On July 7, an Air Canada passenger plane, flying from Toronto, mistakenly headed not for the runway, but for the taxiway, where there were four more liners at the time. The controllers managed to stop the pilot in time, give the command to go around, after which the plane safely landed on the correct lane.
According to the head of Aero Consulting Experts and former pilot of United Airlines Ross Eimer, the incident threatened to become the largest disaster in the history of aviation: "Imagine a huge Airbus crashing into four passenger liners with full tanks."
Let us recall the most famous and unusual cases of survival in plane crashes.
Boeing 777 crash in San Francisco
On July 6, 2013, the 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 the San Francisco airport, it crashed into an embankment in front of the runway end and collapsed.
The NTSB commission named the cause of the crash as erroneous actions of the crew: the plane was descending too quickly. The pilots noticed that the descent rate and airspeed were inadequate when the aircraft was 60 meters from the ground, but did not take action to go around. More precisely, 1.5 seconds before the collision, the crew decided to go around, but there was no longer an opportunity for this.
Promotional video:
The tail and the left engine came off from the impact of the aircraft, the fuselage slid along the strip of about 600 meters and described an almost full circle - it turned 330 degrees.
Of the 307 people on board (291 passengers and 16 crew members), 3 schoolgirls were killed (two at the crash site, one died in hospital), 187 people were injured. “Only three people” - it's hard to believe in looking at the photos of the crashed liner.
This plane crash showed that serious damage to an aircraft does not mean a big loss. There is another interesting fact: contrary to the popular theory that the safest seats are in the back of the plane, all three victims of the crash were sitting there.
The cabin of flight 214 after the crash:
Miracle in Toronto 2005
It was a high-profile case when all people survived with a completely destroyed liner.
On August 2, 2005, an Air France A340 crashed near Toronto International Airport on flight AFR358 on the Paris-Toronto route. Onboard there were 12 crew members and 297 passengers.
The landing approach was carried out in difficult weather conditions with large thunderstorms over the airport in heavy rain and lightning flashes on the runway. Landing was carried out in manual mode with disabled autopilot and autothrottle.
Having flown over the end of the runway significantly higher than the established one, the airliner landed more than a third of the start of the runway length. The pilots used a reverse, but could not stop within the lane, as a result of which the liner moved off the runway and rolled 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 on time.
The evacuation of 309 people took less than 2 minutes, which many, including the Minister of Transport of Canada Jean Lapierre, called it a "miracle".
Survive by falling from a height of 5 kilometers
A young student Larisa Savitskaya, together with her husband Vladimir, was returning from a honeymoon trip. On August 24, 1981, the An-24 aircraft, on which the Savitsky spouses flew, collided with a Tu-16 military bomber at an altitude of 5220 m. After the collision, the crews of both aircraft were killed. As a result of the collision, the An-24 lost its wings with fuel tanks and the top of the fuselage. The remainder of the fall broke several times.
An-24 passenger aircraft:
At the time of the crash, Larisa Savitskaya was sleeping in her seat in 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 rupture of the fuselage, which passed right in front of her chair, Larisa was thrown into the passage, waking up, she got to the nearest chair, climbed up and squeezed into it, without buckling herself. Larisa herself later claimed that at that moment she recalled an episode from the film "Miracles still happen", where the heroine, during a plane crash, sank into a chair and survived.
Bomber Tu-16K:
Part of the plane's hull glided into a birch grove, which softened the blow. According to subsequent studies, the entire fall of a wreck of an aircraft measuring 3 meters wide by 4 meters in length, 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 was able to move independently.
Two days later, rescuers found her, who were very surprised when, after two days they came across only the bodies of the dead, they met a living person. She later found out 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:
- as 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 the standards of the State Insurance in the USSR, 300 rubles were supposed. compensation for damage 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 is a plane crash that occurred on January 26, 1972. Airliner McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 of Yugoslav Airlines operated flight JAT367 on the route Stockholm - Copenhagen - Zagreb - Belgrade, but 46 minutes after leaving 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 liner.
DC-9-32 airline JAT, identical to the exploded one:
The explosion of the liner took place 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 stewardess Vesna Vulovich, who fell without a parachute from a height of 10 160 meters. She is the holder of the Guinness World Record for Free Fall Survivors without a parachute.
Spring was in a coma and received many injuries: fractures of the base of the skull, three vertebrae, both legs and pelvis. The treatment took 16 months, of which within 10 the girl's lower body was paralyzed (from waist to legs).
Miracle on the Hudson: A320 Emergency Landing
This accident occurred on January 15, 2009. US Airways' Airbus A320-214 was flying AWE 1549 on the New York-Charlotte-Seattle route with 150 passengers and 5 crew members on board. 1.5 minutes after takeoff, the airliner collided with a flock of birds and both engines failed. Commander Chesley Sullenberger, a former US Air Force pilot, decided the only option to save the 155 people on board was to land on the Hudson River. The flooding was successful.
The crew safely landed the plane on the water of the Hudson River in New York. All 155 people on board survived, 83 people were injured - 5 serious (one stewardess 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 the water are known, this case is the fourth, without casualties.
By the way, yesterday, July 17, 2017, the Ural Airlines plane (flight U6-2932 Simferopol - Yekaterinburg) collided with a flock of birds, as a result of which the nose cone was damaged. It would seem that such a colossus and some kind of birds, but … the plane was eventually repaired for 12 hours.
This is what a bird strike looks like from the pilot's seat and outside:
Landing Tu-124 on the Neva
This splashdown occurred in Soviet aviation in the skies over Leningrad on August 21, 1963. As a result of a coincidence of circumstances, the engines of the Tu-124 passenger aircraft failed, the airliner began to glide from a half-kilometer height above the city center. The crew had no choice but to try to make a splashdown to the surface of the Neva. All 52 people on board survived.
The commission that initially investigated the circumstances of the accident blamed the crew for the emergency. But later it was decided not to punish the pilots.
Ilyushin Il-12 flooding in Kazan
And 10 years earlier, on April 30, 1953, the Il-12 P aircraft of the Aeroflot company performed flight 35 on the route Moscow - Kazan - Novosibirsk. Onboard there were 18 passengers and 5 crew members. At 21:37, at the moment when the liner, preparing for landing in Kazan, flew over the Volga, a very strong blow occurred. The crew members recalled that their eyes had darkened. Power dropped in both engines and flames erupted from the tailpipes.
IL-12 by Aeroflot:
The commander of the ship decided to make an emergency landing. IL-12 splashed down near the Kazan river port, after which the car began to rapidly fill with river water. the evacuation was not carried out in time. The crew informed the passengers that the plane splashed down in shallow water, which caused many to attend to pick up personal belongings. In fact, the depth of the river in this place reached about 20 meters. As a result, people wearing outerwear found themselves in water and began to drown. One passenger out of 22 drowned. The Commission of Inquiry found that the accident was caused by the collision of the plane with a flock of ducks.
Miracle in the Andes
On October 13, 1972, the FH-227 plane crash occurred, which was named "Miracle in the Andes." The Uruguayan Air Force Fairchild FH-227D airliner operated FAU 571 on the Montevideo-Mendoza-Santiago route with 5 crew members and 40 passengers (members of the Old Cristians rugby team, their relatives and sponsors). On approaching Santiago, the liner got into a cyclone, crashed into a rock and collapsed at the foot of the mountain.
Fairchild FH-227D aircraft on board T-571:
The survivors had minimal food supplies and lacked the heat sources needed to survive in the harsh cold climate at 3600 meters. Desperate from hunger and reports on the radio that "all activities to find the missing plane are terminated", people began to eat the frozen bodies of their dead comrades. Rescuers found out about the survivors only 72 days later …
12 passengers died in a fall and collision with a rock, another 5 died later from wounds and cold. Then, out of the remaining 28 survivors, 8 more died during an avalanche that covered their "dwelling" from the aircraft fuselage, and later three more died from wounds.
Incident with Boeing 737 over Kahului
This accident occurred on April 28, 1988. Aloha Airlines' Boeing 737-297 operated domestic flight AQ 243 on the Hilo-Honolulu route with 6 crew members and 89 passengers on board. But 23 minutes after takeoff, the aircraft suddenly tore off a significant part of the fuselage structure in the nose. According to the report, the reasons for the accident were steel: metal corrosion, poor epoxy bonding of the fuselage parts, and rivet fatigue.
94 out of 95 people survived. Senior flight attendant Clarabelle Lansing died - at the time of the breakdown of a part of the fuselage, she was in the middle of the plane, and was thrown out by the air stream. Her body, as well as a detached fragment of the fuselage about 5.4 meters long, was not found by the search parties.