Surviving falling from heaven: Three true stories of miraculous rescue after a plane crash. Incredible stories of people who survived plane crashes Survived after a plane crash

On July 7, an Air Canada passenger plane flying from Toronto mistakenly headed not onto the runway, but onto the taxiway, where four other airliners were at that moment. The controllers managed to stop the pilot in time, give the command to go around, after which the plane landed safely on the correct runway.

According to the head of Aero Consulting Experts and former United Airlines pilot Ross Eimer, the incident threatened to become the largest disaster in aviation history: “Imagine a huge Airbus crashing into four passenger airliners with full tanks.”

Let's remember the most famous and unusual cases of survival in plane crashes.
Boeing 777 crash in San Francisco

On July 6, 2013, a Boeing 777 crashed in San Francisco. The Asiana Airlines Boeing 777-28EER was flying OZ-214 on the Seoul-San Francisco route, but when landing at San Francisco airport, it crashed into an embankment in front of the runway and collapsed.

The NTSB commission blamed the cause of the crash on the erroneous actions of the crew: the plane was descending too quickly. The pilots noticed that the rate of descent and airspeed were not adequate when the aircraft was 60 meters from the ground, but did not take action for a missed approach. More precisely, 1.5 seconds before the collision the crew decided to go around, but there was no longer an opportunity for this.

The impact tore off the plane's tail and left engine; the fuselage slid along the runway for about 600 meters and described an almost complete circle - it was turned 330 degrees.

Of the 307 people on board (291 passengers and 16 crew members), 3 schoolgirls died (two at the scene of the disaster, one died in the hospital), 187 people were injured. “Only three people” - it’s hard to believe when looking at the photographs of the wrecked liner.

This plane crash showed that serious damage to an aircraft does not mean large casualties. There is another interesting circumstance: contrary to the popular theory that the safest seats are in the back of the plane, all three crash victims were sitting there.

The cabin of flight 214 after the disaster:

Miracle in Toronto 2005

It was a high-profile case when all the people survived a completely destroyed liner.

On August 2, 2005, an Air France A340 aircraft, operating flight AFR358 on the Paris-Toronto route, crashed near Toronto International Airport. There were 12 crew members and 297 passengers on board.

The approach was carried out in difficult weather conditions with large thunderstorms over the airport in heavy rain and lightning flashes on the runway. The landing was carried out in manual mode with the autopilot and autothrottle disabled.

Having flown over the end of the runway significantly higher than set, the airliner landed more than a third from the beginning of the runway length. The pilots applied reverse, but were unable to stop within the runway, causing the plane to leave the runway and roll into a ravine. A fire broke out, which in a few minutes engulfed the airliner and destroyed it, but all 309 people on board were evacuated in time.

The evacuation of 309 people took less than 2 minutes, which many, including Canadian Transport Minister Jean Lapierre, later called a “miracle.”

Survive falling from 5 km height

Young student Larisa Savitskaya and her husband Vladimir were returning from their honeymoon. On August 24, 1981, the An-24 plane on which the Savitsky spouses were flying collided with a Tu-16 military bomber at an altitude of 5220 m. After the collision, the crews of both aircraft died. As a result of the collision, the An-24 lost wings with fuel tanks and the top of the fuselage. The remaining part broke several times during the fall.

Passenger aircraft An-24:

At the time of the disaster, Larisa Savitskaya was sleeping in her seat at the rear of the plane. I woke up from a strong blow and a sudden burn (the temperature instantly dropped from 25 °C to? 30 °C). After another break in the fuselage, which passed right in front of her seat, Larisa was thrown into the aisle, waking up, she reached the nearest seat, climbed in and pressed herself into it, without having buckled herself in. Larisa herself 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.

Bomber Tu-16K:

Part of the plane's body landed on a birch grove, which softened the blow. According to subsequent studies, the entire fall of the plane fragment measuring 3 meters wide by 4 meters long, where Savitskaya ended up, took 8 minutes. Savitskaya was unconscious for several hours. Waking up on the ground, Larisa saw in front of her a chair with the body of her dead husband. She received a number of serious injuries, but could move independently.

Two days later, she was discovered by rescuers, who were very surprised when, after two days they came across only the bodies of the dead, they met a living person. She later learned that a grave had already been dug for both her and her husband. She was the only survivor of 38 people on board. The reasons for the aircraft collision were unsatisfactory organization and management of flights in the area of the Zavitinsk airfield.

Larisa Savitskaya was twice included in the Russian edition of the Guinness Book of Records:

like a person who survived a fall from a maximum height,
as a person who received the minimum amount of compensation for physical damage - 75 rubles. According to Gosstrakh standards in the USSR, 300 rubles were required. compensation for damages for the dead and 75 rubles. for survivors of plane crashes.
Larisa Savitskaya with her son Georgy.

Survive falling from a height of 10 km without a parachute

The DC-9 crash over Hermsdorf was an aircraft accident that occurred on January 26, 1972. The McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 airliner of Yugoslav Airlines was operating flight JAT367 on the route Stockholm - Copenhagen - Zagreb - Belgrade, but 46 minutes after departure from Copenhagen the liner exploded in the air. According to some reports, a Croatian group of extremists left a bomb in the luggage compartment of the plane.

JAT DC-9-32, identical to the one blown up:

The explosion of the airliner occurred over the German city of Hermsdorf, and the wreckage of the plane fell near the city of Ceska Kamenice (Czechoslovakia). Of the 28 people on board (23 passengers and 5 crew members), only one survived - 22-year-old flight attendant Vesna Vulović, who fell without a parachute from a height of 10,160 meters. She is the holder of the world altitude record for surviving a free fall without a parachute, according to the Guinness Book of Records.

Vesna was in a coma and received many injuries: fractures of the base of the skull, three vertebrae, both legs and the pelvis. The treatment took 16 months, of which for 10 months the girl’s lower body was paralyzed (from the waist to the legs).

Miracle on the Hudson: A320 Emergency Landing

This aircraft accident occurred on January 15, 2009. The US Airways Airbus A320-214 was operating flight AWE 1549 on the route New York-Charlotte-Seattle, and there were 150 passengers and 5 crew members on board. 1.5 minutes after takeoff, the plane collided with a flock of birds and both engines failed. Commander Chesley Sullenberger, a former US Air Force pilot, decided that the only option to save the 155 people on board was to land on the Hudson River. The splashdown turned out to be successful.

The crew landed the plane safely on the waters of the Hudson River in New York. All 155 people on board survived, 83 people were injured - 5 seriously (one flight attendant was the most injured) and 78 minor.

In the media, the incident is known as the “Miracle on the Hudson.” In total, 11 cases of controlled forced landings of passenger airliners on water are known; this case is the fourth without casualties.

By the way, yesterday, July 17, 2017, a Ural Airlines plane (flight U6-2932 Simferopol - Yekaterinburg) collided with a flock of birds, resulting in damage to the nose cone. It would seem like such a colossus and some birds, but... the plane ended up being repaired for 12 hours.

Here's what a bird strike looks like from the pilot's seat and from outside:

Tu-124 landing on the Neva

This splashdown event occurred in Soviet aviation in the skies over Leningrad on August 21, 1963. As a result of a combination of circumstances, the engines of the Tu-124 passenger plane failed, and the airliner began gliding from a height of half a kilometer above the city center. The crew had no choice but to try to splash down on the surface of the Neva. All 52 people on board survived.

Initially, the commission investigating the circumstances of the accident placed responsibility for the emergency on the crew. But later it was decided not to punish the pilots.

Il-12 splashdown in Kazan

And 10 years earlier, on April 30, 1953, an Il-12 P aircraft from Aeroflot operated flight 35 on the route Moscow - Kazan - Novosibirsk. There were 18 passengers and 5 crew members on board. At 21:37, at the moment when the airliner, preparing to land in Kazan, was flying over the Volga, a very strong impact occurred. The crew members recalled that their vision darkened. Both engines lost power and flames appeared from the exhaust pipes.

Aeroflot IL-12:

The ship's commander decided to make an emergency splashdown. The IL-12 splashed down in the area of the Kazan river port, after which the car began to rapidly fill with river water. the evacuation could not be carried out in time. The crew told passengers that the plane splashed down in shallow water, causing many to worry about taking personal belongings. In fact, the depth of the river in this place reached about 20 meters. As a result, people who had put on outerwear ended up in the water and began to drown. Of the 22 people, one passenger drowned. The investigation commission found that the cause of the emergency was a collision between the plane and a flock of ducks.

Miracle in the Andes

On October 13, 1972, an FH-227 plane crash occurred, which was called the “Miracle in the Andes.” The Uruguayan Air Force Fairchild FH-227D was operating charter flight FAU 571 on the Montevideo-Mendoza-Santiago route, carrying 5 crew members and 40 passengers (members of the Old Cristians rugby team, their relatives and sponsors). While approaching Santiago, the airliner was caught in a cyclone, crashed into a rock and crashed at the foot of the mountain.

Aircraft Fairchild FH-227D board T-571:

The survivors had minimal food supplies and no heat sources necessary to survive in the harsh cold climate at an altitude of 3,600 meters. Desperate from hunger and a radio message that “all efforts to find the missing plane are being stopped,” people began to eat the frozen bodies of their dead comrades. Rescuers learned about the survivors only after 72 days...

12 passengers died when they fell and collided with a rock, another 5 died later from wounds and cold. Then, of the remaining 28 survivors, 8 more died in an avalanche that covered their “home” from the fuselage of the plane, and later three more died from their wounds.

Boeing 737 accident over Kahului

This accident occurred on April 28, 1988. The Aloha Airlines Boeing 737-297 was operating domestic flight AQ 243 on the Hilo-Honolulu route, with 6 crew members and 89 passengers on board. But 23 minutes after takeoff, a significant part of the fuselage structure in the nose section of the plane was suddenly torn off. According to the report, the causes of the accident were metal corrosion, poor epoxy bonding of fuselage parts, and rivet fatigue.

94 out of 95 people survived. Senior flight attendant Clarabelle Lansing died - at the moment a part of the fuselage was torn off, she was in the middle of the plane, and she was thrown out by the air flow. Search teams could not find her body, as well as the detached fragment of the fuselage, about 5.4 meters long.

Valery Valiulin

Is it necessary, really?!

Based on real events. First and last names are excluded.

Arriving early in the morning for duty to carry out the next training flights, I was very upset - the flights were canceled. Flights are canceled infrequently, mainly due to weather conditions that do not allow them to be carried out, in the absence of weather at alternate airfields, in case of accidents and catastrophes of similar aircraft, and you never know other reasons to reschedule flights to another day. The reason for the cancellation of flights stunned me - in the unit from which I had transferred three years earlier, my friend, the commander of the ship with whom I had flown for two years in the same crew, died.

Subsequently, the flight and engineering personnel of all aviation units were informed of the results of the investigation of the disaster, the reasons that led to the death of people and the loss of the combat vehicle, and recommendations for measures to prevent the recurrence of similar tragedies in the future.

A colonel who arrived from Moscow, hanging a “sheet”* in front of the aviation squadron, measuring “two hundred twenty by one hundred eighty”, with the crew’s unfinished route from the take-off airfield to the point of the disaster marked on it, tried to convince us that a slow depressurization had occurred at high altitude cockpits. That all crew members, in violation of instructions, flew at high altitude with relaxed oxygen masks, and lost consciousness due to lack of oxygen and decreased pressure in the cabin. That the plane, having become uncontrollable, fell into a tailspin, went to supersonic speed, broke up in the air, and fell to the ground. Of the six crew members, only the ship's navigator ejected.

I listened carefully to the flight safety inspector's speech and did not believe what I heard! So that such an oversight could be made by the commander, with whom we once deliberately carried out a five-hour cross-country flight on an airplane with a faulty cabin pressurization system, which was always notified in the air about the well-being of the crew members?! And now I hear his voice: “Crew, tighten up the oxygen masks, report on your health!” No! This is a lie in the name of preserving the positions of the commanders, hiding the true cause of the death of five crew members and the loss of the combat vehicle.

Years passed. Until my death, grief for my lost friend and his crew will not leave me. I often dream about him. I dream about his face, tense in his work, his eyes intently watching the instruments, his hands in leather gloves not letting go of the steering wheel.

I asked all the comrades from the former regiment with whom the flight service later brought me together about the details of this incident. Everyone agreed on one thing - the authorities hid the true cause of this disaster, but no one could know it for sure; they only expressed their assumptions.

Fellow soldiers who tried to “talk” the navigator, the survivor who was able to reveal the true cause of the incident, with the help of cognac and vodka, could not squeeze anything out of his lips, sealed by the command.

When the rescue team, in the snowy mountains, on a frosty February day, took the ship's navigator, who had landed by parachute, from the scene of the death of the crew, he was not wearing a headset! The headset could only be torn off from his head in one case, if it was not fastened. Consequently, during the flight the navigator was not wearing an oxygen mask, which is attached to the headset, and was breathing cabin air, but did not lose consciousness! Repeatedly during flights, I, as the navigator of the ship, had to unfasten the oxygen mask with the permission of the commander; it prevents me from leaning tightly against the rubber tube of the radar sight screen, and prevents me from clearly seeing the flare from ground landmarks and targets. So it’s possible for a navigator to find himself without a mask at any stage of the flight.

Being already retired, I told my neighbor, a retired colonel, about my disbelief in the results of the investigation of this disaster, with whom we shared common hobbies for literature and, in the past, joint service. Already ready for his imminent departure from life, stricken by cancer, he told me the true reason that led to the tragic death of the friend of my youth:

“You are right, Valera, in not recognizing this false version of this catastrophe. The engineering and technical staff installed “KPZh-30” with unacceptable alcohol vapor residues in it! Those who cleaned the oxygen equipment, which was important for the life support of the crew in flight, did not comply with the requirements laid down in the instructions and installed KPZh-30 on the aircraft without purging it until it was completely cleared of alcohol vapors. The flight lasted 52 minutes. The crew breathed oxygen mixed with alcohol vapor during the flight and were simply poisoned! This is the second case in our Air Force where people died due to such a violation bordering on a crime. The first such incident with the death of the crew happened so long ago that they stopped remembering it or, as this time, hid the true cause of the disaster in order to save the “skins” of those responsible. Due to the official position I held in those years, I was aware of the true cause of this disaster. Most of the flight and engineering personnel were then given false information about the causes of that disaster. Blame the dead so as not to destroy the families of many living people - this principle has always been pursued by the Air Force. Until now, no one knows how many of the first cosmonauts died in space before Yuri Gagarin’s flight.”

The era of digital civilization has arrived. I found on the Internet everything I could find about the effects of alcohol vapor on the human body when inhaled, and drew conclusions about how pilots could behave under the influence of alcohol that penetrated into the blood and brain of a person directly through the lungs, bypassing the stomach. The performances are terrible!

During the initial intoxication, a person’s muscular activity is activated and the pilots could do anything, unreasonably “dragging the helm”, increasing and decreasing engine speed, taking the plane beyond critical angles of attack and roll, beyond unacceptable flight speeds. Subsequently, a person intoxicated by alcohol vapor falls asleep and may simply die! I know of two cases of people dying in the air when: one - he drank heavily on the eve of the flight as a passenger; the other took a flat bottle of cognac into the air so as not to get bored on a long flight in his single-seat suspended cabin and did not have a task for this flight in his specialty. There were even more cases of loss of consciousness in flight by those who took off “with a hangover”, having managed to “skip” the pre-flight medical control.

For the rest of my life, I imagined myself in the place of the ship’s navigator on that ill-fated flight, trying to “see” the actions of the pilots poisoned against their will by alcohol fumes.

The cause of a similar plane crash in the Air Force, which killed people many years earlier, was either hidden or forgotten. It was the lack of awareness of the incident by the flight and technical crew that led to its repetition many years later. I don’t remember that when checking the equipment before departure, the instructions required sniffing the oxygen supplied to the masks from the KPZh-30. “Yes, he always smells of alcohol!” – anyone who has flown will say.

Traffic police officers are equipped with a device that detects the presence of alcohol in the body of vehicle drivers, but aircraft crews do not have a device that can determine before departure the presence of alcohol in the oxygen that they will breathe in flight. Maybe breathalyzers of traffic police officers are suitable for such monitoring of the oxygen equipment of aircraft and can protect the flight crew from forced intoxication in flight?! Then why is no such check carried out?!

Once every six months, the KPZh-30 is removed from each aircraft. Every six months they are washed with alcohol to remove dirt and fats from the system (pure oxygen can ignite when combined with fats!) Then “KPZh-30” is purged with air under a certain pressure, dried before being filled with liquid oxygen. This means that a similar tragedy can be expected every six months if the engineering and technical staff violates the requirements for their maintenance established by the instructions.

How can you hide the truth about the true causes of disasters from people whose lives depend on their awareness?! In my twenty-two years of service in aviation, I have never heard of such alcohol poisoning - through the oxygen system!

Later, I asked many colleagues whether they had to deal with the presence of alcohol vapor in oxygen equipment during flight? And I heard: “We once fell out of the plane with the whole crew under the canopy, having flown over the aircraft after it was repaired at the aircraft factory! The day before, the authorities accused the aviation technicians of saving alcohol when flushing KPZh-30 for the sake of flushing their stomachs with it, so they left enough alcohol vapor in the KPZh to prove that this was not the case.”

I also discovered on the Internet an altercation between the navigator of the ship who had ejected at that time and one of his colleagues, who tried to accuse the deceased commander of the ship and his crew members of illiterate action during the depressurization of the aircraft cabin at high altitude:

Navigator to the “Accuser”: “I would never have written what I am writing now, but you affected our crew, and there is no one else to answer.” I continue to be ironic about the system for determining the best crew, but at the time of the disaster, our crew was determined to be the best in the regiment. KK* had his mask on and fully pulled up. And he lost consciousnessfor a completely different reason before my eyes.

I also spent two years as a navigator for an innocently accused crew commander and, too, joining the navigator who survived a terrible accident, I can defend him without naming his name. Our deceased commander was a competent pilot, he knew aerodynamics and aircraft better than many of his colleagues, he was a first-class pilot who valued the lives of the people he lifted into the air. We repeatedly got into difficult situations with him in the air, from which we got out of them competently. Once we avoided an obvious collision in the air with a huge Aeroflot airliner. Then the air traffic controllers made a mistake, bringing the sides together at the point of intersection of our route with the air route at the same level (same flight altitude), without separating the planes according to the time of its intersection. The commander was the first to see the IL-62 approaching us and dived under it. I even saw the faces of the passengers pressed to the windows, we were so dangerously close.

“Killed! Killed!” – the commander’s wife shouted, running to the regiment headquarters after learning about the death of her husband, the father of two preschool-age boys, and four other members of his crew. How right she was when they tried to convince her of something completely different.

* Air Force- air Force.

* KK – ship commander.

* "sheet" (in the Air Force)– diagram, drawing, visual teaching aid, made on a Whatman paper measuring 220 cm by 180 cm.

* "KPZh-30"– liquid oxygen is stored on the aircraft in oxygen gasifiers arranged likeDewar vessels (KPZh-30, SKG-30, etc.).

Today we decided to remember incredible incidents, list of air accidents that occurred with multi-seat aircraft, as a result of which, of all those on board, only one person survived.

On June 14, 1943, a plane carrying American soldiers on leave crashed in Australia. In conditions of poor visibility due to fog, the plane touched the tops of trees and crashed. Only Foy Kenneth Roberts survived (there were a total of 41 soldiers on board ), who received severe traumatic brain injuries. Doctors managed to save Roberts and he lived until 2004. However, as a result of his injuries, he forgot everything about the accident itself and lost the ability to speak.

Julianna Dealer Kopke survived a plane crash after falling from a height of 3 km

On December 23, 1971, 500 kilometers from the capital of Peru, Lima, as a result of being caught in a vast thunderstorm area, a passenger plane actually disintegrated in the air at an altitude of more than three kilometers.

“Suddenly an amazing silence reigned around me. The plane disappeared. I must have been unconscious and then came to. I was flying, spinning in the air, and could see the forest rapidly approaching below me.”

Seventeen-year-old girl Julianna Diller Kopke was the only survivor - she was fastened with a belt to a row of chairs and fell into the dense jungle. In the fall, she broke her collarbone, injured her arm and received a moderate head injury.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.

On January 26, 1972, Croatian terrorists blew up a McDonnell Douglas DC-9−32 passenger plane belonging to JAT Yugoslav Airlines over the Czech town of Serbska Kamenice. 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

Vesna Vulovich fell from a height of 10,160 m after a plane crash and survived

When falling from a height of 10160 meters (the case is a record for survivors of a fall from a great height ) received severe injuries to the spine and skull, and was unconscious when she was discovered. After that, she was in a coma for almost a month, the total duration of treatment was about one and a half years. After recovery, she was transferred to ground work at an airline; in Yugoslavia she was considered a national heroine.

Larisa Savitskaya

On August 24, 1981, passenger and military aircraft collided over the territory of the USSR. The only survivor was passenger Larisa Savitskaya, who ended up in the wreckage of the plane, where there were seats in which she took refuge. When falling from a height of more than five kilometers, Savitskaya received serious spinal injuries, traumatic brain injuries, and lost almost all her teeth. For three days she waited for rescuers, as the debris fell in the taiga. Unlike Vesna, Vulovich did not receive special support from the state: the fact of the disaster was hidden, the injuries she received individually did not allow her to register for disability and receive support from the state, she was paid a lump sum of 75 rubles as a survivor of the plane crash.

Larisa Savitskaya spent three days in the taiga after the plane crash

On January 13, 1995, a plane crashed in Colombia after making an emergency landing in a swampy area. The landing was unsuccessful; when it hit the ground, the ship broke into pieces and exploded. The only survivor was a nine-year-old girl, Erica Delgado, who was thrown out of the plane by her mother as it began to fall apart. Erica fell into a pile of seaweed, but could not get out. According to her recollections, one of the local residents tore off her gold necklace and disappeared, ignoring requests for help ( the bodies of the victims were also robbed). After some time, the girl was found by her cries for help and pulled out of the swamp by a local farmer.

On August 27, 2006, a passenger plane crashed during takeoff in Kentucky, USA. The crash was caused by the captain mistakenly selecting a runway that was too short for this type of aircraft; as a result, only the co-pilot, James Polehink, survived, and as a result of numerous injuries ( severe concussion, many fractures, lung punctured by ribs) lost his memory and did not remember anything related to the plane crash.

4-year-old Cecilia Sichan managed to survive a plane crash in 1989

On August 16, 1989, a regular flight, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9−82 of Northwest Airlines, began taking off from Detroit Airport. There were 157 people on board, including a 4-year-old girl, Cecilia Sichan. Her parents and six-year-old brother were flying with her.

The airliner began to sway already on takeoff; its left wing touched the lighting mast, part of the wing came off and caught fire. The plane then pitched to the right and the other wing crashed through the roof of a car rental office. The plane crashed onto the highway, broke into pieces, and caught fire. Debris and victims' bodies were scattered over an area of more than half a mile.

Firefighter John Tied, who was working at the crash site, heard a thin squeak and saw a child's hand among the wreckage. A 4-year-old girl, who suffered a fractured skull, a broken leg and collarbone and third-degree burns, was the only one who managed to survive the disaster. She underwent four skin graft surgeries but managed to make a full recovery.

Cecilia was raised by her aunt and uncle. When the girl grew up, she got a tattoo of an airplane on her wrist in memory of that day.

Baya Bakari

On June 30, 2009, a Yemeni airline plane crashed off the coast of the Comoros Islands, falling directly into the ocean. Of the 153 passengers, only thirteen-year-old Baya Bakari, a French woman flying to the Comoros from Marseille with her mother, survived. When the girl was thrown out of the plane during its collision with water, she received multiple bruises and broke her collarbone. She managed to get out of the water onto one of the wreckage of the plane, on which she remained for 14 hours, until she was discovered by the crew of a passing ship, who took the girl, who was suffering primarily from hypothermia, to the hospital.

In January 2010, Bakari published her autobiography, Survivor, with journalist Omar Guendouz.. In May of the same year the newspaperAOL Newspublished information that Steven Spielberg Bakari offered to purchase the film rights to her book, but she refused.

6 January 2012, 15:59

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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