Death of a remarkable survivor

Vesna Vulović, aged 66, died in her Belgrade apartment over Christmas. Nearly 45 years earlier she had fallen 33,000 feet from a Yugoslav Airlines DC-9 that blew up over the Czech Republic en route from Stockholm to Belgrade.

Vulović, a flight attendant, was the only survivor among the 28 people on board. She was trapped in the tail as the aircraft plummeted to a mountainous area, and it is thought that pine trees and the snow softened the impact.

The Serbian woman was rescued by a woodsman who heard her screams. She was rushed to hospital after suffering a fractured skull, two crushed vertebrae and a broken pelvis, ribs and legs, but eventually made an almost complete recovery. Vulović’s fall would feature in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest anyone had ever survived without a parachute.

For a long time it was suspected the DC-9 had been brought down by a bomb on board, but in recent years a new theory emerged that it had been shot down by mistake by the then Czechoslovak air force.

(For other stories of remarkable escapes, see my posts of 4 July 2009, 16 January 2010, and 22 March 2011.)

Indonesian air crash - lightning strikes twice

Students of lightning will tell you that far from it never striking the same place twice, it has favourite places it is always hitting. A structure such as New York’s Empire State Building, for example, might be struck 40 times in a single day.

Even so, the citizens of Medan on the Indonesian island of Sumatra must have felt themselves particularly unfortunate when a 51 year old Hercules military aircraft crashed this week, killing 9 people on the ground, as well as the 12 crew members and perhaps 109 passengers on board. There still seems to be confusion about the exact number of passengers.

It came down just two kilometres from where a Mandala Airlines Boeing 737 crashed shortly after take off in 2005, killing 100 people in the aircraft and 49 on the ground. An official investigation concluded the airliner had taken off with its flaps and slats retracted, meaning it failed to lift off properly.

The first indications from the Hercules crash are that one of its four engines failed shortly after take off. It is the latest in a series of accidents involving Indonesian military aircraft. Relatives of some of the passengers told reporters the victims had paid to be carried on the aircraft, which would be an illicit use of a military craft.

Air crashes in the Alps

It has been clear from the start that there would be no survivors from the Germanwings Airbus A320 that came down in a remote area of the French Alps. We know that it lost altitude for eight minutes before hitting the ground. One flight recorder has been found, but it is damaged.

There have been a number of other serious air crashes in the Alps. On 3 November 1950, an Air India Lockheed Constellation flew into Mont Blanc, killing all 48 people on board. Storms delayed the rescue operation, and it was not until four days after the accident that search parties were able to reach the aircraft.

Less than 3 years later, on 1 September, 1953, another Constellation, this time operated by Air France, crashed into the Pelat Massif in the French Alps near Barcelonnette, killing the 42 people on board. Shortly before the crash, the pilot had reported violent storms.

On 24 January, 1966, another Air India aircraft, a Boeing 707, crashed close to the site of the 1950 accident, while en route from Beirut to Geneva, killing all 117 passengers and crew. An investigation concluded that the pilot had miscalculated his position, and had also misunderstood an instruction from air traffic control. There is still debris in the area, and only last year, a passenger’s camera was found by a mountaineer.

What happened to AirAsia flight QZ8501?

Salvage teams are starting to try to raise the fuselage of AirAsia flight QZ8501, which crashed into the Java Sea last month killing all 162 people on board. The Airbus A320 left Surabaya in Indonesia for Singapore at 0535 local time on December 28, and vanished nearly half-way into the two hour flight.

The salvage operation has been delayed by bad weather, and so far only 69 bodies have been recovered. Indonesian officials believe the aircraft may have climbed too fast to try to avoid a storm, then stalled.

Transport Minister Ignasius Jonan said radar data showed the Airbus had climbed at a speed of 6,000ft a minute, a rate that could only be achieved by a fighter jet, and was at least three times what a commercial airliner would normally do.

Shortly before it disappeared, the pilot asked air traffic control for permission to climb from 32,000 to 38,000 feet to avoid some big storm clouds. Because of heavy traffic in the area, he was not immediately given permission, and when air traffic control tried to contact the crew again, there was no answer. The aircraft disappeared from radar screens soon afterwards, without sending a distress signal.

Mystery of another civil airliner shot down over Ukraine

We are still no nearer to knowing exactly who shot down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine (see my blog of July 20), and perhaps we never will be, but it was not the first civil airliner to be shot down over the country.

On October 4, 2001, a Siberia Airlines Tupelov Tu-154 (similar pictured) was hit by what was believed to be a Ukrainian missile while en route from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk in Russia, and crashed into the Black Sea. None of the 78 people on board survived.

With the crash coming so soon after 9/11, the favourite explanation at first was terrorism, but Ukraine eventually admitted the aircraft had been hit by one of its missiles that had gone astray during a military exercise, and paid compensation to victims’ families.

Subsequently, though, the Ukrainian government denied responsibility for the disaster, and a claim against it by Siberia Airlines remains unresolved. 

Aircraft that vanished - 2

The continuing failure to find any trace of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 that disappeared on March 8 will cast a shadow over the annual conference of the world’s airlines that opens today in Doha.

But as I have mentioned before, aircraft DO disappear (see my blog of April 13). On the night of June 23, 1950, in what was then America’s deadliest ever commercial airliner accident, a Northwest Orient DC-4 with 58 people on board went missing en route from New York to Seattle.

It vanished from radar screens 3,500 feet above Lake Michigan. Divers turned up some upholstery and other light debris, but the main wreckage has never been found, so pity those trying to locate flight MH370 in the vastness of the Indian Ocean.

A Varig Brazilian cargo Boeing 707 disappeared just 30 minutes after take-off from Narita airport in Tokyo on January 30, 1979. In addition to six crew, it was carrying more than a million dollars’ worth of paintings. No trace has ever been found of people, paintings or aircraft.

* The story of the Moscow football stadium disaster of 1982 from the Romanian edition of 'Disastrous History of the World' - http://www.ziartricolorul.ro/tragedii-la-fotbal/

The mystery of flight MH370

Perhaps the most baffling mystery in commercial aviation history – the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 – continues to defy solution, and the agony of those with friends and loved ones aboard goes on.

Search aircraft from five countries have been scouring the ocean for a sign of the Boeing 777 that left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on March 8, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew. The last contact with it came less than an hour after take-off.

Much attention is now focused on the seas 1,400 miles off Perth, where there have been a number of reports of floating debris. Australia’s prime minister says there is now ‘hope’, but no more than that, that we may be on the verge of finding out what happened to the aircraft.

The Malaysian authorities believe MH370 was taken deliberately off course, for reasons unknown, and there is now speculation that the flight crew may have passed out through lack of oxygen.