Aviation accidents appeared along with aeronautics, but only by the 40s of the 20th century did these cases begin to be recorded. The rating includes people who survived plane crashes. 10 cases were considered when only one person survived from all the passengers.
10.Julianne Diller Koepke(December 24, 1971) - the only survivor of a plane crash, a seventeen-year-old girl . On that terrible night, she was on board a Peruvian airline liner with her parents. A thunderstorm began, and lightning struck the plane. The air car began to fall apart at an altitude of 3200 meters and fell into the rainforest. The piece that held Julianne's chair fell off while still in the air. He flew down through the raging elements and rotated in a circle at breakneck speed. The fragment, along with Julianne, landed on the crowns of trees, which saved the girl. Her collarbone was broken and there were numerous wounds. The survivor found the strength to get up and go to seek help. Having stumbled upon a stream in the jungle, she went down its course. On the tenth day, Julianna went out to the settlement. The story of the heroic girl formed the basis of several feature films.
9.Vesna Vulovich(January 26, 1972) - A twenty-two-year-old flight attendant who survived a plane crash and got into the Guinness book for falling from a height of 10 kilometers without a parachute. At the moment when the airliner was flying over Czechoslovakia at an altitude of 10160 meters, an explosion occurred on the ship. The Yugoslav stewardess, by the will of fate, was on board that day - she replaced her colleague. The branches of the trees on which the girl had fallen softened the blow. Vulovich did not come to his senses for almost a month and spent a year and a half in a hospital bed. Despite this, the forced record holder was able to return to normal life and continued to work in aviation, but only in ground service.
8.Larisa Savitskaya - plane crash survivor twenty-year-old girl (August 24, 1981). Together with her husband, a young woman was returning home from honeymoon trip. A bomber crashed into their An-24 plane over the city of Zavitinsky at an altitude of 5220 meters. All people in two planes (37 people) were killed. The girl was in the tail section of the broken AN-24. From a height of five thousand, Larisa fell on a large piece of debris. The fall lasted 8 minutes. A piece of the airliner, along with the victim, fell on birch plantations, which softened the force of the blow. Larisa, a plane crash survivor, spent two nights alone in the forest. Despite the concussion, numerous abrasions and injuries, she could move independently. Graves were prepared for all passengers, including Larisa. The search engines were taken aback when they saw her alive. The woman got into the Guinness Book of Records twice: as the only survivor of a plane crash and as a passenger who received the minimum compensation - 75 rubles.
7.George Lamson ( January 21, 1985) - the only survivor of a plane crash that occurred in the US state of Nevada. A seventeen-year-old boy was returning with his father on a Lockheed L-188 Electra aircraft with ski resort. Suddenly, the aircraft rolled heavily on one side and began to fall. George pulled his knees to his chest as the plane hit the ground. Together with the seat, it was carried out of the fuselage a moment before the explosion. It was this factor that saved the life of the young man. The cause of the tragedy, in which 70 people died, was a pilot error in assessing the situation, as a result of which the Lockheed L-188 Electra lost speed and fell.
6.Cecilia Sichan(August 16, 1989) is a four-year-old girl who survived a plane crash in Detroit that killed 154 people. The plane never managed to gain altitude. Even on takeoff, he caught the lighting tower with his wing, which caused it to fall off and catch fire. The liner moved to the right, and with the second wing it broke through the roof of the building. The aircraft simply fell apart into pieces, which were scattered over almost a kilometer area. Cecilia was found under the rubble by a firefighter. After numerous fractures and burns, the girl was able to recover. Cecilia's parents were victims of the same tragedy. Now the girl is not afraid to fly, believing that "the shell does not hit the same place twice."
5. Nine year old Erica Delgado ( January 11, 1995) was on the list of the only survivors of plane crashes thanks to her mother. Together with her family, she was on board, making a flight from Bogota to Cartagena (Colombia). The cause of the terrible disaster was a malfunction of the instruments of the ship, which crashed to the ground during the landing approach. At the time of the fall, the mother pushed the child out of the collapsing liner, and the girl fell into a lake overgrown with algae. She was rescued by a local farmer after hearing cries for help. Erica escaped with a broken arm, the rest of the passengers and crew members (52 people) died.
4.Yousef Jillali(March 6, 2003) - the only survivor of a plane crash that occurred in the city of Tamanrasset (Algeria). The Boeing 737-200 crashed on takeoff due to engine failure. Being in airspace Due to the ignition of the engine, the ship began to rapidly lose speed. The Boeing crashed in a rocky area, not far from the airfield and shattered into pieces. Of the 104 crew members, only the twenty-eight-year-old soldier Jillali managed to escape. The victim suffered multiple fractures and was in a coma. But a day later, the young man came to his senses, and his life was out of danger.
3. Sunday morning (August 27, 2006) in Kentucky, a fire broke out on board a Lexington-Atlanta flight. The car crashed a kilometer from the airport. All passengers and crew members (49 people) were killed. The fire was so intense that it was impossible to identify the bodies. Only the second forty-four-year-old pilot James Polehinka managed to escape. Firefighters pulled him out of the cab on fire. The cause of the accident was the pilots' use of a shorter runway. As a result of this, the air machine, having rammed an iron fence and crashed into a tree, collapsed and caught fire.
2. Thirteen Bahia Bakary- the only surviving passenger on the flight Paris - Comoros (June 30, 2009). A few minutes before landing, the aircraft began to rapidly fall and crashed into the waters of the Indian Ocean. The girl cannot describe the circumstances of what happened, as she was sleeping. Presumably, she was thrown through the porthole. Bahia waited for 14 hours for help from rescuers, drifting in the open ocean on a wreck that did not sink. So she was the only survivor of 153 people.
1. Flight engineer Alexander Sizov - survivor of a plane crash that occurred on September 7, 2011 near Yaroslavl. On that fateful day, the Yak-42 aircraft was supposed to deliver the Lokomotiv hockey players to the match in the city of Minsk. Having slipped the entire runway, the plane began to rise from the ground, abruptly falling on the left wing. After that, the car collapsed, shattering into pieces, which were thrown several hundred meters in the area. Alexander came to himself only when he found himself in a river burning from kerosene. Despite numerous fractures and subsequent operations, the fifty-two-year-old passenger managed to survive. The cause of the tragedy that happened on board the Yak-42 was a crew error during takeoff.
Against all odds, these people managed to survive and escape from the terrible plane crashes; sometimes due to simple luck, sometimes due to their own courage or self-sacrifice of those who were with them at the time of the accident.
22 year old flight attendant
A young Serbian flight attendant named Vesna Vulovich was the only survivor of a DC-9 crash over Hinterhermsdorf, Germany on January 26, 1972. The miraculously escaped girl became the owner of the world record for the height of survivors in free fall without a parachute according to the Guinness Book of Records. The McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 aircraft was flying JAT 367 from Stockholm to Belgrade with intermediate stops in Copenhagen and Zagreb and exploded at an altitude of 10,160 meters due to a luggage compartment explosive device. Vesna Vulović survived the explosion and was the only survivor of 28 passengers and crew as debris fell to the ground. The crime remained unsolved, and no organization claimed responsibility for it. By the time of the accident, Vesna Vulovich had not yet completed her studies and ended up on the flight by mistake instead of another stewardess with a similar name - Vesna Nikolic. The girl lost consciousness at the time of the explosion and woke up already in the hospital, where she was taken with a fracture of the base of the skull, three vertebrae, both legs and pelvis. She did not have a fear of flying, and later she flew for some time on Yugoslav Airlines aircraft as a flight attendant, and then received an office position in the airline. She lived to be 66 years old.
4 year old girl
Cecilia Sichan (Crocker) was only 4 years old in August 1987 when a Northwest Airlines McDonnell Douglas MD-82, in which she and her family were returning home from vacation, failed to climb at the Detroit airport and crashed into a pole. The mother shielded her daughter with her body. As a result, she became the only survivor of the plane crash despite severe injuries: the girl had a fractured skull, a broken leg and collarbone, and she also received third-degree burns. As the investigation found out, the accident occurred due to an electronics failure: the crew could not control the speed and angle of takeoff. The reasons for the failure remain unclear. The accident caused the death of 153 people - passengers and crew members, as well as two eyewitnesses to the crash on the ground. Little Cecilia was taken in by her uncle and aunt, her mother's sister. She learned about the tragedy of her family later and in memory of this she got a tattoo on her wrist in the form of a small airliner. In the documentary "The Only Survivor", she told interviewers that for a long time she felt guilty for surviving, although the rest of her family died.
17 year old schoolgirl
On December 24, 1971, 17-year-old Juliana Koepke, along with her mother, flew on board a LANSA Lockheed L-188 Electra turboprop aircraft from Lima (Peru) to the city of Iquitos with an intermediate stop in Pucallpa. At an altitude of 6400 meters, lightning struck the right wing of the aircraft, which caused a fire in the fuel tank. The plane began to descend, soon its wing fell off and the aircraft, collapsing, fell from a height of 3200 meters into the rainforest. At first, the rescue services decided that all 92 people on board were killed. However, ten days later, a 17-year-old schoolgirl from the family of German emigrants Julian Koepke came out of the forest to people. Both of her parents were biologists.
According to the girl's stories, she woke up on the second day after the disaster, covered from above with a triple chair, on which she sat on the plane. The girl had a broken collarbone and a torn ligament in her knee, she also received a bruise in her right eye, a concussion and numerous deep cuts. She was unable to move for some time, but on the fourth day she recovered enough to try to reach people on her own. She did not find her mother. She searched the wreckage of the plane for food and found a small bag of candy. Based on the knowledge of survival in the jungle received from her parents, the girl set off along the course of a stream that flowed near the accident site. She practically did not sleep at night because of the pain in her wounds, besides, larvae bred in them: in the jungle, the girl was pursued by hordes of insects.
Finally, on the sixth day of hiking through the jungle, Juliana found a moored boat and a hut to shelter the outboard motor next to her. She was found sleeping on an earthen floor in a hut by lumberjacks from a local village. Currently, Juliana continues to live in Peru, works as a biologist, like her parents, and is also the author of the book "When I fell from the sky."
Game of Thrones star Sophia Turner signed on to play Juliana in the 2017 film The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, based on the book.
On December 23, 2016, at the age of 66, the legendary stewardess Vesna Vulovich died, who in 1972 was present at the explosion in the cabin of the aircraft, and then fell along with the debris from a height of 10 km. 
She received numerous fractures and injuries, fell into a coma for several days, but then recovered, entered the Guinness Book of Records and became a world celebrity.
On January 26, 1972, 22-year-old Vesna Vulovich flew from Stockholm to Belgrade on a Yugoslav Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32. When the plane flew over the German Hersdorf, he disappeared from the radar, and 46 minutes after takeoff exploded in the air. It is assumed that the bomb was carried on board by Croatian nationalists - the Ustashe. Debris fell near the village of Serbska Kamenice in Czechoslovakia.
Of the 28 people on board, only Vulovich survived. As a result of the fall, she received fractures of the base of the skull, three vertebrae, both legs and the pelvis, spent several days in a coma, but then woke up and first of all asked for a cigarette. Interestingly, by mistake of the airline, the girl got on the flight instead of another stewardess with the same name (Vesny Nikolic). By the time of the disaster, the flight attendant had not yet completed her training and was in the crew as a trainee.
What saved Vulovich, who spent three minutes in free fall? Perhaps the fact that she was squeezed in the tail of the plane, between the corpses and pieces of luggage. In addition, pine branches and a thick layer of snow softened the blow.
Her cries in the forest were heard by the forester Bruno Henke, who during the Second World War was a doctor in the German army. He helped the girl hold out until the arrival of medical help.
Vulovich spent 10 months with paralysis of her lower body (from the waist to her legs). After that, she was treated for another six months, but then recovered and even asked to fly again on flights with JAT. She was turned down and instead given a job at the airline's office.
Such fearlessness is explained by the fact that Vesna did not remember either the accident or her salvation. In a 2008 interview, she admitted that she only remembers how she greeted passengers after taking off from Copenhagen, and then how she woke up in the hospital and saw her mother.
Vulovich became a national heroine: she was given a reception by Marshal Tito, which was then considered a great honor for a citizen of Yugoslavia. Songs were dedicated to the woman and she was invited to the most popular television shows. It became popular to name girls after a flight attendant who survived, as if it brought them good luck.
Vesna Vulovich used her fame for political purposes: she protested against the power of Slobodan Milosevic, and later campaigned for one of the parties in the elections.
The peak of international fame Vulovich came in 1985, when she was invited to London on behalf of the Guinness Book of Records. There, Vulović received an award for surviving a maximum height fall without a parachute. The prize was presented to the woman by musician Paul McCartney, the idol of her youth.
Vesna said that she was just as much a “survivor” as the other inhabitants of Serbia: “We Serbs are truly survivors. We have lived through communism, Tito, war, poverty, NATO bombings, sanctions and Milosevic. We just want a normal life."
On December 23, Vesna Vulović was found dead at her home in Belgrade after the police broke into the woman's apartment at the request of her friends, who were alarmed that she was not answering her calls. The cause of death is unknown, but, according to Vulovich's friends, her health is beyond Lately reeled.
Stewardess Vesna Vulovich in the early seventies became famous throughout the world. In 1972, an event occurred, after which her life completely changed. Vulovich's name was entered in the Guinness Book of Records, she met with political and public figures, met the idol of her youth Paul McCartney and other world stars. What happened in the early seventies? What event made an ordinary flight attendant famous?
plane crash
A terrible accident occurred on January 26, 1972. The McDοnnell Dοuglas DC-9-32 airliner was flying from Stockholm to Belgrade. At an altitude of more than ten thousand meters, the liner exploded. Its wreckage fell on the Czechoslovak city of Ceska Kamenice. All passengers and crew members were killed, with the exception of the flight attendant Vesna Vulovich.
On this day, all the media in the world reported on the explosion of the plane. The cause of the tragedy that occurred over a small Czechoslovak city was a bomb, which terrorists from Croatia hid on board the airliner. The chances of surviving such accidents are negligible. Reports of catastrophes in the sky, as a rule, end with the tragic phrase: "All who were on board died." But this time, news appeared in the media that struck the world: Yugoslav airlines flight attendant Vesna Vulovich managed to survive. However, this case cannot be called absolutely unprecedented in
So, more than forty years ago, a sensation flew around the world - twenty-two-year-old stewardess Vesna Vulovich remained alive after falling from a height of ten thousand meters. What saved her life? The landing was softened by snow-covered treetops. However, the heroine herself of this amazing story could not tell ο her flight. The stewardess Vesna Vulovich, who survived the terrible accident, remembered that terrible day vaguely. She came to herself only two months later. What is known from the biography of the flight attendant?
Stewardess Vesna Vulovich
She became a flight attendant by accident. Vesna was born in Yugoslavia in 1950. She graduated from high school, entered the university. Like many other young people of the sixties, the girl was a fan of the Beatles, and therefore dreamed of mastering English language perfectly. In 1968, she could not even imagine that she would someday meet Paul McCartney himself.
Vesna chose the English department for herself and began to study the language in which famous vocalists sang. After the first year of study, our heroine went on an internship to England. When she returned home, something happened that abruptly changed her whole life.
The girl met her school friend. By that time, he had flown on the liners of a large Yugoslav company. A childhood friend and advised Vesna to enroll in flight attendant courses. Working on international airlines made it possible to regularly visit the beautiful foggy city of London. In addition, the salary of a flight attendant was several times higher than the income of an English teacher.
First flight
Courses Vesna successfully completed. In 1971, the girl took to the skies for the first time. When the tragedy occurred, which became the main event in her life, she was still a university student. She did not have a permanent job.
Last hours before disaster
On that day, the crew in which Vesna was trained arrived in Copenhagen. In the Danish capital, he replaced the pilots of the plane that flew in from Stockholm. Subsequently, Vesna Vulovich - the stewardess who killed all her colleagues - recalled that the crew members, more experienced people, seemed to have a premonition of something. They constantly talked about their families, went shopping a lot, bought souvenirs for their relatives.
Later, in the hospital, the Serbian stewardess Vesna Vulovich tried to remember all the smallest events of that day. Who planted the bomb? Shortly before takeoff, she drew attention to one of the porters. This man differed both in appearance and behavior from his colleagues. Outwardly, he looked like a resident Balkan Peninsula. The behavior of the man contrasted sharply with the behavior of other loaders. He spoke loudly, was nervous, fussed. According to Vulovich, it was he who put the bomb on the plane. However, this realization came too late.
Bruno Honke
What happened to the flight attendant Vesna Vulovich in 1972 can be safely called a miracle. She was extraordinarily lucky twice. The first time was when she didn't die in the explosion. In the second - when she managed to survive the fall.
However, the girl was saved not only by the fact that the dilapidated liner fell into snow-covered trees. The fact is that the first on the scene of the disaster was a local resident Brunο Honke. This man during the Second World War worked in the German field hospital. He gave the girl the first medical care. It is worth saying that Honka miraculously managed to find a barely breathing young stewardess among the many dead bodies. He probably saved her life.
Treatment
The story of Vesna Vulovich, a flight attendant from Yugoslavia who survived an accident that claimed 27 lives, instantly spread around the world. She was taken to the hospital. A long period of rehabilitation began. For about two months, Spring did not come to its senses. Doctors did not believe for a long time that the girl would survive after such a monstrous accident. But she still came to her senses. It is noteworthy that when she opened her eyes, the first thing she asked for was a cigarette.
As the days passed, the young body more and more confidently coped with the injuries received during the fall. However, Spring did not remember the last hours spent on board the plane. She could not tell what she was doing at the time of the explosion. Most likely, in those minutes the girl was in the passenger compartment.
For ten months Vesna was paralyzed. The doctors feared that she would never be able to walk. However, another miracle happened - the only survivor of the McDοnnell Dοuglas DC-9-32 plane crash got to her feet.
After the disaster
Stewardess Vesna Vulovich, whose photo was shown on television almost every day in February 1972, was sent by plane to Belgrade two months after the accident. Doctors feared that the flight would adversely affect her mental state. A fall from such a height cannot go unnoticed. However, everything turned out well. Moreover, Spring had no fear of flying. She was not afraid of planes even later.
She spent some more time in the Belgrade hospital. At the entrance to Vulovich's ward, a policeman was on duty day and night. She did not remember anything about the events of the last hours before the accident. Nevertheless, she remained the only witness to the crime, which, by the way, was never solved. The authorities feared that the terrorists would try to deal with the surviving crew member.
The miraculous rescue of the stewardess overshadowed the sοbοy οsteel fοdrοbnοsti of your accident. Spring was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records as the person who made the highest jump without a parachute. In the mid-eighties Spring came to London. Paul McCartney was present at the ceremony of presenting the Diploma in the Guinness Book of World Records. Spring, finally, met with the idol of his youth.
In the early autumn of 1972 Vulovich was discharged from the hospital. Surprisingly, not only did she not have a fear of flying, but she did not even lose her desire to work as a flight attendant. Vesna tried to get a job with an airline again. She was not taken as a flight attendant, but was offered a position in the office. Vesna Vulovich worked for the airline for many years: she was engaged in the execution of cargo contracts. The former stewardess left her place of work eighteen years later due to disagreement with the policy of the Yugoslav leader S. Milosevic.
The stewardess who survived the 1972 plane crash has become a national heroine. She was given a reception by Marshal Tito himself, which was considered a great honor for a citizen of Yugoslavia at that time. Songs were dedicated to spring, she was invited to various television shows. Girls were named after her. In order to survive in such a catastrophe, a happy accident is not enough. You need strength, an extraordinary desire to live. Vulοvich has become a symbol of good luck and optimism.
The former stewardess used her fame for social and political purposes. She took an active part in protests against the power of Milosevic, and campaigned for one of the parties in the elections.
Death
Vesna Vulovich lived for 66 years. On December 23, 2016, she was found dead in her own apartment. Relatives and friends could not get through to her for a long time. The police were called and they opened the door. The cause of death of the famous stewardess is unknown. Friends say that the woman's health has recently deteriorated sharply.
The record of a stewardess from Yugoslavia has not yet been broken. Not a single person managed to fall from such a height and stay alive. However, history knows several no less interesting cases.
In 1942, a Soviet military aircraft was shot down, the pilot of which fell without a parachute. The snow cover saved his life.
Another amazing event happened many years after World War II ended. In December 1971, a passenger plane crashed near Peru. Half an hour after departure, the airliner landed in a thunderstorm. The plane burst into flames and shattered into pieces. A 17-year-old passenger survived. When she woke up, she found herself sitting in a chair hanging from a tree.
In August 1981, there was a collision between the An-24 and Tu-16 aircraft. On board the passenger airliner was a student Larisa Savitskaya with her husband. There were several reasons for the disaster, including poor coordination between civilian and military controllers. Everyone died except Larisa.
She fell from a height of five kilometers. She received many injuries, but, according to Soviet laws, she was not entitled to disability. The woman all her life was interrupted by odd jobs, sometimes starving. She also became a record holder in some way. Unlike Vulovich, Savitskaya did not become famous in her homeland. She received compensation from the state in the amount of 75 rubles, after which the story of the amazing fall was forgotten.
Despite the fact that thousands of times more people die in car accidents every year than in plane crashes, the fear of flying lives in the mass consciousness. First of all, this is due to the scale of the tragedies - a crashed liner means tens and hundreds of simultaneous deaths. This is much more shocking than several thousand reports of fatal accidents stretched over 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. Almost always this is true. However, the history of aeronautics has accumulated a small number of exceptions in which people survived by falling with the aircraft (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 surviving a free fall without a parachute. She got into the Guinness Book of Records because she survived after 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 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 the trolley from the buffet. 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 the pelvis. For 10 months, the girl was paralyzed in the lower part of her body, 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 Vulovich in a cocoon of debris is much easier than in a single free flight. However, in the second case there are surprising examples. One of them dates from 1943, when US military pilot Alan Magee flew over France in a B-17 heavy four-engine 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, remained alive and was immediately taken prisoner by the shocked Germans.
A great fall target would be a large haystack. Several cases are known when people survived in plane crashes if densely growing bushes appeared on their way. A dense forest also gives some chances, but here 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 gained in flight to the center of the earth, with good luck, can make injuries compatible with life.
There is almost no chance of survival when falling on water surface. Water practically does not compress, so the result of contact with it will be the same as in a collision with concrete.
Salvation can sometimes bring the most unexpected objects. One of the main things skydiving enthusiasts are taught is to stay away from power lines. However, a case is known 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, bounced off and fell to the ground from a height of several tens of meters.
Pilots and children
Air crash survival statistics show that underage crew members and passengers are significantly more likely to cheat death. With 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, several reliable reasons, the researchers of this issue have established:
- increased bone flexibility, general muscle relaxation and a greater percentage of subcutaneous fat that protects internal organs from injury like a pillow;
- small 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 air crashes is brain injury;
- smaller body size, which reduces the likelihood of running into some sharp object at the time of landing.
Invincible Spiritual Power
A successful landing does not always mean a positive outcome. Not every miraculous survivor is instantly found by benevolent locals. For example, in 1971, over the Amazon at an altitude of 3,200 meters, a Lockheed Electra aircraft was destroyed due to a fire caused by lightning in the wing with a fuel tank. 17-year-old German woman Juliana Kopke woke up 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 went along the forest streams, gradually turning into rivers. With a broken collarbone, a bag of sweets and a stick, with which she dispersed stingrays in shallow water, the girl went out to people after 9 days. In Italy, this story was made into the film Miracles Still Happen (1974).
There were 92 people on board, including Kopke. Subsequently, it was found that in addition to 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 their 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 broke right in front of her seat, and the girl was thrown into the aisle. At that moment, she remembered a movie about Julian Kopka, who, during the crash, got to the chair, pressed herself into it and survived. Savitskaya did the same. Part of the body of the aircraft, 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 was seriously injured, but remained conscious and retained the ability to move independently.
The surname Savitskaya is inscribed 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 the minimum compensation for physical damage. She was paid only 75 rubles - that's how much, according to the norms of the State Insurance, then it was supposed to survive in a plane crash.
