New Delhi: One passenger walked out alive from the wreckage of the Air India crash in Ahmedabad, video footage purportedly shows. He is said to have been seated in 11A, a window seat in the first row of Economy. While there is no official confirmation yet on whether he is the only survivor, there have been crashes in the past where just one person defied all odds.
ThePrint takes a look at some sole survivor stories that surfaced over the years.
Struck by lightning
Seventeen-year-old Juliane Koepcke was the lone survivor of LANSA Flight 508, which was struck by lightning over Lima, Peru, causing the aircraft to break apart midair. Amid the thunderstorm, Koepcke fell about 3 kilometres—still strapped into her seat—into the dense Amazon jungle. She was the only survivor among 92 passengers. Koepcke sustained multiple injuries, including a broken collarbone and deep cuts to her shoulder. But she didn’t just survive the crash—she also endured the treacherous terrain of the Amazon rainforest. For 11 days, she battled hunger, thirst, and severe insect bites before being rescued by local forest workers.
‘Miracle crash girl’
The passengers aboard the ill-fated Airbus 310 — an older aircraft — were on the final leg of their trip from Paris and Marseille to Comoros, with a stopover in Yemen for a plane change. Severe turbulence was suspected to have contributed to the crash.
The lone survivor of the crash was 14-year-old Bahia Bakari, who clung to wreckage for 13 hours before being rescued. She suffered multiple injuries, including a broken collarbone. Bakari was travelling with her mother, who died along with 151 other passengers on board.
The final report by French investigators said that a speed sensor on the Airbus A330, called a pitot tube, got blocked by ice during a thunderstorm and sent wrong speed data to the cockpit. This caused the autopilot to turn off, handing control back to the pilots.
Due to strong turbulence, the pilots couldn’t fully understand the problem, and the plane began to descend before going into a deep stall.
3-yr-old survivor
Mohammed el-Fateh Osman was just three years old when he survived the Sudan Airways flight SD39 crash in 2003.
The Boeing 737 carrying 115 passengers and crew members, took off from Port Sudan on the Red Sea and was en route to Khartoum. It crashed soon after the pilot reported technical problems with an engine following.
No one from the flight survived except Osman, who was found by a worker near a tree. He was sent to London for burn treatment and the loss of part of one leg.
The lucky soldier
On 6 March 2003, Air Algérie Flight 6289 experienced issues in the left engine moments after the plane took off from Saharan city. The aircraft, carrying 97 passengers and six members of crew, hit the ground and burst into flames.
No one survived the blaze, except a 28-year-old Algerian soldier Youcef Djillali, who was seated on the last row of the aircraft. Djillali was ejected from the aircraft upon impact, and was in coma for several days, before regaining consciousness.
Navigator who made it out
A charter flight from Tajikistan crashed into desert sand on 15 December 1997 near an airport in the United Arab Emirates, killing 85 people on board.
Initially, there were two survivors who were taken to a hospital in Sharjah, but one of them died soon after arriving.
The lone surviving passenger was identified as Sergei Petrov, 37, the flight navigator.
Orphaned at 4
Cecelia Cichan was a four-year-old when she became the sole survivor of Northwest Airlines Flight 255, which crashed shortly after takeoff near Detroit Metropolitan Airport on August 16, 1987.
The tragedy claimed 156 lives, including that of Cichan’s parents and older brother.
It was later revealed that the flight crew had failed to set the wing flaps properly for takeoff. And, the cockpit warning system did not alert the pilots about the same.
Also Read: Ahmedabad pilots tried to land in empty area, say aviation experts. See Google Earth images
10,000-metre fall without a parachute
Serbian flight attendant Vesna Vulovic survived a 10,000 metres fall, without a parachute, when her aircraft (JAT Flight 367) exploded in mid-air in January of 1972. The accident claimed 27 lives.
Vulovic was reportedly stuck next to a food cart in the tail section of the plane as it fell from the sky in freezing weather. The tail landed in a snowy, forested mountainside, which likely softened the impact.
She was in a coma for 10 days and suffered serious injuries — a fractured skull, broken ribs, a crushed spine, a broken pelvis, and broken legs.
Her survival got her a spot in the Guinness World Records for surviving the biggest fall without a parachute.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)