Survivors of a plane crash. Real stories

2024 Author: Harold Hamphrey | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:06

Ever since man first took to the air, he has known the fall. Every year, flight technology has become more sophisticated, better and safer, but aircraft crashes still occur. The mass death of people in the crash of a passenger liner becomes not only grief for the inconsolable relatives of the victims, but also a national tragedy.

Plane crash survivors become celebrities in the media all over the world. This happens for the reason that there are very few of them.

Aircraft crash statistics

If we take the statistics of aircraft crashes for the entire historical period of the development of passenger air transportation, we can conclude that they are extremely rare. The chance that the vehicle will crash during flight, takeoff or landing is 1/8 million. This means that it would take a person more than 20,000 years of daily flights on random flights to board that unlucky one.

Aircraft design engineers, insurance agents and statisticians are wondering if it's possible to survive a plane crash? The answer is yes, as survivors of a fall from such a height can share theirexperience.

If we take the statistics of the identified causes of equipment failure, then in percentage terms it will look like this:

• when the plane is loading, 5% of accidents happen (most often fire);
• during takeoff - 17% of accidents;
• when climbing only 8% of cases;
• during flight 6%;
• when the plane descends - 3%;
• approach is the cause of 7% of cases;
• airplane landing - 51%.

The statistics of all recorded cases of airliner crashes show that the greatest risk is present during takeoff and fall. This is probably why passengers applaud the pilots after they complete this stage of the flight.

Survivors after a plane crash most often point out that something “suddenly” went wrong with the plane. In fact, meticulous extras and workers responsible for flight safety note that the reasons for the sudden breakdown of instruments or ignited engines are flaws that were not identified on the ground, which means that the reasons for the crash of the liners should be looked for there first of all.

Causes of plane crashes

It's sad to say, but the main cause of all air crashes is the human factor. Machines do not spoil themselves and do not incapacitate. The lack of proper attention during their assembly, during daily checks for malfunctions and the conscious work of pilots and dispatchers - all this most often leads to the crash of equipment.

Is it possible to survive in a plane crash,if the specialists did their job poorly? And in this case, the answer will be yes, since today there are cases when more than 1 person remained alive.

The statistics of aircraft crashes as a percentage is as follows:

• pilot error accounts for 50% of cases;
• errors of personnel serving during the flight were revealed in 7% of tragedies;
• the influence of weather conditions accounted for 12%;
• malfunction of instruments and the machine as a whole - 22% (what was not properly identified before the flight);
• terrorism and others (unidentified causes or mid-air collision) - 9%.

Of the above reasons, except for the weather, everything else is the activity of people. This suggests that the tragedy could have been avoided, and the cases of survivors of the plane crash were significantly higher. If we take the statistics of the largest crashes over the past 30 years, then their cause is:

• DC-8 crashed in Newfoundland in 1985 on takeoff due to loss of speed, killing 250 passengers;
• Boeing 747 crash in Japan in 1985 caused by poor repairs, resulting in 520 casu alties;
• Il-76 en route from Kazakhstan to Saudi Arabia crashed in India in 1996 from a mid-air collision with a Boeing, resulting in 349 deaths;
• IL-76 crashed in Iran in 2003 due to impact on the ground in poor visibility, killing 275 people;
• 224 people who did not survive the Kogalymavia plane crash in October 2015 added to the sad statistics: the reason is a possible terrorist attack.

These are far from all the major crashes that happened from 1985 to 2015, but even they show that their cause is most often human carelessness or dishonesty. The list of plane crash survivors would be much longer if flight safety professionals did their job well and passengers knew what to do to stay alive.

What to do in case of a plane crash

It turns out that there are rules that really help people stay alive when the liner crashes. The most basic instructions are given by flight attendants before the start of the flight. Unfortunately, most passengers do not listen to them, and even more so they cannot put them into practice. Among the simplest recommendations considered mandatory:

• be seat belted during takeoff and landing (ideally it is better to be seated for the entire flight);
• know where the life jackets are and how to use the oxygen mask;
• in an emergency, do not leave your seat, much less try to get into the luggage compartment to save your belongings;
• concentrate and take the correct posture before the plane collides with the ground or water (bending your head to your knees, covering it with your hands).

In addition to these simple rules, there are several conclusions of emergency specialists that people who survived the plane crash applied intuitively and did not suffer.

Most of the passengers die after the plane crashes andfire, because they can not get out of it in time. To prevent this from happening, you should know in advance:

• how seat belts unfasten;
• exact direction to the exit (especially if there is smoke in the cabin);
• panic is 100% death.

For example, George Lamson, still a 17-year-old teenager in 1985, survived only because at the time of the collision of the plane in which he was flying with his father, his chair was thrown out of the cabin. If the boy had not been fastened and had not pressed his head to his knees, and after the fall he had not managed to quickly unfasten himself and run away to a safe distance, he would have died, like the other 70 people.

As the cases of survivors of a plane crash show, if a person does not panic and knows what to do, then he has every chance of surviving. Examining examples of such tragedies, scientists have come to the conclusion that many passengers, instead of getting out of the plane, are waiting for someone's instructions or instructions. It is important to know that in such a situation, everyone is responsible for their own safety.

High risk situations

Although it may seem that the survivors of a plane crash are just the lucky ones, in reality they are not. As the data of scientists from England, who studied more than 2000 cases of rescue in such an accident, showed, these people were helped not by a simple coincidence of circumstances, but by specific knowledge and actions, plus a bit of luck.

It turns out that there are high-risk areas and safer areas on planes, as evidenced by survival statistics:

• for example, those who sit in the first five rows in the nose of the aircraft have a 65% chance of survival;
• it is even higher for those who sit in these rows on the outer seats (67%), and not near the windows (58%);
• passengers at the tail of the plane have a 53% survival rate if they are also seated in the first five rows of the emergency exit;
• People who survived after a plane crash and sat in the middle of the cabin are extremely rare.

In addition to the risk areas in the cabin, the aircraft itself also plays an important role. So, statistics say that 73% of all air crashes occur in small aircraft designed for up to 30 seats. The fatal outcome of a crash of a single-engine or small aircraft is 68%, which suggests that the chance of survival for passengers and pilots of such vehicles is tantamount to a miracle.

There is only one conclusion - you should fly large planes of reliable companies. It is unlikely that only the right choice of vehicle and seats in it will save lives in an emergency, but its passengers will have more chances of survival, and rescuers in the crash of a large liner do not ask the question “are there any survivors in a plane crash”, but save them.

The most difficult situations

The most difficult and dangerous part of the disaster is the collision of the plane with the ground or water. After this happened, people only have 1.5-2 minutes to stay alive. It is at this time that you need to keep within to unfasten, find a way out and jump out as far as possible.

The biggest threat to life is fire andcarbon monoxide filling the cabin, which is confirmed by a woman who survived the plane crash. Larisa Savitskaya survived after the plane in which she was flying with her husband collided with a bomber. Having received burns from the fire that started, she managed to concentrate and take the correct position in the chair, which saved her life when she fell on it from a height of 5200 m for 8 minutes.

Her landing was "softened" by tree branches, but even after surviving such a fall, she had to endure a severe shock both from her injuries and from the fact that rescuers were in no hurry to search for the crashed plane, confident that no one survived.

"Are there any survivors of the plane crash?" - this question should be in the first place for those who deal with similar situations. Larisa waited two days for help with a fracture of the cervical spine and a head injury. She is the only one to be listed in the Guinness book twice for the same event:

• first time as a survivor after falling from a height of more than 5 km;
• the second - as having received the most meager compensation for the damage received - only 75 rubles.

No less a threat to human life is a collision of an aircraft with the water surface, although most passengers naively believe that it can soften the fall. Such ignorance of the elementary laws of physics cost the lives of many people.

Fall into the ocean

When a plane crashes over the ocean, it's not uncommon, but the death toll remains shockingly high, although there aresurvivors of a plane crash on the water.

This happens for several reasons:

• first of all, people are often unable to find and put on a life jacket because of panic;
• secondly, they activate it too early, and when inflated, it prevents not only moving, but also swimming out of the cabin if water has entered there;
• Thirdly, they don't know that hitting the water with an airplane is tantamount to hitting a concrete pavement, and may not buckle up for a rescue position.

Except when a pilot performs an emergency landing on the water, falling into the ocean is just as dangerous as falling to the ground, as the only survivor of a plane crash confirms.

Bakari was 12 years old when she and her mother flew from Paris to Yemen. For an unknown reason, the plane crashed into the ocean 14 km from the coast of Bolshiye Komory Island. From the impact on the water, he was torn to pieces, and the girl fell into the water. She was lucky that parts of the liner remained on her surface, on one of which she waited 14 hours until she was picked up by a passing fishing boat.

The story of the girl went around the world, as this is one of those examples when, perhaps, there would have been more survivors if help had come in time. Hypothermia and life jackets not put on in time took the lives of other passengers.

This is not the last time the sole survivor of a plane crash had to fight for her life due to lack of help on the ground.

Falling in the jungle

Although there are examples,when the fall of the plane was softened by tree branches, the number of surviving passengers and crew members did not increase. How a person behaves during a tragedy continues to play a big role.

An example of this is the story of a German 17-year-old schoolgirl traveling with her mother from Lima to Pucallpa (Peru) before Christmas 1971. It was, in fact, a short flight that became tragic due to the fact that the plane got into turbulence during a thunderstorm.

From a lightning strike, the systems of the airship went out of order, a fire started in the cabin. Juliana Koepke is the only survivor of the plane crash during this flight. At an altitude of 6400 m, both wings of the aircraft came off, after which the liner, which went into a tailspin, began to fall apart.

The girl was saved by the fact that she was wearing a seatbelt and took a rescue position when a row of chairs, along with her seat, was “thrown” overboard. During the fall, it was rotated by a strong wind along with the debris from the cabin, which led to a downward slope and a fall into the dense thickets of the Amazon jungle.

The consequences of the “landing” were a broken collarbone, abrasions and bruises, but even greater trials awaited her. Located 500 km from Lima, in the thick of the jungle, without knowing the way, this young woman who survived a plane crash was forced to fight for life in an unfamiliar area.

For 9 whole days she walked down the river, afraid to move far from it, so as not to lose the source of water. Eating fruits and plants that she recognized and coulddisrupt, the girl went to the parking lot of the fishermen, who took her to the hospital.

If Juliana had stayed to wait for help near the crashed plane, she would most likely have died. Based on these events, the Italian television company made a feature film “Miracles still happen”, which later saved the life of a Soviet girl Larisa Savitskaya, who had been waiting for two days for rescuers.

Surviving crew members

It's pretty rare to hear that crew members survived a plane crash. Perhaps they are busy rescuing passengers or are at this moment in the most “unfavorable” part of the plane, but this is a fact.

But there are examples when a flight attendant who survived a plane crash was the only one saved. Vesna Vulović was only 22 years old in 1972 when a Yugoslav airline plane fell apart in the air as a result of a terrorist bomb during a regular flight from Copenhagen to Zagreb.

This case can be considered a "miracle", as Vesna was able to survive being in the middle of the cabin when falling from a height of more than 10 km. The wreckage of the car she was in fell into the snow-covered trees, softening the impact greatly.

The second "miracle" was that while she was unconscious, a farmer from a nearby village found her and took her to the hospital. A flight attendant who survived a plane crash after falling from such a height was in a coma for almost a month, and then struggled for another 16 months to be able to move around and live a normal life.

Vesna Vulovich became the Guinness book record holder as the person who committedjump without a parachute from a 10 km height. It is unlikely that there will be a daredevil who, of his own free will, decides to surpass her result.

Russian plane crash in Egypt

One of the hottest topics in autumn 2015 was the plane crash in Egypt. Today, “are there any survivors” is no longer the most important question in this tragedy. If at first there were rumors that not all of the 224 people died, now this is a sad fact.

Today, the public is interested in the cause of the death of the airliner, and the guarantee that this will not happen to Russian aircraft again.

Completely different versions of what happened to the Airbus A321 are presented by Russian and foreign media. The airliner, which took off without delay, 23 minutes after takeoff, disappeared from the controllers' radars for unknown reasons.

One of the versions why no survivors of a plane crash in Egypt have been found is the explosion of a bomb on board. The plane exploded in the sky, so the passengers had almost no chance.

Egyptian authorities claim the presence of the bomb was not detected in the wreckage environment. These data were published by them after experts from the USA, England and Russia came to a different conclusion.

The only reason for the inconsistency of the experts' conclusions is Egypt's unwillingness to lose potential customers during the tourist season and pay compensation to the Kogalymavia company for a plane crash in its airspace. If there were survivors of a plane crash in Egypt, they would also receive compensation fordamage.

It remains to be seen what agreement both sides will come to, but looking back at the history of aeronautics, we can say that planes do not just fall apart in the air and disappear from the radar. There are no final conclusions yet, but the world community understands what caused the plane crash in Egypt today. Are there any survivors, the answer to this question is unequivocal - "no".

Positive statistics

Knowing the meticulousness of scientists in their desire to calculate and measure everything, there is no doubt that they also studied the question of why people do not survive in a plane crash.

The reason is actually the most banal - all the same human factor. If we take the statistics of changes in the causes of aircraft crashes since 1908, then it will look like this:

• at the dawn of aircraft construction from 1908 to 1929 50% of crashes were due to technical problems, 30% to weather, 10% to fire and 10% to pilot error;
• by the second half of the 20th century, the air fleet came up with different statistics - 24% are related to technology, 25% - the weather is to blame, pilot error - 37%, fire - 7%, and terrorist attacks occupy only 5%;
• in the 21st century, statistics have completely changed - 45% - the culprit is the human factor, 13% - the weather, 32% - malfunctions in equipment, fire - 3%, and terrorist attacks occupy 4% of cases.

This is how the causes of air disasters in the air have changed in 100 years. Nevertheless, today it is the safest form of transportation, because crashes occur with a probability of 0.00001%. In addition, more and more facts are emerging when, withIn a plane crash, not 1 person survives, but a significant part of the passengers.

For example, 4 people survived a plane crash that occurred in Japan in 1985. 12 minutes after takeoff, the aircraft suffered a depressurization in the tail compartment. The pilots managed to keep the car in the air for 32 minutes, after which the board crashed 100 km from the capital of Japan. As the survivors said, there could have been more rescued, as people asked for help, but by the time the rescuers arrived, who were in no hurry at all, 520 people were dead. They were killed by hypothermia and injuries from falls.

Unfortunately, information about the saved is not always true. So it was when it was reported that 4 people had survived a plane crash over Egypt. In this case, one can only sympathize with people who found hope for a miracle, but then lost it again.

In the Russian history of aviation there are also examples when passengers survived the crash of the liner. So, the people who survived the Kogalymavia plane crash in 2011, when the plane caught fire, which was just taxiing to the runway, received a lucky ticket. Out of 116 passengers and 6 crew members, only three people died, while the Tu-154 was completely burned down.