With 241 passengers and crew confirmed lifeless within the crash of Air India’s Boeing 787 Dreamliner proper exterior Ahmedabad airport, one passenger miraculously survived and actually walked out of the wreckage that killed everyone else on board. Whereas deadly air crashes with a sole survivor appear to defy all odds, there have been round two dozen cases up to now 80 years the place 50 or extra individuals died in a serious crash and only one particular person made it out alive.
Amongst such crashes, the Air India flight carrying 242 individuals from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick, which went down on Thursday, leads with the very best dying toll. With just one survivor confirmed up to now—a 38-year-old British nationwide of Indian origin—authorities are conducting DNA assessments to determine the victims.
“The plane crashed shortly after take-off. We remorse to tell that, of the 242 aboard, there are 241 confirmed fatalities. The sole survivor is being handled in a hospital,” Air India posted on X early Friday.
Beating the chances
In August 1987, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82 carrying 149 passengers and 6 crew crashed shortly after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport as a result of pilot error. All however one perished—a 4-year-old lady, Cecelia Cichan, who survived with extreme burns and a number of fractures.
A long time later, in 2013, CNN launched ‘Sole Survivor’, a documentary profiling Cichan and three different lone survivors of main air crashes. Amongst them was 12-year-old Bahia Bakari, who lived by way of the 2009 Yemenia Airways crash that killed 152 individuals. She was discovered clinging to floating particles within the Indian Ocean by native fishermen and rescuers.
George Lamson Jr—additionally featured within the CNN documentary—was the only survivor of a Lockheed L-188 Electra crash in 1985 that killed 70 individuals. Then simply 17, Lamson was hurled from the plane in his seat because it broke aside into flames over a freeway shortly after takeoff. The fourth lone survivor featured within the documentary, James Polehinke, was the primary officer aboard a Bombardier CRJ100 that crashed in Kentucky in 2006, killing 49 individuals.
Extra not too long ago, in March 2018, a Cubana de Aviación flight crashed shortly after takeoff close to Havana, killing 112 individuals. Of the 4 initially discovered alive, three later died in hospital. The only real survivor, critically injured, spent almost a 12 months recovering and was discharged in Could 2019.
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11-A was the seat the place the only survivor of the Air India crash was seated. (Photograph: X/@Osint613)
Navy crashes
There have additionally been cases of lone survivors in army aircraft crashes. In 1991, an Indonesian Air Power Lockheed C-130 Hercules crashed throughout takeoff in Jakarta as a result of an engine fireplace, killing 134 individuals on board and two on the bottom. Just one man survived; one of many pilots was initially discovered alive however succumbed to his accidents later within the day.
In 2014, one other C-130 Hercules — this time operated by the Algerian Air Power — crashed right into a mountain in northwest Algeria whereas carrying troopers and their households. The crash killed 77 individuals, with only one survivor, who was handled for head accidents.
One of many earliest recorded cases of a lone survivor in a serious air crash occurred in 1959, when a Curtiss C-46 Commando operated by a business service crashed a few kilometre off the coast throughout a failed touchdown try in Argentina, killing 51 individuals. Based on native studies, the only survivor swam again to shore.
