At what stage do passenger planes crash more often? Latest Plane Crash: Terrible plane crashes in recent years

The most common cause of civil aircraft accidents is human error.

The USA is the absolute leader in the number of plane crashes since 1945

As a result of the terrorist attack, every twelfth of the crashed airliners crashes

On November 29, a plane carrying players from the Brazilian team Chapecoense crashed in Colombia. At least 76 people have died, and doctors are fighting for the lives of 13 people. According to preliminary data, the plane crashed into the jungle because it ran out of fuel several dozen miles from the airport.


CRASH STATISTICS

Half of all plane crashes are caused by pilot errors. Some of them neglect their job descriptions, others do not have sufficient experience, and others are simply negligent. This group also includes situations when a pilot intentionally directs a plane into a building or into the ground in order to take his own life.

1/5 of all plane crashes are the result of equipment failure. If at the beginning and middle of the last century we were talking, as a rule, about design flaws in the creation of aircraft, now it usually means poorly done repairs. Thus, on August 12, 1985, due to the negligence of welders, a Boeing 747 crashed near Tokyo.

Every tenth aircraft crash occurs due to unsuitable weather conditions. This is fog, thunderstorm, heavy rain, snow or very strong wind. For this reason, on April 10, 2010, an airliner carrying the then President of Poland, Lech Kaczynski, crashed near Smolensk.

In 8% of cases, plane crashes are caused by the actions of terrorists and hijackers. This category includes, for example, the collision of airliners with the buildings of the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001.

6% of plane crashes are caused by air traffic controller errors. In particular, due to incorrect actions of the dispatcher, on July 1, 2002, two planes collided over Lake Constance in Switzerland.

In other cases, it is not possible to determine the cause of the disaster, or it is quite rare (a crocodile crawled out of the luggage compartment, the plane collided with a flock of birds, or fell into a cloud of volcanic ash). Sometimes officials voice completely absurd versions of plane crashes.

“The plane fell due to gravity, since the machine is heavier than air,” Andrey Deliev, prosecutor of the Chusovsky district of the Perm region, said in November 2010, commenting on the crash of the MiG-31 fighter.

WHERE DO PLANES CRASH MOST OFTEN?



The leader in the number of plane crashes is the United States. But this does not mean that flying in America is more dangerous than in Russia or Mexico: civil aviation is widespread in the United States, and the lion's share of crashes occurs on light aircraft.

The number of plane crashes in Russia in the first half of 2016 did not decrease, but increased. During this period, 22 plane and helicopter crashes were registered, and for the same period in 2015 - 12. According to information from the JACDEC research center for 2016, the largest Russian air carrier is in 36th place in the flight safety rating.

It is worth keeping in mind that the likelihood of dying in a plane crash is 62 times lower than in a car accident.

Is it very typical for Russian planes to fall from Ukrainian missiles? Have you already counted a lot?

It sounds blasphemous to mention a Ukrainian missile after such events:

1 Malaysian Boeing shot down by a beech tree (the report of the Dutch prosecutor's office proves this irrefutably)

2 On the night of June 14, 2014, a military transport aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force Il-76 was shot down by a shot from an anti-aircraft missile system and a long burst from a heavy machine gun while landing at the airfield in Lugansk. There were 40 Ukrainian military personnel and 9 crew members on board the Il-76. They all died. This feat was celebrated Wagnerians, who were in Ukraine at that time. The Ukrainian special service has documentary information that part of the “Wagnerites” fired at the Lugansk airport almost every day in the summer of 2014.

What if we remember history?

On September 1, 1983, a tragedy occurred in the skies over the Pacific Ocean, which some Russian sources bashfully call an “incident” to this day: a Soviet air defense fighter shot down a South Korean civilian airliner that violated the air border of the USSR. All 269 people on board, including 23 children, were killed.

Boeing 707 crash in Karel II

Everyone is now hearing about the crash of the Malaysian Boeing over the Donbass. Less known, but nevertheless known about it, is the story of how a South Korean Boeing was shot down over the Soviet Far East on September 1, 1983. It turns out that this is not the first South Korean Boeing shot down over the Soviet Union. There was one more.

On April 20, 1978, in the area of ​​the Kola Peninsula over the territory of the USSR, another South Korean Boeing 707 was shot down, flying along the route Paris - Anchorage - Seoul
On April 20, 1978, in the area of ​​the Kola Peninsula, the USSR border was crossed by a passenger Boeing-707-321B (HL7429) of Korean Air Lines (KAL) that deviated from its route, operating flight 902 - Paris-Anchorage-Seoul.
The Korean Boeing continued to fly towards Severomorsk. Dmitry Tsarkov, who in 1978 held the position of commander of the 21st Air Defense Corps of the USSR, reports to Vladimir Dmitriev, who at that time held the position of commander of the 10th Air Defense Army of the USSR, that the air defense is ready to shoot down the intruder. Dmitriev did not give permission, saying that we could shoot down our plane; the exact identity of the plane was not yet clear. The offender was walking at a speed of 15 kilometers per minute (900 km/h). At this time, the intruder crossed the border of the USSR. A flight of fighters was lifted into the sky.
The plane was detected by Soviet air defense radars and initially identified as a Boeing 747. The anti-aircraft missile system was put on alert. A Su-15TM fighter ("Flegon-F") under the control of Captain A. Bosov was sent to intercept.

According to the testimony of the captain of the airliner, Kim Chang Kee, the interceptor approached his plane from the right side (and not from the left, as required by the rules of the international civil aviation organization - ICAO). The captain states that he reduced his speed and turned on his navigation lights, indicating that he was ready to follow the Soviet fighter for landing. Attempts by Captain Kim Chang Kee to contact the interceptor pilot on frequency 121.5 were detected by the air traffic control tower in Rovaniemi, Finland. According to the official statement of the Soviet side, the airliner evaded the requirement to land. When the interceptor pilot reported that the intruder was in fact not a 747, but a Boeing 707, the command decided that it was an RC-135 electronic reconnaissance aircraft (produced on the basis of the Boeing 707 airliner) and gave the order to destroy goals.

According to American radio intercepts, the interceptor pilot tried for several minutes to convince the command to cancel the order, because he saw the KAL airline emblem on the airliner and inscriptions in hieroglyphs, however, after confirming the order, he fired two P-60 missiles at the liner. The first of them missed the target, and the second exploded, tearing off part of the left wing, causing depressurization of the aircraft and killing two passengers with fragments.

Due to depressurization of the cabin, the airliner began an emergency descent and disappeared from the radar screens of the Soviet air defense system. The interceptor pilot also lost the damaged airliner in the clouds.

Over the next hour, emergency flight 902 flew at low altitude across the entire Kola Peninsula, looking for a place for an emergency landing and, after several unsuccessful attempts, landed in the gathering dusk on the ice of Lake Korpiyarvi, already on the territory of Karelia. Throughout this entire time, the air defense had no information about the fate and location of the aircraft.

The USSR refused to cooperate in the investigation of this incident with international experts and did not provide data from the black boxes seized from the plane. The plane itself was dismantled and removed in parts. The Korean airline refused it so as not to pay for the evacuation of the plane. 95 passengers were taken to Kem, and then to Murmansk airport. On April 23, 1978, they were handed over to representatives of the US Consulate General in Leningrad and Pan American Airlines and sent to Helsinki. Su-15 pilot Captain A. Bosov was awarded the Order of the Red Star for completing a combat mission.

The Boeing commander, the highest-class pilot Lee Chang Hui, a former military pilot, managed to land a barely controllable 200-ton aircraft on a frozen lake. This saved the lives of the remaining passengers. The Boeing commander was later questioned. He said that he fought as a fighter pilot back in Vietnam. Finished fighting with the rank of colonel. Then he worked for 10 years in a civil airline, and also had 10 years of experience flying on the route of flight 902. He has been flying with this crew for 7 years. The last flight before this flight on this route was a week ago. The weather during the flight was good. When asked how you could have gone so off course, the commander replied that the navigation equipment had allegedly failed.

Years later, a flight map of Flight 902 was released based on declassified black box data, showing that the plane began a smooth, wide right turn shortly after reaching Iceland on the Amsterdam-Anchorage leg. This turn was too smooth to be done by hand, and The only explanation can be a malfunction of the navigation equipment.

Every 2-3 seconds someone lands or takes off. Some are happy about this, others are afraid. Is it worth giving in to fear? The answer will be given by statistics: how often planes crash, where it happens and how high the probability of a crash is.

About 100 thousand planes take off into the sky every day, and, oddly enough, the same number successfully land. Aircraft transport about 4.5 billion people annually, which is more than half the world's population. How many of them do you think add up to the statistics of those killed in plane crashes? No more than 1000 per year. The ratio is impressive, isn't it?

Over the entire existence of civil aviation (almost 100 years), less than 150 thousand people have died. This is less than the number of deaths per month in traffic accidents around the world.

How many planes crash per year?

According to Wikipedia, over the past 6 years, there have been 107 fatal plane crashes worldwide, killing 3,245 people. This is approximately 540 victims per year. It is important to clarify that the statistics take into account both commercial airliners and private small aircraft, and the number of victims is indicated taking into account those killed on the ground. That is, if a falling plane rammed a bus with 10 passengers, then they are also included in the statistics. Therefore, the real numbers of passenger plane crashes are much lower.

2010: 14 accidents in which 792 people died. The biggest tragedy was the unsuccessful landing of an Indian low-cost airline on a Boeing 737 (158 victims) and the crash of a Polish TU-154 near Smolensk (96 deaths).

2011 passed without any loud plane crashes. The largest number of victims (77 people) was in the Iranian Boeing 727, which could not be landed due to bad weather conditions. In total, 45 plane crashes were recorded, in which 552 people died. As is clear from the statistics, these were mainly light aircraft with no more than 10 people on board.

year 2012: 23 accidents, 315 dead. The worst case was the crash of a Pakistani Boeing 737, in which everyone on board (127 people) died.

year 2013 was relatively calm: only 5 aircraft accidents, the total number of victims was 128 people. 50 of them died in a Boeing 737 that crashed near Kazan.

year 2014 severely spoiled airline statistics: 15 accidents, with a total number of victims - 980 people. The most significant incident was the downing of a Boeing 777 over Ukraine, with 298 people on board.

2015 claimed 478 lives in just 5 plane crashes. The loudest was the Russian Airbus A321 that crashed over the terrorist attack, killing 224 people.

2016 remembered for the crash of the TU-154 of the Russian Ministry of Defense, in which 100 people died (92 passengers and 8 crew members. In total, over 12 months, air transport caused the death of 389 people.

2017 went down in history as the safest in the entire history of civil aviation. In just 12 months, 67 people died.

In which country do planes crash more often?

If we take into account exclusively passenger air transportation, then there is no clearly defined “Bermuda Triangle” in which planes most often crash. But if you take statistics on all air transport, the result will be somewhat unexpected.

Over the same 6 years, the most plane crashes occurred... in Russia - 41, the number of deaths - 559 people. During the same period, there were 11 aircraft accidents in the United States. It's interesting to note that the last one was back in 2013. Next comes Ukraine (7 disasters), Congo (6) and Germany (4, all in 2010).

Overall, the numbers are very encouraging. Having learned how often planes crash according to statistics, we hope you will feel more confident in flight.

In the specialized literature there is a concept "competent passenger"- a person who makes the most of his chances of survival in an emergency.

In 1974, during the crash of the B-707 plane in Pago Dago in Samoa, out of one hundred and one passengers, only five survived, who later said that they had carefully read the memo and listened to the flight attendant’s instructions. Therefore, to escape, they used the emergency exits on the wing, while other passengers created a stampede, rushing to the traditional entrance and exit. The commission found that most passengers would have been saved if they had simply known where the escape hatches were and how to use them.

Today, the airplane is one of the safest modes of transport. This is true, but only within the framework of statistics. It should be added that while it is still possible to survive in a car accident or train crash, a plane crash usually means the death of all passengers on board.

When on January 26, 1972, a bomb exploded on board a DC-9 of the Yugoslav airlines JAT, and the wreckage of the liner fell from a height of more than 10 km, it was clear to everyone that none of the passengers were saved. However, flight attendant Vesna Vulović survived. How could this happen? Some believe that Vesna Vulovich was saved by the fact that she had low blood pressure - she quickly lost consciousness, and this saved her from a heart attack. Others simply believe that a miracle happened. As a result of the disaster, Vulovich herself developed amnesia - she does not remember the explosion itself, or even what happened an hour before it. Therefore, it is unlikely that we will ever know the truth about this unusual case. Unusual because it had never happened before that someone had survived the crash of a plane flying so high.

More often plane crashes in which someone survived, is an unsuccessful takeoff of an aircraft or its forced landing. The forces acting in such cases are not as destructive as, for example, when two aircraft collide, tanks full of fuel explode, or fall from a great height. However, there is always a chance to survive, and it depends on many factors.

If you look at photographs of plane crashes, you can often see the tail of the plane sticking out of the wreckage, sometimes even intact. The tail is the last one to touch the ground during a fall, so the passenger sitting in the back has the greatest chance of surviving. The size of the aircraft also matters: the larger the car, the safer it is.

Passenger planes do not, like fighter planes, have a catapult for the pilot; you also cannot escape from a falling plane by parachute. Everything on passenger airliners is designed solely to prevent bodily harm from occurring in the cabin during a flight.

Unlike a car, an airplane, when it hits a stationary structure or any vehicle, usually does not stop, but rushes on. Therefore, passengers are not exposed to sudden impacts. An exception to this would be when an airplane collides with a mountain. In this case, the chances of salvation are minimal.

In other cases, if an emergency occurs during flight, the crew may decide to make an emergency landing, which is quite likely in a deserted area. At the same time, if conditions allow and the plane is controllable, they try to land on relatively flat terrain without obstacles, and in extreme cases, on a forest. In this case, injuries and the number of victims increase, but if the plane does not immediately fall apart and does not burn, then the chances of rescue increase.

There are several main types of emergency situations. In the air, in order to act correctly in them, you must not only know how to behave, but also mentally make the path to salvation in advance. This gives you more chances that your memory will not fail you in a dangerous moment.

  • Accidents during takeoff and landing

It is unlikely that you will be warned about this type of accident in advance. Therefore, the most reasonable tactic is to take preliminary personal safety measures before each takeoff and landing. For example, wearing outerwear: a coat or jacket (not synthetic!) can protect you from burns if you have to get out of a fire. Keep your shoes on, even if they are high heels, in case you have to walk on debris, burning plastic, etc. A woman should take off her high-heeled shoes only in front of the inflatable ladder, without blocking the escape route for other passengers and not let go of her shoes in order to immediately put on her shoes on the ground. Of course, you need to take off your tie, scarf, glasses, hair clips, etc. — in an extreme situation, even a pen in the side pocket of a jacket is dangerous. Carefully adjust your seat belt before each takeoff and landing. It should be firmly secured as low as possible near your hips. Check to see if there are any heavy suitcases overhead.

Immediately before an accident, it is usually possible to assume a safe, fixed position. It is usually recommended to bend over and clasp your hands tightly behind your knees (or grab your ankles). Your head should be placed on your knees, and if this does not work, tilt it as low as possible. Your feet should be placed on the floor, extending them as far as possible (but not under the front seat, which could get stuck in an accident).

The FAA recommends using the seat in front of you for another fixed position. You should place your arms crossed on the back of the chair and press your head to your hands. Also stretch your legs and lean forward. And, of course, both poses can only be taken with a seat belt fastened. At the moment of impact, you should tense up as much as possible and prepare for a significant overload. Its direction in most accidents is forward and, perhaps, downward.

Typically, emergency exits are located on the left and right sides of the fuselage. All passenger exits, approaches to them and opening means are clearly marked from a distance, making them easier to identify. The flight attendant describes the location of all exits from the cabin in a brief instruction. Having put aside all pre-boarding worries, listen to her carefully. Be sure to mentally imagine your path to the nearest exit. And if you are sitting next to the emergency hatch, then you have an additional responsibility: the lives of many people depend on whether you can open it. However, it is not always possible to open the nearest exit (flame outside, deformation of the fuselage in this place, etc.), so you need to remember about all the ways of escape.

For takeoff and landing accidents, suddenness is common, and you may not wait for a warning from the crew, so be aware of all events overboard (smoke, sudden descent, engine stops, etc.) in order to take a fixed position. However, under no circumstances leave your seat until the plane comes to a complete stop, do not cause panic. Only a professional can judge with confidence the danger of what is happening.

One of the most common accidents on board an airplane is bruises and other injuries sustained during turbulence.

Turbulence- these are various turbulences and air currents that move chaotically within the atmosphere in different directions. More than half of the cases of turbulence occur with an airplane at an altitude of over 6 thousand meters, 30% - at an altitude of up to 3 thousand meters and 5-10% - in the range from 3 to 6 thousand meters. Most often this happens on sunny days over houses or over an area with a strong temperature contrast (sand, forest, lake, road) - the earth's surface warms up unevenly, and the heated air masses rise upward at different speeds, which is why the plane can take off in ascending streams or fall into air pockets.

This is exactly what happened to the American Airlines Boeing 747, which flew over the Pacific Ocean on December 28, 1997. Once in a turbulent zone, the huge machine instantly lost several tens of meters of altitude. All loose objects on board immediately flew up, hit the ceiling and fell on the heads of the passengers sitting in their seats. The most severely injured people were those who, although they were sitting in their seats, were not wearing seat belts. The plane itself was not damaged and continued to fly, but one woman died as a result of her injuries, and the remaining 100 wounded required medical attention.

Since airplanes fly at altitudes where the air is very thin and its pressure is much lower than usual, the cabin of the airliner must be sealed - as soon as the slightest crack appears, all the air will escape from the plane through it, and this is very dangerous. Therefore, most modern aircraft are equipped with oxygen masks that automatically hover over each passenger seat in the event of depressurization of the cabin, and the pilots immediately begin to reduce their flight altitude.

Information about an approaching disaster, nervousness of the crew, smoke or fire escaping from the engines - all this can cause panic. First of all, you should never lose your head. It is advisable to become familiar with all the emergency systems that are on the plane before takeoff. It’s worth thinking over your own evacuation plan - figuring out where the emergency exit is and figuring out what can be done in the event of a disaster.

If there is a threat of an emergency landing, you need to get rid of sharp objects (pencils, pens, etc.); It would be nice to have something soft (for example, a pillow) to protect your head.

Decompression(thin air on an airplane). Rapid decompression usually begins with a deafening roar (air is escaping). The salon fills with dust and fog. Visibility is sharply reduced. Air leaves a person's lungs quickly and cannot be retained. At the same time, ringing in the ears and pain in the intestines (gases expand) are likely.

Without waiting for commands or assistance from the crew, immediately put on an oxygen mask. The flight attendant will tell you where it is and how to use it at the beginning of the flight. The mask must be put on, and not just pressed to the nose and mouth - even with oxygen supplied, you can lose consciousness and drop the mask. For the same reason, you should not help someone before you put on a mask yourself, even if it is your child: if you do not have time to help yourself, both of you will find yourself without oxygen.

Decompression is an emergency situation that the crew immediately begins to correct by lowering the flight altitude. Below three thousand meters, the oxygen content can already be considered normal. Therefore, if signs of decompression occur, immediately after putting on the mask, fasten your seat belts and prepare for a sharp descent or “hard” landing.

Fire on board the plane. Most passengers estimate that during an overboard fire they will have about five minutes after landing to exit the plane. However, experience shows that it is better to count on one or two minutes. Fires are involved in approximately 20% of aircraft accidents; over 70% of people involved in plane crashes with fires survive.

It is very important to remember the location of the exits. In the event of a fire, this is also necessary because the smoke makes it difficult not only to breathe, but also to see the signs. And the most important thing in case of a fire is to immediately after stopping the plane, head to the nearest exit. Wherein:

  • protect your skin - you should wear a coat, hat, blanket;
  • do not breathe smoke, protect yourself with clothing, bend down or even make your way to the exit on all fours - there should be less smoke below; remember - smoke, not fire, is the first danger;
  • remove nylon tights and stockings; if they melt, they can cause severe burns;
  • do not stand in the crowd at the exit if the line is not moving, remember that if there are other exits; if the passage is blocked, make your way through the chairs, lowering their backs;
  • before takeoff, count and remember the number of seats in front and behind you on the way to the emergency exit, then you will be able to get to it even by touch in impenetrable smoke;
  • do not take hand luggage with you, it could cost you your life;
  • do not open emergency hatches in a place where there is fire and smoke outside;
  • be decisive and disciplined, fight panic on board by any means, provide maximum assistance to the flight attendant;
  • Don't become the cause of a fire yourself: fire should be handled on board an airplane in the same way as in a fuel tanker.

Landing on water. A passenger who has a good chance of being rescued when landing on water must have some idea of ​​the aircraft's buoyancy position before he lands on the water. Some planes float horizontally, others with their tail submerged, and some with their nose submerged. Knowing this will prevent you from running in a panic to the emergency exit at the rear of the plane if that exit ends up underwater. You should also know in advance what water rescue equipment (vests, rafts, etc.) are available on board, where they are located and how to use them. Before sinking, the plane can float from 10 to 40 minutes. However, if the fuselage is damaged, this time may be significantly shorter.

After splashdown, life rafts should be launched into the water, which inflate automatically when released. If this does not happen, then you need to give a strong jerk to the halyard, which leads to the cylinder of the gas filling system. The time it takes to bring the raft into working condition is approximately one minute in summer and three minutes in winter.

Catastrophic situations on airplanes show two dangerous types of passenger behavior - panic and apathy. Oddly enough, numbness is much more common. We must remember this in order to prevent such a reaction in ourselves and under no circumstances stop fighting for our salvation.

How to survive a plane crash on the ground. Ed Galea, an Australian professor who survived a plane crash, wondered how he could improve his own chances of survival. The most important thing is to never forget that the plane can get into an accident. Naturally, we are not talking about a plane falling from a great height - it is almost impossible to survive in a car falling from a height of 10 thousand meters, however, the number of incidents that occur on the ground is much higher, and we should not forget that they also die People. Moreover, according to statistics, in the period from 1983 to 2000, 95% of passengers survived aircraft accidents in the United States. For example, in 2005 on board the liner Air France, which caught fire during landing at Toronto Airport, there were 309 people, and all survived. This incident was called the "Miracle in Toronto".

Ed Galea was on board a plane in 1985 that, as it happens, went off the runway and caught fire. In this accident, 55 passengers flying with him died. Since then, he has been studying the rules of survival on board. During his work, he interviewed more than 2 thousand survivors of 105 aircraft accidents. Based on their experience, he derived a number of simple rules.

I have always been interested in what people experience in a falling plane. Summarizing the experience of eyewitnesses who survived plane crashes, we can draw one interesting conclusion - the devil is not as terrible as he is painted...

First, be more afraid when driving to the airport. In 2014, over 33 million flights were made in the world, 21 plane crashes occurred (and most of the troubles in the sky occur in 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 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, your chances of dying on an escalator in the subway or contracting AIDS are much greater 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 accident - 1 in 5,000, so now it is much safer to fly than to drive a car. Moreover, every year aviation technology becomes safer. By the way, Africa remains the most unfavorable continent in terms of flight safety: only 3% of all flights in the world are carried out here, but 43% of plane crashes have occurred!

Thirdly, under severe overloads, you will not remember anything 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 impact with the ground there is not a single person in the cabin who is conscious. As they say, the body’s defense reaction is triggered. This thesis is confirmed by those who managed to survive plane crashes. Silence also accompanies minor air incidents, video selection

Fourth, the experience of survivors of 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 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. 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 strength 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.

Another case confirms the blackout. 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.

Fifth, a plane crash is a positive experience for survivors! Scientists have come to a unique conclusion: people who survived plane crashes subsequently turned out to be healthier from a psychological point of view. They showed less worry, anxiety, did not become depressed and did not experience post-traumatic stress, unlike subjects from the control group who had never had such an experience.

In conclusion, I bring to your attention the speech of Rick Elias, who sat 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 his mind as the doomed plane fell down...

Still afraid of flying?-)