Who survived plane crashes. Miraculous rescues: survivors of plane crashes. Surviving crew members

(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 that in the last seconds your whole life flashes 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 steer. 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 someone had hit the fuselage 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, the 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, went to watch. 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.

It is now possible to sum up the results of the Colombian plane crash that occurred on November 29: of the 81 people on board, only six survived. Some of the passengers on the crashed plane were football players from the Brazilian club Chapecoense. Of the entire team, only one player survived - defender Alan Ruschel. Surely, when he recovers, he will tell a lot about that fateful flight - as those who were lucky enough not to die in other plane crashes have already done. We have collected several monologues from survivors: what they remember about the crash, what they were thinking about at that moment and why they feel guilty.

10 days in the jungle

Juliane Köpke is the only survivor of 92 passengers from the plane crash in December 1971. Their Lockheed L-188 Electra plane was caught in a thundercloud and lightning damaged its wing. At the time of the disaster, Juliana was 17 years old.

My father Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke was a famous zoologist. That year he conducted research in Peru, in the Amazon jungle. My mother and I flew to him from Lima to celebrate Christmas together. Almost at the very end of the flight, when there were about 20 minutes left before landing, the plane fell into a terrible thundercloud and began to shake violently. Mom got nervous: “I don’t like this.” I, without looking up, looked out the window, behind which the darkness was torn by bright lightning, and saw how the right wing caught fire. Mom's last words: "It's all over now." What happened next happened very quickly. The plane tilted steeply, began to fall and collapse. I still have the incredibly loud screams of people in my ears. Fastened to the chair, I quickly flew down somewhere. The wind whistled in my ears. The seat belts cut into my stomach very hard. I fell headfirst. Perhaps the most inexplicable thing is that at that moment I was not afraid. Maybe I just didn't have time to be scared? Flying through the clouds, I saw a forest below. My last thought is that the forest is like broccoli. Then, apparently, I lost consciousness. The plane crash occurred around 1:30 am. When I woke up, the hands of my watch, which, oddly enough, were running, showed about nine. It was light. My head and eyes hurt very badly (the doctors later explained to me that at the time of the accident, due to the difference in pressure inside and outside the plane, the eye capillaries burst). I sat in the same chair, saw a little of the forest and a little of the sky. It dawned on me that I had survived the plane crash, remembered my mother, and lost consciousness again. Then I woke up again. This happened several times. And every time I tried to free myself from the chair to which I was fastened. When I finally succeeded, it began to rain heavily. I forced myself to get up - my body was like cotton wool. With great difficulty she got to her knees. My eyes turned black again. It must have been half a day before I finally managed to get up. The rain had stopped by then. I started screaming, calling my mother, hoping that she was also alive. But no one responded.

For 9 days, the seriously wounded Juliana independently made her way through the jungle to the people: the knowledge she received from her father helped her survive. Having reached one of the boats tied to the shore along the river, she fell exhausted, and was later found by local fishermen. The girl was brought to the nearest village, where her wounds were treated, then to the nearest village, and only then transported on a small plane to Pucallpa, where she met her father. Later it became known that 14 passengers survived the plane crash, but all of them later died from their injuries.

Fell from the sky for eight minutes

Larisa Savitskaya is twice included in the Russian Guinness Book of Records: as a person who survived a fall from a height of 5220 meters, and as a person who received the minimum amount of compensation for physical damage in a plane crash - 75 rubles. On August 24, 1981, she and her husband Vladimir were returning from a honeymoon on board an An-24PB from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Blagoveshchensk. Their plane at an altitude of 5220 meters was rammed from above by a Tu-16 military bomber: as it later turned out, military and civilian controllers incorrectly coordinated the movement of both aircraft in space. The An-24 lost wings with fuel tanks and the top of the fuselage from the collision. The remaining part broke several times during the fall, and part of the hull, together with Savitskaya, landed on a birch grove. During the fall, the girl held on to the seat, losing consciousness several times. As it turned out later, Savitskaya’s fall along with the wreckage of the plane lasted approximately eight minutes.

Sometimes they say that in one moment your whole life can fly by before your eyes. In eight minutes you probably won’t see anything like this. But I had nothing like that. At these moments, I mentally whispered to my husband about how scared I was to die alone. The first thing I saw when I woke up on the ground was him, dead, sitting in a chair opposite me. At that moment he seemed to be saying goodbye to me.

Despite many terrible injuries, Savitskaya was able to move. She built herself a shelter from airplane debris and covered herself with seat covers and plastic bags. The rescue planes she waved to from below mistook her for one of the geologists whose camp was nearby. The girl spent three days in the taiga before she was found. Since the double plane crash was immediately classified in the Soviet Union, there was not a single news about the crash at that time. Savitskaya’s ward was guarded by people in civilian clothes, and her mother was “advised to remain silent.” Soviet Sport first wrote about Savitskaya, but the article said that she fell from a height of five kilometers during testing of a homemade aircraft. Savitskaya was never given a disability, despite the fact that for some time she could not even stand on her feet, and physical damage was compensated in the amount of 75 rubles. Despite the difficulties, Larisa recovered and even gave birth to a son.

"Why me?"

The highest height from which a person has ever fallen and remained alive is 10,160 meters. This person is Vesna Vulović, a flight attendant on the Yugoslav McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 airliner. On January 26, 1972, the plane exploded in the air (presumably it was a Yugoslav nationalist bomb). The 22-year-old girl Vesna is the only survivor of that disaster. She was thrown out of the plane by a blast wave, and miraculously survived. The girl was also lucky in that the peasant Bruno Honke, who found her first, was able to provide her with first aid before the rescuers arrived. Once in the hospital, Vesna fell into a coma. And as soon as she got out of it, she asked for a smoke.

I didn't have any premonitions. It was as if I knew in advance that I would survive. I don’t remember how I fell. Later they told me that the residents of the town where the plane wreckage, the corpses and I fell, heard my screams: “Help me, Lord, help me!” They followed the voice and found me. At that time, I had already lost four liters of blood. All crew members and passengers suffered lung ruptures while still in the air, and none of them could survive. They all died before they hit the ground. When I found out that everyone died, but I remained alive, I wanted to die, I felt guilty: why am I alive? For 31 years I didn’t remember anything about the month I lived after the accident, and about my problems: paralysis, broken arms, legs, fingers. All this had to be endured. I had to get up. And heal normally. I think miracles do exist.

“I remember what those children were wearing.”

Alexandra Kargapolova is one of the five lucky ones who survived the Tu-134 plane crash near Petrozavodsk, which happened on June 21, 2011. While approaching to land, the pilots missed (there was very poor visibility that night), hitting a 50-meter pine tree with their wing. The plane caught fire, plowed through the forest and fell, breaking in half. Alexandra recalls that initially they were supposed to fly from Moscow to Petrozavodsk on a Bombardier plane, and only at the landing they were told that they would fly on a Tu-134. Even then, the girl had an unpleasant premonition, but she decided to drive it away from herself.

If I had known about this in advance, I would have gone by train... I flew from Moscow to Karelia, home to my son and parents. Due to the change of board, passengers began to sit in different places. I sat right behind business class, on the left in front of the wing. Everything was calm, but at some point I realized that we were falling. At this moment there was silence in the salon. No screams, no panic. Only frightened faces. Many were asleep at that moment, thank God. I was saved by my unfastened seat belt - the impact threw me out of the plane. I fell on the plowed ground - as if a feather bed, as they say, had been laid down. My injuries were minimal compared to the scale of the disaster. I was very lucky. After what happened, it was very difficult to realize that I was alive, but the children who were sitting next to me were not. I don't remember their faces, but I remember how they were dressed. I had a marriage, a child, something built in my life. But the children did not have any of this at the time of their death. Why? For the first months, only this thought gnawed at me...

• On average, the possibility of a passenger getting into a plane crash is 1:10,000,000 flights, that is, the risk is minimal.

• There are statistics that show that during a disaster, a much smaller number of passengers are registered on a fatal flight than usual. This allows some mystics to believe that some people are able to sense danger.

• Every 2-3 seconds an airplane lands or takes off around the world. Around the world, more than 3 million people.

On December 23, 2016, at the age of 66, the legendary flight attendant Vesna Vulović, who in 1972 was present at the explosion in the aircraft cabin and then fell along with the debris from a height of 10 km, died.

She received numerous fractures and injuries, fell into a coma for several days, but then recovered, entered the Guinness Book of Records and became a world celebrity.

On January 26, 1972, 22-year-old Vesna Vulović was flying from Stockholm to Belgrade on a Yugoslav Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32. When the plane flew over Hersdorf, Germany, it disappeared from radar, and 46 minutes after takeoff it exploded in the air. It is assumed that the bomb was carried on board by Croatian nationalists - the Ustasha. Debris fell near the village of Serbska Kamenice in Czechoslovakia.

Of the 28 people on board, only Vulovich survived. As a result of the fall, she received fractures of the base of her skull, three vertebrae, both legs and pelvis; she remained in a coma for several days, but then she woke up and the first thing she did was ask for a cigarette. Interestingly, due to an error by the airline, the girl got on the flight instead of another flight attendant with the same name (Vesna Nikolic). At the time of the disaster, the flight attendant had not yet completed her training and was on the crew as a trainee.

What saved Vulovich, who spent three minutes in free fall? Perhaps the fact that she was sandwiched in the tail of the plane, between corpses and pieces of luggage. In addition, the blow was softened by pine branches and a thick layer of snow.

Her screams in the forest were heard by forester Bruno Henke, who was a doctor in the German army during World War II. He helped the girl hold out until medical help arrived.

Vulović spent 10 months with paralysis of the lower part of the body (from the waist to the legs). After that, she was treated for another six months, but then recovered and even asked to fly with JAT again. She was turned down and given a job in the airline office instead.

Such fearlessness is explained by the fact that Vesna did not remember either the accident or her rescue. In a 2008 interview, she admitted that she only remembers greeting passengers after takeoff from Copenhagen, and then waking up in the hospital and seeing her mother.

Vulović became a national heroine: she was given a reception by Marshal Tito, which was then considered a great honor for a citizen of Yugoslavia. Songs were dedicated to the woman and she was invited to the most popular television shows. It became popular to name girls after the flight attendant who survived: it supposedly brought them good luck.

Vesna Vulović used her fame for political purposes: she protested against the power of Slobodan Milosevic, and later campaigned for one of the parties in the elections.

The peak of Vulovich's international fame came in 1985, when she was invited to London on behalf of the Guinness Book of Records. There, Vulovich received an award as the person who survived a fall without a parachute from a maximum height. The woman was presented with the prize by musician Paul McCartney, the idol of her youth.
Vesna said that she was as much a “survivor” as other residents of Serbia: “We Serbs are truly survivors. We survived communism, Tito, war, poverty, NATO bombing, sanctions and Milosevic. We just want a normal life."

On December 23, Vesna Vulović was found dead at home in Belgrade: police opened the woman’s apartment at the request of her friends, alarmed that she was not answering calls. The cause of death is unknown, but according to Vulovich's friends, her health has recently deteriorated.

Aviation accidents appeared along with aeronautics, but only in the 40s of the 20th century these cases began to be recorded. The rating included people who survived plane crashes. 10 cases were considered when out of all the passengers only one person survived.

10.Julianne Diller Koepke(December 24, 1971) - the only survivor of the plane crash, a seventeen-year-old girl . On that terrible night, she was on board a Peruvian airline with her parents. A thunderstorm began and the plane was struck by lightning. The aircraft began to fall apart at an altitude of 3,200 meters and fell into the tropical forest. The piece on which Julianna's chair was mounted fell off while still in the air. He flew down through the raging elements and rotated at breakneck speed in a circle. The fragment, along with Julianne, landed on the treetops, which saved the girl. She had a broken collarbone and numerous wounds. The survivor found the strength to get up and go look for help. Having stumbled upon a stream in the jungle, she went down its course. On the tenth day, Julianna came out to the settlement. The story of the heroic girl formed the basis of several feature films.

9.Vesna Vulovich(January 26, 1972) - a twenty-two-year-old flight attendant who survived a plane crash and was included in the Guinness Book of Records for falling from a height of 10 kilometers without a parachute. At the moment when the airliner was flying over Czechoslovakia at an altitude of 10,160 meters, an explosion occurred on the ship. By the will of fate, the Yugoslav stewardess ended up on board that day - she was replacing her colleague. The branches of the trees on which the girl fell softened the blow. Vulovich did not come to her senses for almost a month and lay in a hospital bed for a year and a half. Despite this, the forced record holder was able to return to normal life and continued working in aviation, but only in ground service.

8.Larisa Savitskaya - twenty-year-old girl who survived a plane crash (August 24, 1981). Together with her husband, a young woman was returning home from a honeymoon. Over the city of Zavitinsk at an altitude of 5220 meters, a bomber crashed into their AN-24 plane. All the people on the two planes (37 people) were killed. The girl was in the tail section of the broken AN-24. From a height of five thousand, Larisa fell on a large piece of debris. The fall lasted 8 minutes. A piece of the airliner, along with the victim, fell onto birch plantations, which softened the force of the impact. Plane crash survivor Larisa spent two nights alone in the forest. Despite a concussion, numerous abrasions and injuries, she was able to move independently. Graves were prepared for all passengers, including Larisa. The search engines were taken aback when they saw her alive. The woman was included in the Guinness Book of Records twice: as the only person to survive a plane crash and as a passenger who received a minimum compensation of 75 rubles.

7.George Lamson ( January 21, 1985) - the only survivor of a plane crash that occurred in the US state of Nevada. A seventeen-year-old boy was returning with his father on a Lockheed L-188 Electra plane from a ski resort. Suddenly, the aircraft tilted heavily to one side and began to fall. George pulled his knees to his chest the moment the plane hit the ground. He and his seat were blown out of the fuselage moments before the explosion. It was this factor that saved the young man’s life. The cause of the tragedy, in which 70 people died, was a pilot error in assessing the situation, as a result of which the Lockheed L-188 Electra lost speed and fell.

6.Cecilia Sichan(August 16, 1989) was a four-year-old girl who survived a plane crash in Detroit that killed 154 people. The plane never managed to gain altitude. While still on takeoff, his wing caught the lighting tower, causing it to fall off and catch fire. The airliner veered to the right, and with its second wing it pierced the roof of the building. The aircraft simply fell apart into pieces, which were scattered over almost a kilometer area. Cecilia was found under the rubble by a firefighter. After numerous fractures and burns, the girl was able to recover. Cecilia's parents became victims of the same tragedy. Now the girl is not afraid to fly, believing that “a projectile does not hit the same place twice.”

5. Nine year old Erica Delgado ( January 11, 1995) was on the list of people who were the only survivors of plane crashes thanks to her mother. She and her family were on board a flight from Bogota to Cartagena (Colombia). The cause of the terrible disaster was a malfunction of the ship's instruments, which crashed to the ground during landing. At the moment of the fall, the mother pushed the child out of the collapsing liner, and the girl fell into a lake overgrown with algae. A local farmer saved her after hearing cries for help. Erica escaped with a broken arm, the remaining passengers and crew members (52 people) died.

4.Youssef Jillali(March 6, 2003) - the only survivor of a plane crash that occurred in the city of Tamanrasset (Algeria). The Boeing 737-200 crashed during takeoff due to engine failure. While in the airspace due to an engine fire, the ship began to rapidly lose speed. The Boeing crashed in a rocky area not far from the airfield and broke into pieces. Of the 104 crew members, only twenty-eight-year-old serviceman Djillali managed to escape. The victim suffered numerous fractures and was in a coma. But a day later the young man came to his senses, and his life was not in danger.

3. On Sunday morning (August 27, 2006), a fire broke out on board a Lexington-Atlanta flight in Kentucky. The car crashed a kilometer from the airport. All passengers and crew members (49 people) were killed. The fire was so intense that it was impossible to identify the bodies. Only the second forty-four-year-old pilot James Polehink managed to escape. Firefighters pulled him out of the cabin burning. The cause of the disaster was the use of a shorter runway by the pilots. As a result of this, the aircraft rammed an iron fence and crashed into a tree, collapsed and caught fire.

2. Thirteen years old Bahia Bakari- the only surviving passenger on the Paris-Comoros flight (June 30, 2009). Just minutes before landing, the aircraft began to rapidly fall and crashed into the waters of the Indian Ocean. The girl cannot describe the circumstances of what happened because she was sleeping. Presumably, she was thrown through the porthole. Bahia waited 14 hours for rescuers to help, drifting in the open ocean on an unsunk wreck of the liner. So she turned out to be the only survivor of 153 people.

1. Flight engineer Alexander Sizov - survivor of a plane crash that occurred on September 7, 2011 near Yaroslavl. On that fateful day, the Yak-42 aircraft was supposed to deliver Lokomotiv hockey players to a match in the city of Minsk. Having missed the entire runway, the plane began to rise from the ground, falling sharply onto the left wing. After this, the car collapsed, breaking into pieces that were thrown several hundred meters in the area. Alexander only came to his senses when he found himself in a river burning with kerosene. Despite numerous fractures and subsequent operations, the fifty-two-year-old passenger managed to survive. The cause of the tragedy that occurred on board the Yak-42 was a crew error during takeoff of the aircraft.

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 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 mistake. 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 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.

Among the 32 people, only a 20-year-old woman survived Larisa Savitskaya, returning with her husband from a 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 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 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.”