I have always wondered what people experience in a falling plane. Summarizing the experience of eyewitnesses who survived the plane crashes, we can draw one interesting conclusion - the devil is not so terrible as he is painted ...
First, be more afraid when driving to the airport. In 2014, more than 33 million flights were flown in the world, there were 21 plane crashes (moreover, most of the troubles in the sky are caused by cargo transportation), in which only 990 people died. Those. the probability of a plane crash is only 0.0001%. During the same year, in Russia alone, 26,963 people died in road accidents, and according to the WHO, 1.2 million people die in road accidents in the world every year and about 50 million are injured.
Secondly, judging by the statistics, you have much more chances of dying on an escalator in the subway or contracting AIDS than dying on an airplane. So the chance of dying in a plane crash is 1 in 11,000,000, while, for example, in a car crash - 1 in 5,000, so now it is much safer to fly than to drive a car. Moreover, aviation technology is becoming safer every year. By the way, Africa remains the most unfavorable continent from the point of view of flight safety: only 3% of all flights in the world were performed here, but 43% of plane crashes occurred!
Thirdly, with strong overloads, you will not remember anything. According to research by the Interstate Aviation Committee, the consciousness of a person in a falling plane is turned off. In most cases - in the first seconds of a fall. At the moment of collision with the ground there is not a single person in the cabin who is conscious... The body's defense reaction is said to be triggered. This thesis is confirmed by those who managed to survive in plane crashes. Silence accompanies minor aircraft incidents, video compilation
Fourth, the experience of surviving plane crashes. The story of Larisa Savitskaya is included in the Guinness Book of Records. In 1981, at an altitude of 5220 meters, the An-24 aircraft in which she was flying collided with a military bomber. In that crash, 37 people died. Only Larisa managed to survive.
I was 20 years old then, - says Larisa Savitskaya. - Volodya and I, my husband, flew from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Blagoveshchensk. I immediately fell asleep after takeoff. And she woke up from the roar and screams. Cold burned my face. Then I was told that our plane had its wings cut off and the roof blown off. But I don't remember the sky above. I remember there was a fog, like in a bathhouse. I looked at Volodya. He didn't move. Blood spurted down his face. I somehow immediately realized that he was dead. And she prepared to die too. Then the plane collapsed and I lost consciousness. When I regained consciousness, I was surprised that I was still alive. I felt that I was lying on something hard. It turned out in the aisle between the chairs. And next to the whistling abyss. There were no thoughts in my head. Fear too. In the state in which I was - 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, having fallen into the jungle, remained alive. I didn’t hope to survive. I just wanted to die without suffering. I noticed the bars of the metal floor. And I thought: if I fell sideways, it would be very painful. I decided to change position and group. Then she crawled to the next row of chairs (our row stood near the break), sat down in a chair, grabbed the armrests and rested her feet on the floor. She did all this automatically. Then I look - the earth. Very close. She grabbed the armrests with all her might and pushed off the chair. Then - like a green explosion from the branches of larch. And again a blackout. 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. A man and a woman lay dead under the chairs ...
Later it was established that the piece of the plane - four meters long and three meters wide, on which Savitskaya fell, planned like an autumn leaf. He fell into a soft swampy clearing. Larisa lay unconscious for seven hours. Then I sat in a chair in the rain for two more days and waited for death. 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 her spine. You can't go with such injuries. But Larisa refused the stretcher and reached the helicopter herself.
The plane crash and the death of her husband stayed 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.
Another case confirms the loss of consciousness. Arina Vinogradova is one of the two surviving flight attendants of the Il-86 aircraft, which in 2002, barely taking off, fell 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 the whole life is scrolled before the eyes. This was not the case with me, - says Arina to Izvestia. - Tanya and I were sitting in the first row of the third saloon, at the emergency exit, but not in service seats, but in passenger seats. Tanya is opposite me. The flight was technical - we just had to return to Pulkovo. At some point, the plane began to shake. This happens at the Il-86. But somehow 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 drifted away somewhere, and I fell into a black void. I woke up from a sharp jolt. At first I did not understand anything. Then I figured it out a little. It turned out that I was lying on a warm engine, littered with chairs. Itself could not unfasten. She began to scream, pound on metal and shake Tanya, who then raised her head, then lost consciousness again. We were dragged out by firemen and taken to different hospitals.
Arina still works as a flight attendant. The plane crash, she said, left no trauma in my soul. However, the incident influenced Tatyana Moiseeva very strongly. Since then, she no longer flies, although she has not left the aviation.
Fifth, the plane crash is a positive experience for survivors! Scientists have come to unique conclusions: people who survived plane crashes later turned out to be healthier from a psychological point of view. They showed less anxiety, anxiety, did not become depressed and did not experience post-traumatic stress, in contrast to the subjects from the control group, who had never had such an experience.
In conclusion, I bring to your attention a speech by Rick Elias, who was sitting in the front row of an airplane that made an emergency landing in the Hudson River in New York in January 2009. You will find out what thoughts came to him as the doomed plane fell down ...
Are you still afraid to fly ?-)
(Collected from various internet sites)
Alexander Andryukhin
If what happens in the cockpit during a disaster can be judged by 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 aircraft in which she was flying collided with a military bomber. In that crash, 37 people died. Only Larisa managed to survive.
I was 20 years old then, - says Larisa Savitskaya. - Volodya and I, my husband, flew from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Blagoveshchensk. We were returning from a honeymoon trip. First we sat down in the front seats. But I didn’t like it ahead, and we moved to the middle. I immediately fell asleep after takeoff. And she woke up from the roar and screams. Cold burned my face. Then I was told that our plane had its wings cut off and the roof blown off. But I don't remember the sky above. I remember there was a fog, like in a bathhouse. I looked at Volodya. He didn't move. Blood spurted down his face. I somehow immediately realized that he was dead. And she prepared to die too. Then the plane collapsed and I lost consciousness. When I regained consciousness, I was surprised that I was still alive. I felt that I was lying on something hard. It turned out in the aisle between the chairs. And next to the whistling abyss. There were no thoughts in my head. Fear too. In the state in which I was - 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, having fallen into the jungle, remained alive. I didn’t hope to survive. I just wanted to die without suffering. I noticed the bars of the metal floor. And I thought: if I fell sideways, it would be very painful. I decided to change position and group. Then she crawled to the next row of chairs (our row stood near the break), sat down in a chair, grabbed the armrests and rested her feet on the floor. She did all this automatically. Then I look - the earth. Very close. She grabbed the armrests with all her might and pushed off the chair. Then - like a green explosion from the branches of larch. And again a blackout. 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. A man and a woman lay dead under the chairs ...
Later it was established that the piece of the plane - four meters long and three meters wide, on which Savitskaya fell, planned like an autumn leaf. He fell into a soft swampy clearing. Larisa lay unconscious for seven hours. Then I sat in a chair in the rain for two more days and waited for death. 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 her spine. You can't go with such injuries. But Larisa refused the stretcher and reached the helicopter herself.
The plane crash and the death of her husband stayed 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 aircraft, which in 2002, barely taking off, fell 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 the whole life is scrolled before the eyes. This was not the case with me, - says Arina to Izvestia. - Tanya and I were sitting in the first row of the third saloon, at the emergency exit, but not in service seats, but in passenger seats. Tanya is opposite me. The flight was technical - we just had to return to Pulkovo. At some point, the plane began to shake. This happens at the Il-86. But somehow 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 drifted away somewhere, and I fell into a black void. I woke up from a sharp jolt. At first I did not understand anything. Then I figured it out a little. It turned out that I was lying on a warm engine, littered with chairs. Itself could not unfasten. She began to scream, pound on metal and shake Tanya, who then raised her head, then lost consciousness again. We were dragged out by firemen and taken to different hospitals.
Arina still works as a flight attendant. The plane crash, she said, left no trauma in my soul. However, the incident influenced Tatyana Moiseeva very strongly. Since then, she no longer flies, although she has not left the aviation. He still works in the detachment of flight attendants, but already as a dispatcher. She does not even tell her close friends about what she has 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 plane crash.
It happened about five years ago, - Anna Pletneva tells Izvestia. - I was always terrified of flying by plane, but then I took courage. Flew with Nastya Makarevich to Spain. We had a great rest. In a cheerful mood, they returned to Moscow on a Boeing-767. The neighbors were with the child. The minute we began to descend and the flight attendants ordered us to fasten our seat belts, the child was in my arms. And then the plane went down sharply. Things fell on my head, the flight attendants shouted: "Hold the children! Bend down!" I realized that we were falling, and hugged the baby to me. In my head flashed: "Is it all?" I used to think that when I was so scared, my heart should be pounding. But you don't really feel the heart. You don't feel yourself, but you look at everything as if from the outside. The worst thing is hopelessness. You cannot influence anything. But there was no panic - the one shown in the movies. Deathly silence. Everyone, as if in a dream, buckled up and froze. Someone prayed, someone said goodbye to their relatives.
Anna does not remember how much time has passed. Maybe seconds ... Or minutes.
“Suddenly the plane began to level out a little,” she recalls. “I looked around: did it really just seem to me? But no, others also started up ... Even when we stopped on the strip, it was hard to believe that everything ended well. The commander announced: "Congratulations to all! We were born in a shirt. Now everything in your life will be fine."
“Surprisingly, I have ceased to be afraid to fly on airplanes,” she says. - And on charter flights, pilots often let us into the cockpits and give us a steer. I like it so much that I want to buy my own small plane in the near future. We will fly on it on tour.
Izvestia journalist Georgy Stepanov also survived the fall.
It happened in the summer of 1984, he recalls. - I flew on a Yak-40 plane from Batumi to Tbilisi. When I got on the plane, there was a feeling that I was in a gypsy camp - there were so many things there. They filled all the compartments from above, as well as the aisle of the salon. Do not push through. Of course, there were also more passengers than it should be. We took off, climbed. Below is the sea. Pulled into a doze. But then the fuselage seemed to be hit with a sledgehammer, the hum of the turbine changed, and the plane abruptly, almost vertically, went down. Everyone who was not wearing their seatbelt flew off their seats and rolled around the cabin, interspersed with things. Screams, screeching. A terrible panic began. I was strapped on. I still remember my state of horror. Everything in me snapped, my body seemed to be stiff. The feeling was that everything was not happening to me, but I was somewhere on the side. The only thing I thought: poor parents, what will become of them? I could not scream or move. Nearby, everyone was completely white with fear. They were struck by their dead, motionless eyes, 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, lift things. Then, when we were already 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 he felt sorry for it, it became embarrassing for him.
This fall still reverberates to me. When I get on 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 many experts, referring to 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 this. According to research by the Interstate Aviation Committee, the consciousness of a person in a falling plane is turned off. In most cases - in the first seconds of a fall. At the moment of collision with the ground, there is not a single person in the cabin who would be conscious. The body's defense reaction is said to be triggered.
The ancient Greek poet Theognides wrote: "What is not predetermined by fate will not happen, and what is predetermined - I am not afraid of that." 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, hit 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 disaster at the Varandey airport:
24 people survived in the crash, and 28 more died.
Many of those rescued are still shocked and refuse to speak. But from the words of three survivors - Sergei Trefilov, Dmitry Dorokhov and Alexei Abramov - KP correspondents restored what was happening in the cabin of the falling plane.
According to official reports, An-24, tail number 46489, disappeared from the radar screens at 13.43 during the landing approach.
13.43
Sergey:
- Commander Viktor Popov said over the loudspeaker: “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 the same way. Immediately, the stewardess walked through the cabin and sat on a reclining chair in the tail. Everything was as usual - this is the 10th time I have 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 watch. The neighbor said that he was sick on boarding. But there were no words about the fact that the plane is falling.
13.44 - 13.55
Sergey:
- We flew low. Highly. We saw that there was no runway under the wing - only snow. The man behind me asked: “Where are we going to sit? In field?"
13.56
Sergey:
- The plane fell on its left side somehow too hard. And then there was such a sound outside the window - iron, as if something were coming off. People began to look at each other.
Dmitry Dorokhov got off with a slight fright: “The leg will heal! The main thing is that he is alive. "
Dmitriy:
- We were waiting for the pilots to announce: they say, everything is fine. But they were silent in the cockpit. And then the plane went down steeply. Someone shouted: “That's it, b ...! We are falling! "
Alexey:
“I was shocked that only one screamed in the cabin. The rest silently squeezed into chairs or began to hide their heads between their knees.
Sergey:
- Nothing was said on the speakerphone. Only a strange sound, as if the pilots turned on the microphone, but turned it off immediately. The stewardess was also silent - she did not try to calm the people down.
13.57
Sergey:
- I saw in the window as the plane touched the ground with its wing. I couldn’t close my eyes, and that was all. After that, the pilots obviously tried to level the plane, we jumped up a little. And crashed into the snow!
Alexey:
- They fell silently. Very fast. Everyone sat in a daze. Now many newspapers say that the pilots were blinded by the flash of sunlight reflected from the icy strip. That's bullshit! There were no outbreaks. Only a blow.
I did not lose consciousness. For only two seconds the eyes were dark. You know, like after a blow to the jaw. For about five seconds, complete silence reigned in the cabin. And then all at once stirred, groaned.
13.58 - 14.00
Alexey Abramov rescued 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 was always lamenting: “It hurts! Painfully!" I scrambled out and crawled down the aisle.
Dmitriy:
- The worst thing is that the people were all plague - they could not come to their senses. They just didn't understand what had happened. I shake my neighbor: "Alive?" And he hums. And then the gas tank caught fire. There was no explosion. The flame crept through the cabin gradually.
Sergey:
- People sitting closer to the nose began to light up and shout. Clothes flashed in a moment. And these "living torches" jumped up and ran to the tail. On us.
Someone shouted: "Take things, put them out!" We started grabbing sheepskin coats and jackets from the luggage racks, throwing them at people. We fiddled for about three minutes - extinguished. But I was shocked: even when people were on fire, they did not panic. They screamed out of pain, not out of fear ...
14.01 - 14.08
Sergey:
- Then someone commanded: “We climb out! Now everything here will explode to e ... ". Me and someone else got out through the hole in the fuselage.
Dmitriy:
- The stewardess saved us all. She kicked out the spare hatch and led the people out through it.
Alexey:
- I was one of the first near the hatch. I helped four of them to get out, it was clear that they themselves could not - arms and legs were broken. I shout at them: "Crawl!" - and pull. Pulled 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, they dragged away. And they shouted all the time: “Come on! Let's!"
Dmitriy:
“Ural” was immediately brought up. Those who could not get up on their own were loaded and taken to the village. And we sat in the snow and looked around like newborn babies.
Alexey:
- Nobody then remembered about things - jackets, bags, mobile phones. I didn't even feel the cold, although I was in the same sweater. And only in the hospital, when the first shock passed, I saw that many had tears rolling down their faces ...
And here is how it happens on the ground (from reports on the TU-154 crash Anapa - St. Petersburg):
Eyewitness testimony
Inhabitants of Donetsk region, who saw how Tu-154 fell
The Pulkovo Airlines plane took off from Anapa yesterday afternoon.
There were almost fifty children on board among 160 passengers, because Anapa is a popular children's resort.
At about 15.30 Moscow time, the ship's captain transmitted an SOS signal to the ground. And literally two minutes later, the plane disappeared from the radar.
We got through to the 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 caught fire,” Galina STEPANOVA, a resident of the village of Novgorodskoe, Donetsk region, told us, near which this tragedy happened. - We have fields of the Stepnoy state farm outside the village. It was on them that the plane crashed. He rolled over several times in the air, stuck his nose into the ground and exploded. Our local residents, until the police arrived and cordoned off everything, went to look. They say everything was charred there. Well, one and a half months it was so hot, everyone was waiting for the rain. Wait. There was such a downpour, and the thunderstorm was already breathtaking. Most likely, because of the thunderstorm, the trouble happened.
“Just before the catastrophe, a severe 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 liner. But until the last moment he was not visible! We and the inhabitants of other neighboring villages noticed it only when 150 meters were left to the ground. I thought that it would collapse right on us. It spun around its axis like a helicopter ...
In the airoport
Flight 612 disappeared from the board 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 4 pm the line "Anapa - 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 with the crew were irretrievably lost communication ...
When it was already clear that the plane had died, the calm voice of the announcer sounded in Pulkovo:
- Those who meet flight 612 from Anapa are invited to the cinema hall ...
- Why the cinema? - the greeters got worried and, not understanding anything yet, but already suspecting the most terrible thing, rushed there. And there - hung on the glass doors of the cinema hall lists of passengers who checked in for this flight. People stood silently in front of these sheets for several minutes. They didn’t believe it.
And only when almost all the bars of Pulkovo airport started working at once with the terrifying news - the first heartbreaking cry 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 13, was there with my family ...
and before leaving he wrote a will for the apartment ...
and for a car - to make it easier for friends, the guarantors of the loan, to pay for me in case of something irreparable ...
how they laughed at me and as soon as they did not name my act
laughed - until yesterday, when dozens of families went into eternity
now almost everyone has called back and my act no longer seems so "wild" to them
it hurts me to think about
that these people were also sitting on the same benches in the drive of the Anapa port
sat and watched the runways, planes, takeoffs and landings ...
and now they are gone, and the world lives 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 fate of individuals.
I already wrote this somewhere here on the branches, but these thoughts do not pass, they go around in circles all the time and do not give rest.
and the mother is crying for the 2nd day - she says that she has a feeling that WE "slipped through"
past death, although 9 days separate us from the catastrophe ...
I will repeat again and again:
let the land rest in peace to passengers
eternal clear sky for the crew
let the lost children become angels.
Valery Valiulin
Do I need it, right ?!
On real events. First and last names are excluded.
Arriving early in the morning at the service, to perform the next training flights, I was very upset - the flights were repulsed. Flights are not often repulsed, mainly due to meteorological conditions that do not allow their implementation, in the absence of weather at alternate airfields, in accidents and disasters of the same type of aircraft, and you never know other reasons to postpone flights to another day. The reason for the end of flights stunned me - in the unit from which I transferred three years earlier, my friend, the commander of the ship with which I flew, once in the same crew, died for two years.
Subsequently, the flight and engineering personnel of all aviation units were informed about the results of the investigation of the disaster, the reasons that led to the death of people and the loss of a combat vehicle, recommendations on measures to prevent the repetition of such tragedies in the future.
A colonel who arrived from Moscow, hanging in front of the aviation squadron a "sheet" * measuring "two hundred twenty by one hundred and eighty", with the route from the take-off airfield to the point of disaster marked on it by the unfinished crew, tried to convince us that a slow depressurization had occurred at high altitude cockpits. That all crew members, in violation of the instructions, performed a high-altitude flight with relaxed oxygen masks, and lost consciousness due to a lack of oxygen and a decrease in pressure in the cockpit. That the plane, finding itself uncontrollable, fell into a tailspin, went over to supersonic speed, collapsed in the air, fell to the ground. Ejected, of the six crew members, only the navigator of the ship.
I listened attentively to the speech of the flight safety inspector and did not believe what I heard! So that such an oversight could be made by the commander, with whom we once deliberately performed a five-hour cross-country flight on an airplane with a faulty cockpit sealing system, which was always notified in the air about the well-being of the crew members ?! And now I hear his voice: "Crew, pull up oxygen masks, report on your health!" No! This is a lie in the name of preserving the positions held by the chiefs, hiding the true cause of the death of five crew members and the loss of a combat vehicle.
The years passed. Until my death, grief for my deceased friend and his crew will not leave me. I often dream about him. He dreams of his tense face at work, his eyes intently watching the instruments, his hands in leather gloves, not releasing the steering wheel.
All the comrades from the former regiment, with whom the flight service later took me, I asked about the details of this incident. All agreed on one thing - the authorities concealed the true cause of this disaster, but no one could know it for sure, they expressed only their assumptions.
The 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 brandy and vodka, could not squeeze anything out of his lips, sealed by the command.
When the rescue team, in the snow-capped mountains, on a frosty February day, took the ship's navigator who had landed by parachute from the place of death of the crew, he was not wearing a helmet! To rip off the headset from his head could only in one case, if he was not fastened. Consequently, the navigator during the flight was not wearing an oxygen mask, which is attached to the headset, breathed the air of the cockpit, but did not lose consciousness! Repeatedly in flights, as the navigator of the ship, I had to unfasten the oxygen mask with the permission of the commander, it interferes with leaning tightly against the rubber tube of the radar sight screen, interferes with seeing well the highlights from landmarks and targets. So to be a navigator without a mask at any stage of the flight is real.
When I was already retired, I told about my disbelief in the results of the investigation of this disaster to my neighbor, a retired colonel with whom we shared a common passion for literature and, in the past, service. Already ready for his imminent departure from life, struck by an oncological disease, he told me the true reason that led to the tragic death of a friend of my youth:
“You are right, Valera, that you do not recognize this false version about this catastrophe. On the plane, the engineering and technical staff installed "KPZh-30" with unacceptable residues of alcohol vapors in it! Those who cleaned the oxygen equipment important for the life support of the crew in flight, did not fulfill the requirements set by the instructions, installed the KPZh-30 on the aircraft without blowing it until it was completely purified from alcohol vapors. The flight lasted 52 minutes. The crew breathed oxygen in flight, mixed with alcohol vapors, and was simply poisoned! This is the second time in our Air Force that people have died because of 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, like this time, concealed the true cause of the disaster in order to preserve the "skins" of the perpetrators. Due to the official position I occupied 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. To blame the dead so as not to destroy the families of many of the living - 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 the flight of Yuri Gagarin. "
The era of digital civilization has come. I found on the Internet everything that I could find about the effect of alcohol vapors on the human body when inhaled, made conclusions about how pilots could behave under the influence of alcohol, which penetrated into the blood and into the human brain directly through the lungs, bypassing the stomach. The performances are creepy!
At the initial intoxication, the muscular activity of a person is activated and the pilots could do anything, unreasonably "dragging the control wheel", adding and decreasing the engine speed, take the plane beyond the critical angles of attack and roll, for unacceptable flight speeds. In the future, a person, drugged by alcohol vapors, falls asleep and may simply die! I know of two cases of death of people in the air when: one - had a hard drink 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 one-seater suspended cockpit and had no 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 "slip through" the pre-flight medical control.
The rest of my life I imagined myself in the place of the navigator of the ship on that unfortunate flight, trying to "see" the actions of the pilots, poisoned against their will by alcohol fumes.
The reason for a similar plane crash in the Air Force, which killed people many years before this crash, was either hidden or forgotten. Failure to familiarize the flight and technical crew with that incident led to its repetition many years later. I do not remember that when checking the equipment before departure, the instructions required to sniff the oxygen supplied to the masks from the KPZh-30. “Yes, he always smells of alcohol!”, - any flyer will say.
Traffic police officers are equipped with a device that determines the presence of alcohol in the body of vehicle drivers, but aircraft crews do not have a device that can determine the presence of alcohol in oxygen before departure, which they have to breathe in flight. Maybe breathalyzers of DPS nicknames are suitable for such control of the oxygen equipment of aircraft and can protect the flight crew from forced intoxication in flight ?! Then why such a check is not carried out ?!
Every six months, "KPZh-30" is removed from each aircraft. Every six months they are rinsed with alcohol to remove dirt and grease from the system (pure oxygen, when combined with fats, can ignite!) Then "KPZH-30" is blown with air under a certain pressure, dried before being filled with liquid oxygen. This means that every six months you can expect a similar tragedy if the engineering 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 knowledge ?! In twenty-two years of service in aviation, I have never heard of such alcohol poisoning - through the oxygen system!
Later, I asked many colleagues about whether they had to deal with the fact of the presence of alcohol vapors in oxygen equipment in flight? And I heard: “We once fell out of the plane with the entire crew under the bald by flying around the aircraft after its repair at the aircraft factory! The day before, the authorities accused the aviation technicians of saving alcohol when flushing the KPZ-30 for the sake of flushing their stomachs with it, so they left enough alcohol vapors in the KPZ to prove that it was not so. "
I also found on the Internet a skirmish between the then ejected navigator of the ship and one of his colleagues, who tried to blame the deceased commander of the ship and his crew for an illiterate act when the aircraft cabin was depressurized at high altitude:
Navigator - "The Prosecutor": - I would never write what I am writing now, but you touched on our crew, and there is no one else to answer. As before, I am ironic about the system for determining the best crew, but at the time of the disaster, our crew was determined as the best in the regiment. KK *'s mask was on and fully pulled up. And he lost consciousnessfor a completely different reason, before my eyes.
I was also the navigator of the innocently accused crew commander for two years and, too, joining the navigator who survived a terrible catastrophe, I can protect him without naming him. Our deceased commander was a competent pilot, he knew aerodynamics and the plane better than many colleagues, he was a first-class pilot who treasured the lives of people whom he lifted into the air. We have repeatedly found ourselves in difficult situations in the air, from which we competently emerged. Once we got away from an obvious collision in the air with a huge Aeroflot airliner. Then the air traffic controllers made a mistake, bringing the boards together at the point of intersection of our route with the air route at the same level (the same flight altitude), without separating the planes by the time of its crossing. The commander was the first to see the IL-62 approaching us and "dived" under it. I even saw the faces of passengers clung to the windows, so dangerously we got close.
“They killed! They killed! " - shouted the wife of the commander, running to the headquarters of the regiment, learning about the death of her husband, the father of two boys of preschool age, and four more members of his crew. How right she was when they tried to instill something completely different in her.
* Air Force- air Force.
* KK - the commander of the ship.
* "Sheet" (in the Air Force)– diagram, drawing, visual teaching aid, made on a Whatman sheet measuring 220 cm by 180 cm.
* "KPZh-30"– liquid oxygen is stored on the aircraft in oxygen gasifiers, arranged according to the typeDewar vessels (KPZh-30, SKG-30, etc.).
Despite the fact that every year thousands of times more people die in car accidents than in plane crashes, the fear of flying lives in the mass consciousness. First of all, this is explained by the scale of the tragedies - the crashed liner means dozens and hundreds of simultaneous deaths. This is much more shocking than the several thousand reports of fatal accidents spanning a month.
The second reason for the fear of a plane crash is the realization of one's own helplessness and inability to somehow influence the course of events. This is almost always the case. However, the history of aeronautics has accumulated a small number of exceptions, in which people survived, falling together with the plane (or its wreckage) from a height of several kilometers without a parachute. These cases are so few that many of them have their own Wikipedia pages.
Wreckage rider
Jugoslovenski Aerotransport (now Air Serbia) flight attendant Vesna Vulovic holds the world record for survival in free fall without a parachute. She got into the Guinness Book of Records because she survived the explosion of a DC-9 aircraft at an altitude of 10 160 meters.
At the time of the explosion, Vesna was working with passengers. She immediately lost consciousness, so she did not remember the moment of the disaster or its details. Because of this, the flight attendant did not have a fear of flying - she perceived all the circumstances from hearsay. It turned out that at the time of the destruction of the plane, Vulovich was squeezed between the seat, the body of another crew member and a trolley from the buffet. In this form, the debris fell onto the snow-covered slope of the mountain and slid along it until it came to a complete stop.
Spring survived, although she received serious injuries - she broke the base of her skull, three vertebrae, both legs and a pelvis. Within 10 months, the girl's lower body was paralyzed; in general, the treatment took almost 1.5 years.
After recovering, Vulovich tried to return to her previous job, but she was not allowed to fly and was given a position in the airline's office.
Target selection
Surviving as Vesna Vulovic in a cocoon of debris is much easier than in a solo free flight. However, the second case has its own amazing examples. One of them dates back to 1943, when a US military pilot, Alan Magie, flew over France in a heavy four-engined B-17 bomber. At an altitude of 6 km, he was thrown out of the plane, and the glass roof of the station slowed down the fall. As a result, Maggie fell to the stone floor, survived and was immediately taken prisoner by the shocked what the Germans saw.
A large haystack is a great fall target. There are several known cases when people survived plane crashes, if densely growing bush was on their way. A dense forest also gives some chances, but then there is a risk of running into a branch.
The ideal option for a falling person would be snow or swamp. A soft and contracting environment that absorbs the momentum gained in flight to the center of the earth, with the right combination of circumstances, can make injuries compatible with life.
There is almost no chance of survival when falling onto the water surface. Water practically does not compress, so the result of contact with it will be the same as when colliding with concrete.
Sometimes the most unexpected objects can bring salvation. One of the main things that skydiving enthusiasts are taught is to stay away from power lines. However, there is a known case when it was a high-voltage line that saved the life of a skydiver who found himself in free flight due to an unopened parachute. He hit directly on the wires, sprung and fell to the ground from a height of several tens of meters.
Pilots and children
Airplane crash survival statistics show that there are significantly more chances of cheating death among crew members and passengers who have not reached the age of majority. With the pilots, the situation is clear - in their cockpit, passive safety systems are more reliable than those of other passengers.
Why children survive more often than others is not fully understood. However, the researchers found several reliable reasons for this issue:
- increased flexibility of bones, general relaxation of muscles and a greater percentage of subcutaneous fat, which protects internal organs from injury like a pillow;
- small growth, due to which the head is covered by the back of the chair from flying debris. This is extremely important as the main cause of death in plane crashes is brain injury;
- smaller body size, reducing the likelihood of running into a sharp object at the time of landing.
Invincible fortitude
A successful landing does not always mean a positive outcome. Not every miracle survivor is instantly found by benevolent locals. For example, in 1971, over the Amazon at an altitude of 3200 meters, a Lockheed Electra plane collapsed due to a fire caused by lightning striking a wing with a fuel tank. 17-year-old German Juliana Kopke woke up in the jungle, strapped to a chair. She was injured, but could move.
The girl remembered the words of her father, a biologist, who said that even in the impenetrable jungle, you can always find people if you follow the flow of water. Juliana walked along the forest streams, which gradually turned into rivers. With a broken collarbone, a bag of sweets and a stick, which she used to scatter the stingrays in the shallow water, the girl went out to the people 9 days later. In Italy, the film Miracles Still Happen (1974) was based on this story.
On board, including Kopke, 92 people flew. Subsequently, it was found that in addition to her fall, another 14 people survived. However, over the next few days, they all died before rescuers found them.
An episode from the film "Miracles still happen" saved the life of Larisa Savitskaya, who in 1981 flew with her husband from a honeymoon flight Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Blagoveshchensk. At an altitude of 5,200 meters, the passenger An-24 collided with a Tu-16K bomber.
Larisa and her husband were sitting in the tail of the plane. The fuselage snapped right in front of her chair, and the girl was thrown into the aisle. At that moment, she remembered the film about Julian Kopka, who, during the crash, reached the chair, squeezed into it and survived. Savitskaya did the same. Part of the plane's body, in which the girl remained, fell on a birch grove that softened the blow. She was in the fall for about 8 minutes. Larisa was the only survivor, she received serious injuries, but remained conscious and retained the ability to move independently.
The surname Savitskaya was inscribed twice in the Russian version of the Guinness Book of Records. She is listed as the person who survived the fall from the highest height. The second record is rather sad - Larisa became the one who received the minimum compensation for physical damage. She was paid only 75 rubles - this is exactly how much, according to the standards of the State Insurance, then the survivors of the plane crash were supposed to.
I have always wondered what people experience in a falling plane. Summarizing the experience of eyewitnesses who survived the plane crashes, we can draw one interesting conclusion - the devil is not so terrible as he is portrayed ...
First, be more afraid when driving to the airport. In 2014, more than 33 million flights were flown in the world, there were 21 plane crashes (moreover, most of the troubles in the sky are caused by cargo transportation), in which only 990 people died. Those. the probability of a plane crash is only 0.0001%. During the same year, in Russia alone, 26,963 people died in road accidents, and according to the WHO, 1.2 million people die in road accidents in the world every year and about 50 million are injured.
Secondly, judging by the statistics, you have much more chances of dying on an escalator in the subway or contracting AIDS than dying on an airplane. So the chance of dying in a plane crash is 1 in 11,000,000, while, for example, in a car crash - 1 in 5,000, so now it is much safer to fly than to drive a car. Moreover, aviation technology is becoming safer every year. By the way, Africa remains the most unfavorable continent from the point of view of flight safety: only 3% of all flights in the world were performed here, but 43% of plane crashes occurred!
Thirdly, with strong overloads, you will not remember anything. According to the research of the Interstate Aviation Committee, the consciousness of a person in a falling plane is turned off. In most cases - in the first seconds of a fall. At the moment of collision with the ground, there is not a single person in the cabin who would be conscious. The body's defense reaction is said to be triggered. This thesis is confirmed by those who managed to survive in plane crashes. Silence accompanies minor aircraft incidents, video compilation
Fourth, the experience of surviving plane crashes. The story of Larisa Savitskaya is included in the Guinness Book of Records. In 1981, at an altitude of 5220 meters, the An-24 aircraft in which she was flying collided with a military bomber. In that crash, 37 people died. Only Larisa managed to survive.
I was 20 years old then, - says Larisa Savitskaya. - Volodya and I, my husband, flew from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Blagoveshchensk. I immediately fell asleep after takeoff. And she woke up from the roar and screams. Cold burned my face. Then I was told that our plane had its wings cut off and the roof blown off. But I don't remember the sky above. I remember there was a fog, like in a bathhouse. I looked at Volodya. He didn't move. Blood spurted down his face. I somehow immediately realized that he was dead. And she prepared to die too. Then the plane collapsed and I lost consciousness. When I regained consciousness, I was surprised that I was still alive. I felt that I was lying on something hard. It turned out in the aisle between the chairs. And next to the whistling abyss. There were no thoughts in my head. Fear too. In the state in which I was - 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, having fallen into the jungle, remained alive. I didn’t hope to survive. I just wanted to die without suffering. I noticed the bars of the metal floor. And I thought: if I fell sideways, it would be very painful. I decided to change position and group. Then she crawled to the next row of chairs (our row stood near the break), sat down in a chair, grabbed the armrests and rested her feet on the floor. She did all this automatically. Then I look - the earth. Very close. She grabbed the armrests with all her might and pushed off the chair. Then - like a green explosion from the branches of larch. And again a blackout. 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. A man and a woman were lying dead under the chairs ...
Later it was established that the piece of the plane - four meters long and three meters wide, on which Savitskaya fell, planned like an autumn leaf. He fell into a soft swampy clearing. Larisa lay unconscious for seven hours. Then I sat in a chair in the rain for two more days and waited for death. 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 her spine. You can't go with such injuries. But Larisa refused the stretcher and reached the helicopter herself.
The plane crash and the death of her husband stayed 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.
Another case confirms the loss of consciousness. Arina Vinogradova is one of the two surviving flight attendants of the Il-86 aircraft, which in 2002, barely taking off, fell 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 the whole life is scrolled before the eyes. This was not the case with me, ”says Arina to Izvestia. - Tanya and I were sitting in the first row of the third saloon, at the emergency exit, but not in service seats, but in passenger seats. Tanya is opposite me. The flight was technical - we just had to return to Pulkovo. At some point, the plane began to shake. This happens at the "IL-86". But somehow 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 drifted away somewhere, and I fell into a black void. I woke up from a sharp jolt. At first I did not understand anything. Then I figured it out a little. It turned out that I was lying on a warm engine, littered with chairs. Itself could not unfasten. She began to scream, pound on metal and shake Tanya, who then raised her head, then lost consciousness again. We were dragged out by firemen and taken to different hospitals.
Arina still works as a flight attendant. The plane crash, she said, left no trauma in my soul. However, the incident influenced Tatyana Moiseeva very strongly. Since then, she no longer flies, although she has not left the aviation.
Fifth, the plane crash is a positive experience for survivors! Scientists have come to unique conclusions: people who survived plane crashes later turned out to be healthier from a psychological point of view. They showed less anxiety, anxiety, did not become depressed and did not experience post-traumatic stress, in contrast to the subjects from the control group, who had never had such an experience.
In conclusion, I bring to your attention a speech by Rick Elias, who was sitting in the front row of the plane that made an emergency landing in the Hudson River in New York in January 2009. You will find out what thoughts came to him as the doomed plane fell down ...
