 "Nepal pilot to 3-year-old boy: 8 miraculous plane crash survivors")
On July 24, 2024, another common tragedy hit Nepal as a private plane with a “broken” engine en route to Pokhara for repair crashed while taking off from Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport turning into a raging inferno. The mishap killed 18 of the total 19 people on board. The pilot of the aircraft, belonging to Saurya Airlines - Captain Manish Ratna Shakya was the lone survivor.
How did the pilot in the Kathmandu plane crash survive?
The aircraft with 17 Saurya Airlines staff, who were technicians, and two crew - pilot and co-pilot - took off from TIA around 11:15 am, however, within minutes it “turned right and crashed on the east side of the runway”, the Nepal Civil Aviation Authority’s search and rescue coordination centre said.
Rescuers swung into action and saved Shakya just as the flames neared the cockpit section of the aircraft. He managed to survive miraculously, while 18 others on board were charred.
A report by BBC quoted Senior Superintendent of Nepal Police Dambar Bishwakarma as saying that Captain Shakya was facing difficulty breathing as the air shield was open. “We broke the window and immediately pulled him out,” Bishwakarma added.
The pilot was immediately rushed to Kathmandu Medical College where doctors said he had sustained eye injuries as well as others to his head and face.
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As per his LinkedIn profile, 37-year-old Shakya is the chief of operations at the Saurya Airlines. He had joined the airline in December 2014 and has been associated with the company for over nine-and-half years. Before this, he flew for Simrik Airlines for about three years.
Sole survivors in plane crashes
In plane crashes, sole survivors are rare, but not unheard of. Experts believe that it’s just luck, nous and not age that make the people more likely to improve their chances of survival.
Here’s a look at some of the remarkable sole survivor of plane crashes around the world:
1 - Ruben van Assouw
Ruben van Assouw was nine-year-old when he became the only survivor in an Afriqiyah Airways Flight crash on May 12, 2010 in Libya’s Tripoli airport. His father, mother and brother were among the 103 people who died in the accident.
The aircraft exploded and completely disintegrated after arriving at Tripoli from Johannesburg, South Africa. Assouw from the Netherlands was pulled out unconscious from the wreckage.
His legs were broken and had to undergo surgery. He also had experienced inability to move certain parts of his body. Fears emerged that his brain was bruised. However, Assouw made a good recovery and now lives with his aunt and uncle in the Netherlands.
2 - Bahia Bakari
As many as 153 people died on June 30, 2009 after a Yemenia Airways flight from Temen to Comoros islands (in southern Africa) nosedived out of the sky and crashed into the Indian Ocean.
Only Bahia Bakari, who was 12 years old then, on board had survived. She had been clinging to wreckage for about 13 hours before she was rescued and flown to a hospital in France to be treated for cuts, burns, bruises and a broken collarbone.
Her mother had died in the crash. Upon being rescued, Bakari was reunited with her father. In shock, she believed that she had fallen from the plane after pressing her forehead too hard against its window.
She became known as “miracle girl” and in 2010, she released her own book titled “I’m Bahia, the miracle girl”.
3 - Mohammed el-Fateh Osman
Mohammed el-Fateh Osman was three years old when he was the lone survivor from Sudan Airways flight SD39 when the Boeing 737 with 115 on board members crashed on 8 July 2003.
The flight had took-off from Port Sudan on the Red Sea and was en route to Khartoum. But, soon after it touched the sky, the pilot reported technical problems with an engine.
Shortly after surviving the crash, the boy was flown to London to be treated for burns and the loss of part of one leg.
4 - Youcef Djillali
On March 6, 2003 an Air Algeria flight crashed on takeoff in the southern city of Tamanrasset. The sole survivor was 28-year-old soldier Youcef Djillali.
5 - Sergei Petrov
Back on December 15, 1997, a Tajik Airlines Tupolev ploughed into a river close to Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) . All 77 passengers were killed, but a crew member, Sergei Petrov, was the only one who survived.
6 - Cecelia Cichan
Cecelia Cichan was only four years old when on August 16, 1987, when Northwest Airlines flight 255 from Romulus, Michigan to Phoenix, Arizona, crashed shortly after taking off.
Cichan was the only survivor, while the other 156, including two people on the ground, died. Cichan’s parents and brother were among those killed in the crash
Cichan was buried within the wreckage after the crash. Her skull was fractured, her leg and collarbone were broken and she suffered severe burns.
She was spotted by a firefighter who heard her faint cry, and pulled her out of the wreck.
7 - Vesna Vulovic
Back on January 26, 1972, a suspected terrorist bomb placed on board JAT Yugoslav Airlines Flight 357 en route Belgrade in Yugoslavia from Stockholm, Sweden detonated over Czechoslovakia, blowing the plane apart in mid-air, killing 27 people on board.
Vensea Vulovic, a flight attendant, who was 22 years old then was the only survivor of the crash. Trapped by a food cart in the tail of the aircraft, she was left in a coma fractured her skull and pelvis, and also broke her vertebrae, legs and ribs.
She suffered paralysis from the waist down, before eventually making a total recovery.
Vesna holds the Guinness world record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute (about 33,333 feet). As per BBC, she still flies despite the dubious achievement.
8 - Juliane Koepcke
On the Christmas Eve of 1971 Juliane Koepcke was among other passengers travelling in LANSA Flight 508, a Lockheed L-188A Electra turboprop, from Lima to Coronel, when lightning struck the aircraft after which it crashed into the Amazon Rainforest.
The plane crashed within 25 minutes after takeoff. It was experiencing extreme turbulence soon after it flew right into a thunderstorm. A bolt of lightning struck the right wing of the aircraft and it nosedived.
Koepcke, who was 17 years old then, along with other passengers on board, fell two miles strapped into her seat. She was sitting next to her mother whose final words were “that is the end, it’s all over."
After falling into the Amazon, she was knocked unconscious and woke up the next morning. She then trekked across the rainforest for 11 days before finding civilisation.
She had a broken collarbone and ruptured knee ligaments.
In 2000, the documentary maker Werner Herzog released a film about Koepcke story, titled Wings of Hope. Herzog was inspired to make the film after a last-minute change caused him to miss Koepcke’s doomed flight.
Apart from these, an incident from a Uruguayan plane crash on October 13, 1972 also needs a special mention. It is because the aircraft carrying 45 passengers crashed in the middle of the Andes mountain range.
More than a quarter of those on board died. Ten days after the crash, rescuers gave up searching, assuming that no-one could have survived. However, there were survivours who were stranded in the mountains, with no food and were forced to resort to cannibalism - eating the flesh of those who had died.
Though saved in the crash, another eight were killed when an avalanche hit their shelter amongst the wreckage.
Realising that they would die on the mountain, two Chilean passengers decided to find help and trekked for 10 days before reaching Chile. Soon after, they alerted the authorities. The 14 remaining survivors were rescued from the crash site 72 days after the plane went down.
With inputs from agencies
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