10 Lone Survivors from Recent Plane Crashes

On 12th May, 2010, a deadly plane crash in Libya killed approximately one hundred people. Miraculously, a ten year old Dutch boy escaped death and remains to be the sole survivor of the plane crash. Ruben van Assouw, was hospitalized for three days and after recovery from his surgery he was flown back to his resident city of Tilburg. Once he was in a stable condition, he was told that his parents along with his older brother had perished in the crash. Assouw's family was returning from a trip to South Africa, where they had gone to celebrate the 12 1/2 year wedding anniversary; a Dutch tradition. Rescuers found the boy strapped to his seat about half a mile away from the debris of the plane. He was severely wounded with both of his legs broken. On 15th of May, 2010, he was transferred via an ambulance by air to Eindhoven, Netherlands. The ten year old boy was escorted on the flight by his aunt and uncle.

A Fourteen year old girl by the name of Baya Bakari, was rescued after twelve long hours of being trapped in the Indian Ocean after the crash of a Yemeni Plane on 1st June, 2009. She was the lone survivor of the crash that took the lives of over a hundred and fifty people, including her mother. It is reported that Baya held on to the debris of the plane in the stormy shark infested Indian Ocean for more than ten hours. The little girl was rescued and taken to a hospital in Morani. Baya's father, Kassim Bakari told the media at their home in Corbell Essones south of Paris, that Baya had suffered a fractured collarbone and a few burns on her knee. However, no life threatening injuries were reported either by her father or the doctors, as she had been very luckily ejected from the plane upon impact.

His plane was decelerating on approach towards the supposed runway at Kentucky Airport. James M. Polehimke, the co-pilot, noted that it seemed strangely odd that there were no approach lights on the runway. However, James and the captain did not once attempt to abort approach, contact the tower and go around. They pressed on towards the runway ahead not realizing that they had made an approach on the wrong airstrip. The Comair regional jet landed on the wrong runway. Consequently, it rammed into the trees in the overshoot of this runway and practically anything that came in its path. It exploded into flames. The incident took the lives of all on board except the co-pilot. The final tally of lives lost was 49 out of 50. Polehinke went through some extremely critical surgeries. Mystifyingly, to date, Polehinke is unable to recall what really happened that day.

The overall circumstances and the unbelievable story of the lone survivor of the Jugoslovenski Aero transport crash is simply marveling. Vesna Vulovic was a flight attendant onboard the ill-fated flight when a bomb went off at an altitude of 33,000 feet. It was a plain act of terrorism and was credited to the Croatian Ustashe terrorists. The massive explosion tore the jet off into several pieces in mid-air. The wreckage of the jet fell off the sky for three minutes before finally hitting a frozen mountainside. A German man found Vesna lying half outside of the wrecked plane with another crew member's body on top of her. Luckily the man who found her was a medic in World War II. He did all that he could for Vesna before rescue teams arrived. She had suffered an intensely fractured skull, two broken legs and three broken vertebrae; this left her temporally paralyzed from waist down. After the rescue teams arrived, she was taken to the hospital for treatment. It was later noticed that her flight schedule that day had been mixed up with another flight attendant who shared the same name as her, and was subsequently placed on the wrong flight. Vesna Vulovic holds the Guinness World Record for surviving the highest fall without the use of a parachute. She is also regarded as a national heroine in the former Yugoslavia.

On the Christmas Eve of 1971, the Peruvian Airliner took off from the Jorge Chavez International Airport in Lima on a flight to Pucallpa, Peru. After nearly half an hour of the take off, at 21,000 feet the plane was engulfed in heavy thunderstorm which resulted in massive turbulence. The planewas struck by lightning. The pilots had extreme difficulty in handling the aircraft and soon the aircraft went into a spiral dive. The aircraft came crashing down in a mountainous region of the Amazon. 91 people were killed in the crash. Phenomenally, Juliane Koepke, a 17 year old German, survived the crash and was still strapped in her seat. She had been sitting with her mother on the flight. After the crash, Juliane searched extensively for her mother for nine days through the dense Amazon jungle. However, all her efforts went in vain. On the ninth day of the crash, she found a canoe and a shelter. Just hours later then, a few local lumbermen spotted her and took her final seven hour journey via the canoe down the river to a lumber station. There she was airlifted and taken to a hospital. Juliane Koepk, today is a successful biologist in Germany.