the feeling that everything was happening not to me, but that I was somewhere on the side. The only thing I thought was: poor parents, what will happen to them? I could neither scream nor move. Everyone nearby was completely white with fear. Their dead, motionless eyes were striking, as if they were already in another world.
We actually fell for no more than a minute. The plane leveled off: the passengers began to come to their senses and pick up their things. Then, when we were approaching Tbilisi, the pilot came out of the cockpit. He was like a zombie. We began to ask: what happened? In response, he wanted to laugh it off, but somehow it turned out to be a pity; he felt embarrassed for him.
This fall still haunts me to this day. When I board a plane, I feel like a completely helpless creature in an insecure shell.
The world knows more than a dozen cases of happy salvation
No matter how much experts, citing statistics, assure us that air transport is the safest, many are afraid to fly. The earth leaves hope, the height does not. How did those who did not survive the plane crash feel? We will never know. According to research by the Interstate Aviation Committee, the consciousness of a person in a falling plane is switched off. In most cases - in the very first seconds of the fall. At the moment of the collision with the ground, there is not a single person in the cabin who would be conscious. As they say, the body’s defense reaction is triggered.
The ancient Greek poet Theognis wrote: “What is not destined by fate will not happen, but what is destined, I am not afraid of.” There are also cases of miraculous salvation. Larisa Savitskaya is not the only one who survived the plane crash. In 1944, the English pilot Stephen, shot down by the Germans, fell from a height of 5500 meters and survived. In 2003, a Boeing 737 crashed in Sudan. A two-year-old child survived, although the plane was almost completely burned down. The world knows more than a dozen such cases.
From the material of Komsomolskaya Pravda, published after the AN-24 crash at Varandey airport:
24 people survived the disaster, another 28 died.
Many of those rescued are still in shock and refuse to talk. But according to the words of three survivors - Sergei Trefilov, Dmitry Dorokhov and Alexei Abramov - KP correspondents reconstructed what happened in the cabin of the falling plane.
According to official reports, An-24, tail number 46489, disappeared from radar screens at 13.43 during landing approach.
13.43
Sergey:
- Commander Viktor Popov said over the speakerphone: “Our plane has begun to descend. In a few minutes we will land at the airport in the village of Varandey.” The voice was completely calm. He announced landing in Usinsk in exactly the same way. Immediately the flight attendant walked through the cabin and sat down on a folding chair in the back. Everything was as usual - this is the 10th time I’ve been flying on this watch.
Dmitriy:
- The plane began to shake violently. But there was no panic. Around me people were talking in low voices. We talked about football, about the shift. A neighbor said he felt sick when he landed. But there were no words about the plane crashing.
13.44 - 13.55
Sergey:
- We were flying low. Very. We saw that there was no runway under the wing - only snow. A man behind me asked: “Where are we going to sit? In field?"
13.56
Sergey:
- The plane fell on its left side somehow too much. And then there was a sound outside the window - an iron sound, as if something was being torn off. People started looking at each other.
Dmitry Dorokhov escaped with a slight fright: “The leg will heal! The main thing is that he’s alive.”
Dmitriy:
“We were waiting for the pilots to announce now that everything is fine. But there was silence in the cabin. And then the plane went down steeply. Someone shouted: “That’s it, f...! We're falling!"
Alexei:
“I was shocked that only one screamed in the cabin.” The rest silently squeezed into their chairs or began to hide their heads between their knees.
Sergey:
- They didn’t say anything over the speakerphone. Only some strange sound, as if the pilots turned on the microphone, but then turned it off. The flight attendant was also silent - she did not try to calm the people down.
13.57
Sergey:
- I saw through the window how the plane touched the ground with its wing. I couldn’t close my eyes, I just stared. After this, the pilots clearly tried to level the plane, and we jumped up a little. And crashed into the snow!
Alexei:
- They fell silently. Very fast. Everyone sat in stunned silence. Now many newspapers are saying that the pilots were blinded by a flash of sunlight reflected from the icy strip. That's bullshit! There were no outbreaks. Just a blow.
I didn't lose consciousness. It was only dark in my eyes for about two seconds. Well, you know, like after being hit in the jaw. For about five seconds there was complete silence in the cabin. And then everyone moved at once and groaned.
13.58 - 14.00
Alexey Abramov saved four people from a burning plane. His godmother says: “He is a real hero!”
Sergey:
- The plane lay on its side, and there was a hole in the wall. In the salon, someone kept wailing: “It hurts! Hurt!" I scrambled out and crawled along the aisle.
Dmitriy:
“The worst thing was that all the people were sick with the plague—they couldn’t come to their senses. They just didn't understand what happened. I shake my neighbor: “Are you alive?” And he hums. And then the gas tank caught fire. There was no explosion. The flames gradually crawled through the cabin.
Sergey:
- People sitting closer to the nose began to light up and scream. Clothes caught fire in an instant. And these “living torches” jumped up and ran to the rear. On us.
Someone shouted: “Take the things, put them out!” We started grabbing sheepskin coats and jackets from the luggage racks and throwing them on people. They fiddled around for about three minutes and put it out. But I was shocked: even when people were burning, they did not panic. They screamed in pain, not in fear...
14.01 - 14.08
Sergey:
“Then someone commanded: “We’re climbing out!” Now everything here is going to fucking explode...” Me and someone else got out through a hole in the fuselage.
Dmitriy:
- The flight attendant saved us all. She kicked out the emergency hatch and led people out through it.
Alexei:
- I was one of the first near the hatch. He helped four people get out, it was clear that they couldn’t do it themselves - their arms and legs were broken. I shout at them: “Crawl!” - and I pull. They pulled me out. Then he jumped out himself.
14.09
Sergey:
- There were some warehouses near the plane. And people from there immediately ran to the plane. And everyone who got out of the salon was dragged away. And they shouted all the time: “Come on! Let's!"
Dmitriy:
- The Ural was immediately brought up. They loaded those who could not get up on their own and took them to the village. And we sat down in the snow and looked around like newborn babies.
Alexei:
- No one remembered about things then - jackets, bags, mobile phones. I didn’t even feel cold, although I was only wearing a sweater. And only in the hospital, when the first shock passed, I saw that many had tears rolling down their faces...
And here’s how it happens on earth (from reports on the TU-154 crash Anapa - St. Petersburg):
Eyewitness testimony
Residents of the Donetsk region who saw the Tu-154 fall tell stories
The Pulkovo Airlines plane took off from Anapa yesterday afternoon.
There were almost fifty children on board among the 160 passengers, because Anapa is a popular children's resort.
At approximately 15.30 Moscow time, the ship's commander transmitted an SOS signal to the ground. And literally two minutes after that, the plane disappeared from the radar.
We reached residents of the village of Novgorodskoye, not far from the place where the plane crashed.
“It circled around the ground for a long time, and just before landing it caught fire,” Galina STEPANOVA, a resident of the village of Novgorodskoye, Donetsk region, near which this tragedy happened, told us. - Behind our village there are fields of the Stepnoy state farm. It was on them that the plane crashed. It turned over several times in the air, stuck its nose into the ground and exploded. Our local residents Until the police arrived and cordoned off everything, we went to look. They say everything there was charred. Well, it was so hot for a month and a half, everyone was waiting for rain. We waited. There was such a downpour and a thunderstorm - it was breathtaking. Most likely, the disaster happened because of the thunderstorm.
“Just before the crash, a strong thunderstorm began,” says eyewitness Gennady KURSOV from the village of Stepnoye, near which the plane crashed. - The sky was overcast. Suddenly there was the sound of a low-flying airliner. But until the last moment he was not visible! We and the residents of other surrounding villages noticed it only when there were 150 meters left to the ground. I thought that it would collapse right on us. It was spinning around its axis like a helicopter...
In an Aeroport
Information about flight 612 disappeared from the display as soon as contact with the plane was lost
The flight from Anapa was supposed to land at Pulkovo at 17.45. But at about 16.00 the line “Anapa - St. Petersburg” suddenly went out on the scoreboard. Few people paid attention to this - the greeters had not yet arrived at the airport.
And this was the very moment when the dispatchers and the crew lost contact forever...
When it became clear that the plane had died, the calm voice of the announcer sounded at Pulkovo:
- Those meeting flight 612 from Anapa are invited to the cinema premises...
- Why a cinema hall? - Those who greeted me became worried and, not yet understanding anything, but already suspecting the worst, rushed there. And there are lists of passengers who have registered for this flight, posted on the glass doors of the cinema. People stood silently in front of these sheets of paper for several minutes. They didn't believe it.
And only when almost all the bars of the Pulkovo airport started working on TVs with terrifying news at once, the first heartbreaking scream was heard in the corridors of the airport.
From the words of a passenger flying on the same days:
we flew from Anapa on August 13th, I was there with my family...
and before leaving I wrote a will for the apartment...
and for a car - so that it would be easier for my friends who are loan guarantors to pay for me in case something irreparable happens...
how they laughed at me and how they didn’t call my action
laughed - until yesterday, when dozens of families went into eternity
now almost everyone has called back and my action no longer seems so “wild” to them
it hurts me to think about it
that these people also sat on the same benches in the storage tank of the Anapa port
sat and watched the runway, planes, takeoffs and landings...
and now they are no longer there, and the world lives on as before, but without them...
how painful it is to realize that death does not change the world as a whole, but only breaks the destinies of individual people.
I already wrote this somewhere here on the threads, but these thoughts don’t go away, they go around in circles all the time and don’t give me peace.
and the mother has been crying for the 2nd day - she says that she has a feeling that WE have “slipped through”
past death, although we are separated from the catastrophe by 9 days...
I will repeat again and again:
May the passengers rest in peace
eternal clear sky for the crew
let the lost children become angels.
Unfortunately, none of the victims of the disaster over the Egyptian sky survived. This would, of course, be akin to a miracle. And such miracles have happened in world history.
In the first hours after the plane crashed in the skies over Egypt, there were still hopes that someone would be able to survive the horror and trauma they had suffered. Alas, these hopes were not justified. In general, in the entire history of plane crashes, the number of survivors is 56 people. These are usually called born again. The Amitel news agency remembers these miraculously saved people.
With a bag of candy through the jungle
In December 1971, Soviet newspapers published material about 17-year-old Julian Kepka, a girl who survived the crash of the LANSA Lockheed L-188 Electra airliner that crashed on December 24, 1971. The disaster occurred in the skies over Peru, the liner crashed from a height of three thousand meters into the thick of the tropical forest.
Juliana woke up the day after the disaster. She felt unwell, lost her glasses and was constantly losing consciousness. I decided to look for something to eat. I found a bag of candy. And with him for nine days she made her way through the jungle.
Her story became the subject of two documentaries, and in 1974 the American-Italian feature film “Miracles Still Happen” was released.
Despite numerous offers from publishing houses to write memoirs, Juliana for a long time refused to remember the tragedy in which, by the way, her mother died. Her memoir "When I Fell from the Sky" was released only in 2011.
Today, Juliana Koepke works as a librarian in Peru.
Damaged due to a mistake
The name of the Yugoslav flight attendant Vesna Vulović is included in the Guinness Book of Records as the person who survived “after a free fall without a parachute from the maximum recorded height.”
The disaster occurred on January 26, 1972. The airliner, flying on the route Stockholm - Copenhagen - Zagreb - Belgrade, exploded 46 minutes after taking off from the Danish capital in the sky over the city of Hermsdorf (GDR). The wreckage of the plane fell near the Czechoslovakian city of Ceska Kamenice. The explosion occurred in the luggage compartment and, according to official version, was organized by the underground organization of Ustasha - Croatian nationalists.
Vesna Vulović was not supposed to fly on JAT flight 367, but due to an error by the administration of JAT - Yugoslav Airlines, she was sent to him instead of her colleague, flight attendant Vesna Nikolić. Vulovich herself had not yet completed training by that time and was part of the crew as a trainee.
Soon after the plane's wreckage fell to the ground, local residents were among them. They began searching for survivors. Vesna Vulovich was discovered by the peasant Bruno Henke, who provided her with first aid and handed her over to the arriving doctors.
For the first days, Vulovich was in a coma. After she came to her senses, she asked for a cigarette, which, of course, was denied. The treatment took 16 months. Afterwards, she tried to return to work as a flight attendant, since she no longer developed a fear of flying. However, the company gave her an office job.
She was presented with a certificate of entry into the Guinness Book of Records in 1985 by her musical idol, Paul McCartney.
Saved by a movie about salvation
On August 24, 1981, 20-year-old Soviet student Larisa Savitskaya and her husband flew on an AN-24RV flight Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Blagoveshchensk. At an altitude of 5200 meters, the airliner collided with a TU-16K bomber, which was carrying out weather reconnaissance. As a result, both planes disintegrated while still in the air and fell to the ground. At the time of the collision, Savitskaya was sleeping and woke up from a strong blow and a sudden burn. She was thrown into the aisle and squeezed into one of the chairs. According to her, she managed to remember an episode of the film “Miracles Still Happen” (it was released in the Soviet Union), in which the heroine did exactly this when the plane crashed
Larisa was saved by the fact that part of the plane she was in fell onto a birch grove. This softened the blow. She spent two days waiting for help among the wreckage and corpses.
When rescuers arrived at the scene and found the surviving girl, they were shocked.
After this, the fate of Larisa Savitskaya was not easy. She later suffered temporary paralysis from her injuries, but she still recovered from it. And she was even able to give birth to a son.
Among the sands and blizzards
About the very first disaster in history civil aviation, as a result of which not everyone on board died, it is known that it happened on September 5, 1936 at Pittsburgh International Airport. A Pittsburgh Skyways plane crashed during a sightseeing flight. Ten people died, only 17-year-old Linda McDonald survived.
The last survivor of the plane crash was a passenger on the Kazakhmys airline AN-2 plane, geologist Asem Shayakhmetova. The disaster occurred on January 20, 2015 in the area of the Shatyrkul mine in the Shu district of the Zhambyl region of Kazakhstan. The reasons for the plane crash have not yet been made public; the main version is loss of visibility due to a snowstorm.
Also widely known is the story of the crash of the FH-227 airliner in the Andes, known as the “miracle in the Andes.” At the time, a rugby team was on board a Uruguayan Air Force plane that crashed into a rock. True, this tragedy is often not included in the chronicles of plane crashes from heights, since the plane nevertheless tried to make an emergency landing and fell after catching the top of the peak with its tail. Films were made and books were written about this case and the fate of the survivors.
The most famous person The survivor of the plane crash was, of course, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
On April 7, 1992, a small military plane was transporting the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization from Khartoum to Tripoli. However, on the way there was a sandstorm, and the plane crashed in the desert. Four crew members were killed - Arafat was the only one to survive. This incident greatly strengthened his authority among the leaders of the PLO, who in those years were engaged in a fierce struggle for power.
