How do you feel during a plane crash? How do people feel when a plane crashes?

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

It sounds blasphemous to mention Ukrainian missile after such events:

1 Malaysian Boeing, hit 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 plane was shot down by a shot from an anti-aircraft missile system and a long burst from a heavy machine gun Air Force Ukrainian aircraft Il-76 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?

September 1, 1983, in the sky above Pacific Ocean a tragedy occurred, 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 they shot down South Korean Boeing over the Soviet Far East 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.

April 20, 1978 in the area Kola Peninsula another South Korean Boeing 707 was shot down over the territory of the USSR, flying on 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 was 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 Ki, the interceptor approached his plane from the right side (and not from the left, as required by the rules of the international organization civil aviation- ICAO). The captain claims to have reduced speed and turned on the navigation lights, indicating readiness 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 airliner. 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 to forced landing and, after several unsuccessful attempts, landed in the gathering twilight 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 along 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.

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 freight 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 the collision with the ground, there is not a single person in the cabin who would be conscious. As they say, the body’s defense reaction is triggered. 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. A dead man and woman lay under the chairs...

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 aircraft, 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 on the plane that made emergency landing into the Hudson River in New York in January 2009. You will find out what thoughts came to his mind while the doomed plane was falling down...

Despite the fact that thousands of times more people die in car accidents every year than in airplane crashes, the fear of flying lives in the public consciousness. First of all, this is explained by the scale of the tragedies - a fallen airliner means tens and hundreds of simultaneous deaths. This is much more shocking than several thousand reports of fatal accidents spread over a month.

The second reason for fear of a plane crash is the awareness of one’s own helplessness and inability to somehow influence the course of events. This is almost always true. However, the history of aeronautics has accumulated a small number of exceptions in which people survived falling with the plane (or its debris) from a height of several kilometers without a parachute. These cases are so few that many of them have their own Wikipedia pages.

Wreck Rider

Vesna Vulović, a flight attendant at Jugoslovenski Aerotransport (today called Air Serbia), holds the world record for surviving a free fall without a parachute. She entered the Guinness Book of Records because she survived the explosion of a DC-9 plane 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 either the moment of the disaster or its details. Because of this, the flight attendant did not develop a fear of flying - she perceived all the circumstances from other people’s words. It turned out that at the time of the destruction of the plane, Vulovich was pinned between the seat, the body of another crew member and the buffet cart. In this form, the debris fell onto the snow-covered mountainside and slid along it until it came to a complete stop.

Vesna remained alive, although she received serious injuries - she broke the base of her skull, three vertebrae, both legs and her pelvis. For 10 months, the girl’s lower body was paralyzed; in total, treatment took almost 1.5 years.

After recovery, Vulovich tried to return to her previous job, but she was not allowed to fly and was given a position in the airline office.

Target selection

Surviving like Vesna Vulovich in a cocoon of debris is much easier than in solo free flight. However, the second case also has its own surprising examples. One of them dates back to 1943, when US military pilot Alan Magee flew over France in a heavy four-engine B-17 bomber. At an altitude of 6 km he was thrown out of the plane, and the glass roof of the station slowed his fall. As a result, Magee fell on the stone floor, remained alive and was immediately captured by the Germans, shocked by what he saw.

An excellent fall target would be a large haystack. There are several known cases of people surviving plane crashes if densely growing bushes got in their way. A dense forest also offers some chances, but there is a risk of running into branches.

The ideal option for a falling person would be snow or a swamp. A soft and compressible environment that absorbs the inertia accumulated during the flight to the center of the earth, under a successful combination of circumstances, can make injuries compatible with life.

There is almost no chance of survival if you fall onto the surface of the water. Water is practically not compressed, so the result of contact with it will be the same as in a collision with concrete.

Sometimes the most unexpected objects can bring salvation. One of the main things 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 a parachute that did not open. It hit the wires, bounced back and fell to the ground from a height of several tens of meters.

Pilots and children

Statistics on survival in plane crashes show that crew members and passengers under age are much more likely to cheat death. The situation with pilots is clear - the passive safety systems in their cockpit are more reliable than those of other passengers.

Why children survive more often than others is not completely clear. However, researchers have established several reliable reasons for this issue:

increased bone flexibility, general muscle relaxation and higher percentage subcutaneous fat, which protects internal organs from injury like a pillow;
short stature, due to which the head is covered by the back of the chair from flying debris. This is extremely important, since the main cause of death in plane crashes is brain injury;
smaller body size, reducing the likelihood of running into some sharp object at the moment of landing.

Invincible fortitude

A successful landing does not always mean a positive outcome. Not every miraculously surviving person is instantly found by well-disposed local residents. For example, in 1971, over the Amazon at an altitude of 3,200 meters, a Lockheed Electra aircraft collapsed due to a fire caused by lightning striking a wing with a fuel tank. 17-year-old German Juliana Kopke came to her senses in the jungle, strapped to a chair. She was injured, but could move.

The girl remembered the words of her biologist father, 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 with which she dispersed stingrays in shallow water, the girl came out to people 9 days later. In Italy, the film “Miracles Still Happen” (1974) was made based on this story.

There were 92 people on board, including Kopke. It was subsequently established that besides her, 14 more people survived the fall. 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 honeymoon flight Komsomolsk-on-Amur - Blagoveshchensk. At an altitude of 5,200 meters, a passenger An-24 collided with a Tu-16K bomber.

Larisa and her husband were sitting in the back of the plane. The fuselage broke right in front of her seat, and the girl was thrown into the aisle. At that moment, she remembered the film about Julian Kopka, who during the crash reached a chair, pressed herself into it and survived. Savitskaya did the same. Part of the plane's body, in which the girl remained, fell onto 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.

Savitskaya's surname is included twice in the Russian version of the Guinness Book of Records. She is listed as a survivor of a fall from greatest height. The second record is rather sad - Larisa became the one who received minimal compensation for physical damage. She was paid only 75 rubles - that’s exactly how much, according to State Insurance standards, survivors of a plane crash were then entitled to.

A storm has begun. Armchair experts on the Internet claim that after a storm it will only be easier for divers to work - the water itself will wash many things ashore. Those professionals who are now examining the sunken TU-154 think differently. Bad weather, on the contrary, will confuse all the cards. The head of the search and rescue unit of the southern regional search and rescue team of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Vyacheslav Ivashchenko, told Komsomolskaya Pravda about how the search for the crashed plane is going on.

- Under what conditions do you have to work?

Almost ideal. The plane lies on a large underwater field. The depth is approximately the same everywhere - about 25 meters. That is, you can search during the day without special lighting; natural conditions are enough. The bottom is solid sandstone. There is almost no silt or dirt.

- And what can you find?

Large parts of the aircraft, small ones, some personal items. If we manage to find electronic devices - phones, tablets - they are immediately taken upstairs. Then they are sent for examination. Yesterday we lifted an aircraft engine weighing three tons from the bottom. There are also fragments of bodies (according to data, as of 18:40 on December 28, the remains of 16 people were found - Author)

Divers working underwater at the Tu-154 crash site.

- Are there any whole bodies?

Alas. This happens when you hit the water hard. The dead are literally torn apart. I saw something similar during the Armenian Airlines Airbus crash 10 years ago. Also near Adler. The injuries are similar.

(Recall that information appeared in the media that the bodies of the dead were found without clothes. Now it is clear why. By the way, the data that the passengers were wearing life jackets was also not confirmed.)

- How do you look for fragments at the bottom?

An anchor is lowered from a ship to the surface. I tie myself to it with a rope and begin to swim slowly in a circle. Then the rope lengthens, and I swim in a larger circle. The bottom is searched using such divergent trajectories. Small objects are tied with a rope and lifted by partners in the boat on the surface. Large aircraft parts are pulled out using a crane. I indicate the coordinates, a ship or barge with a lift floats on the surface. Then the find is tied with slings and lifted.

- What is more: personal belongings or aircraft parts?

90% - fuselage elements. Passengers' belongings are rarely found.

- They say the storm will help you.

No. The storm will shake everything at the bottom. Something may shift to already tested areas. In addition, now everything is clearly visible under water. And after the storm, the clouds will rise and work will become much more difficult.

- Is it psychologically difficult to swim underwater and find remains?

You need to set yourself up correctly. I focus on the idea that there is difficult but important work to be done. Return their loved ones to the relatives. Only I can do this. There will be no others. This kind of motivation helps.

- Are there any tricks to relax after work and reboot?

I return to my family, play with the children, and just try not to think about what lies at the bottom. Again, I remind myself that I don’t have an ordinary profession where anything can happen.

Vyacheslav Ivashchenko said that divers from the Ministry of Emergency Situations work hard all day long. They go out to sea in the morning, when it begins to get light, and return to shore only in the evening when the sun sets. But even so, each submariner manages to work no more than two hours. The rest of the time is spent on diving and ascent, preparing equipment and refilling oxygen cylinders.

PHOTO REPORT

Rescuers from the Ministry of Emergency Situations lift the wreckage of a Tu-154 from the bottom of the Black Sea

HELP "KP"

The search operation involves 45 ships, 15 deep-sea vehicles, 192 divers, 12 aircraft and five helicopters. A self-propelled crane arrived in the area of the plane crash to lift large debris.

About one and a half thousand fragments of the aircraft were discovered. On this moment managed to bring one third to the surface. Another 12 large pieces of debris were discovered. One of them is two by three meters, the second is about five meters long, the third is more than 60 meters long.

MEANWHILE

The main phase of the search for the wreckage of the crashed Tu-154 has ended

“The active phase of the search operation in the Black Sea has been completed,” the source said. The search group recovered almost all the fragments of the Tu-154 from the bottom of the sea. The group of ships that took part in the operation left the Black Sea

BY THE WAY

Rescuers from the Tu-154 crash site: The dead have the same injuries as the victims of the 2006 disaster

Since the day of the Tu-154 crash, rescuers have been working non-stop at the crash site in the Black Sea. They are raising from the bottom the bodies of the dead and the wreckage of the plane, on board at the time of the crash there were 92 people - crew members, artists of the ensemble named after. Alexandrova, journalists and Dr. Lisa.

Our photojournalist Vladimir Velengurin observes with his own eyes how divers work and how the search operation is progressing

"Pulse speed is lower than explosion speed"

In the area of the village of Stepanovskoye, Ramensky district, Moscow region, search work continues at the site of the crash of the Saratov Airlines AN-148 plane. Locals, meanwhile, they organized a memorial here and lit 71 candles - according to the number dead passengers and crew members. The answer to the question: “Why did the disaster happen?” After decoding the data from the flight recorders, experts will give information. But after each such emergency, the relatives of the victims and many other people who often board an aircraft, not without fear, are tormented by other questions: “What did the person feel at the time of the disaster? Was he in pain? Did he understand that he was dying? We asked the head of the laboratory for the development of the human nervous system at the Research Institute of Human Morphology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Sergei Savelyev, to answer them.

AN-148 salon.

- Sergei Vyacheslavovich, tell me, during an explosion, does the human brain have time to transmit painful sensations to the body?

Since all this happens so quickly, I can say that most likely the victim of a plane crash does not have time to feel pain. Everything is very simple. The speed of impulses in our body along the nerves to the receptors is much lower than the speed of the explosion. It's just instant death.

- Does the brain have time to understand that death is about to occur?

Again, it all depends on the situation. If you mean, again, an explosion, then, of course, no. And if we consider that a person is flying in a plane that has lost control for several seconds, then everything happens according to a different scenario. The fact is that in such cases we are programmed for a positive outcome. A person always hopes that he will get out and stay alive. Resists to the last, as long as the brain is alive. And he dies last. This is due to our blood supply system.

Sergei Vyacheslavovich, is it true that before a flight, some people’s intuition may tell them not to board an airliner that is about to crash?

There is no intuition in this regard. Well, imagine, you approach the plane and see that everything is in order with it. What will life experience tell you in this case? Nothing. And sometimes you approach an airplane (I had such a case), and one of its engines is smoking. He sat down and flew away. Everything went fine. Astral tails don't help here.

Is it possible to trick the brain during a flight if it’s too scary? Suppose you close your eyes and imagine that you are on a train?

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