What do passengers feel when the plane crashes? What do people who somehow survived a plane crash say? Pilots and children

(Collected from various websites)

Alexander Andryukhin

If what happens in the cockpit during a crash can be judged from the records of the flight recorders, then there are no "black boxes" in the cabin. Izvestia tracked down several people who survived plane crashes or got into serious flight accidents ...

The story of Larisa Savitskaya is listed in the Guinness Book of Records. In 1981, at an altitude of 5220 meters, the An-24 aircraft in which she was flying collided with a military bomber. 37 people died in that crash. Only Larisa managed to survive.

I was then 20 years old, - says Larisa Savitskaya. - Volodya, my husband, and I flew from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Blagoveshchensk. Returned from honeymoon trip. First we sat in the front seats. But ahead I did not like it, and we moved to the middle. I fell asleep immediately after takeoff. And woke up from the roar and screams. His face was cold. Then I was told that our plane had its wings cut off and the roof blown off. But I don't remember the sky above my head. I remember it was foggy, like in a bathhouse. I looked at Volodya. He didn't move. Blood splattered across his face. I knew right away that he was dead. And prepared to die too. Then the plane broke up, and I lost consciousness. When she came to herself, she was surprised that she was still alive. I felt like I was lying on something hard. It turned out to be in the aisle between the chairs. And near the whistling abyss. There were no thoughts in my head. Fear too. In the state I was in - between sleep and reality - there is no fear. The only thing that came to my mind was an episode from an Italian film where a girl, after a plane crash, soared in the sky among the clouds, and then, having fallen into the jungle, remained alive. I didn't expect to survive. I just wanted to die without pain. I noticed the crossbars of the metal floor. And I thought: if I fall sideways, it will be very painful. I decided to change position and regroup. Then she crawled to the next row of chairs (our row stood near the break), sat down in a chair, clutched the armrests and rested her feet on the floor. All this was done automatically. Then I look - the earth. Very close. She grabbed the armrests with all her might and pushed herself away from the chair. Then - like a green explosion from larch branches. And again a memory failure. When I woke up, I saw my husband again. Volodya sat with his hands on his knees and looked at me with a fixed gaze. It was raining, which washed the blood from his face, and I saw a huge wound on his forehead. Under the armchairs lay a dead man and woman...
Later it was established that a piece of the plane - four meters long and three wide, on which Savitskaya fell, planned like an autumn leaf. He fell into a soft marshy clearing. Larisa lay unconscious for seven hours. Then for two more days I sat in a chair in the rain and waited for death to come. On the third day I got up, started looking for people and came across a search party. Larisa received several injuries, a concussion, a broken arm and five cracks in her spine. You can't go with these injuries. But Larisa refused the stretcher and reached the helicopter herself.
The plane crash and the death of her husband remained with her forever. According to her, her feelings of pain and fear are dulled. She is not afraid of death and still quietly flies on airplanes. But her son, who was born four years after the disaster, is terrified of flying.

Arina Vinogradova is one of the two surviving stewardesses of the Il-86 aircraft, which in 2002, having barely taken off, fell into Sheremetyevo. There were 16 people on board: four pilots, ten flight attendants and two engineers. Only two flight attendants survived: Arina and her friend Tanya Moiseeva.

They say that in the last seconds, your whole life scrolls before your eyes. This didn’t happen to me, ”Arina tells Izvestia. - Tanya and I were sitting in the first row of the third cabin, at the emergency exit, but not in service chairs, but in passenger ones. Tanya is in front of me. The flight was technical - we just had to return to Pulkovo. At some point, the plane shook. This happens with the "IL-86". But for some reason I realized that we were falling. Although nothing seemed to happen, there was no siren or roll. I didn't get scared. Consciousness instantly swam somewhere, and I fell into a black void. I woke up with a sharp shock. At first I didn't understand anything. Then it slowly unraveled. It turned out that I was lying on a warm engine, littered with chairs. She couldn't pull herself away. She began to scream, pound on the metal and shake Tanya, who either raised her head or lost consciousness again. We were pulled out by firefighters and taken to different hospitals.
Arina still works as a flight attendant. The plane crash, she said, left no trauma in her soul. However, the incident affected Tatyana Moiseeva very strongly. Since then, she no longer flies, although she has not left aviation. He still works in the squad of flight attendants, but already as a dispatcher. She does not even tell close friends about what she experienced.

The group "Lyceum" is known throughout the country. But few people know that two singers from this group - Anna Pletneva and Anastasia Makarevich - also survived a fall on an airplane.

This happened five years ago, - Anna Pletneva tells Izvestia. - I was always terrified of flying by plane, but then I got braver. She flew with Nastya Makarevich to Spain. We had a great rest. In a cheerful mood, they returned to Moscow on a Boeing-767. Neighbors were with a child. The minute we started to descend and the flight attendants told us to fasten our seat belts, I had the baby in my arms. And then the plane went downhill. Things fell on his head, the flight attendants shouted: "Hold the children! Get down!" I realized that we were falling, and pressed the baby to me. In my head flashed: "Is this all?" I used to think that when it was so scary, my heart should be beating wildly. But you don't really feel the heart. You don’t feel yourself, but you look at everything as if from the outside. The worst thing is hopelessness. You can't influence anything. But there was no panic - the one that is shown in the movies. Grave silence. Everyone, as if in a dream, buckled up and froze. Someone prayed, someone said goodbye to relatives.
Anna does not remember how much time has passed. Maybe seconds... Or minutes.
“Suddenly, the plane gradually began to level off,” she recalls, “I looked around: did it really only seem to me? But no, others also started up ... Even when we stopped on the runway, we could not believe that everything ended well. The commander announced: "Congratulations to everyone! We were born in a shirt. Now everything will be fine in your life."
- What is surprising, I have ceased to be afraid to fly on airplanes, - she says. - And on charter flights, pilots often let us into the cockpit and let us steer. I like it so much that I want to buy my own small plane soon. We will fly it on tour.

The Izvestia journalist Georgy Stepanov also survived the fall.

It happened in the summer of 1984,” he recalls. - I flew on a Yak-40 plane from Batumi to Tbilisi. When I got on the plane, there was a feeling that I was in a gypsy camp - there were so many things there. They were clogged with all the compartments from above, as well as the passage of the cabin. Don't push through. Passengers, of course, were also more than expected. We took off and gained altitude. Below the sea. Pulled into slumber. But then the fuselage seemed to have been hit with a sledgehammer, the rumble of the turbine became different, and the plane abruptly, almost vertically, went down. Everyone who was not fastened flew off their seats and rolled around the cabin interspersed with things. Screams, screams. A terrible panic began. I was strapped in. I still remember my state of horror. Everything in me broke off, my body seemed to be stiff. The feeling was that everything was not happening to me, but I was somewhere on the side. The only thing I thought: poor parents, what will happen to them? I couldn't scream or move. Nearby everyone was completely white with fear. Their dead, motionless eyes were striking, as if they were already in another world.
We actually fell for no more than a minute. The plane leveled off: passengers began to come to their senses, pick up things. Then, when we were already flying up to Tbilisi, the pilot got out of the cockpit. He was like a zombie. We began to ask: what happened? In response, he wanted to laugh it off, but somehow it was a pity he did it, it became embarrassing for him.
This fall still haunts me. When I get on a plane, I feel like a completely helpless creature in an unreliable shell.

The world knows more than a dozen cases of happy salvation

No matter how many specialists, referring to statistics, assure us that air transport is the safest, many are afraid to fly. The earth leaves hope, the height does not. How did those who did not survive the plane crash feel? We will never know this. According to research by the Interstate Aviation Committee, the consciousness of a person in a falling plane is turned off. In most cases - in the first seconds of the fall. At the moment of impact with the ground in the cabin there is not a single person who would be conscious. As they say, a protective reaction of the body is triggered.

The ancient Greek poet Theognid wrote: "What is not destined by fate will not happen, but what is destined - I am not afraid of that." There are also cases of miraculous salvation. Larisa Savitskaya is not the only one who survived the plane crash. In 1944, the English pilot Stephen, shot down by the Germans, fell from a height of 5500 meters and survived. In 2003, a Boeing 737 crashed in Sudan. A two-year-old child survived, although the plane was almost completely burned down. The world knows more than a dozen such cases.

From the material of "Komsomolskaya Pravda", published after the crash of the AN-24 at Varandey airport:

24 people survived the crash, 28 more died.
Many of those rescued are still in shock and refuse to speak. But according to three survivors - Sergei Trefilov, Dmitry Dorokhov and Alexei Abramov - KP correspondents restored what happened in the cabin of the falling plane.

According to official reports, An-24, tail number 46489, disappeared from the radar screens at 13.43 when landing.

13.43
Sergei:
- Commander Viktor Popov said over the speakerphone: “Our plane has begun to descend. In a few minutes we will land at the airport in the village of Varandey.” The voice was completely calm. He announced the landing in Usinsk in the same way. Immediately the stewardess walked through the cabin and sat on a folding chair in the tail. Everything was as usual - this is the 10th time I fly on this watch.

Dmitriy:
- The plane began to shake violently. But there was no panic. Around me, people were talking in undertones. We talked about football, about the watch. The neighbor said that he felt sick when landing. But there were no words about the fact that the plane was falling.

13.44 - 13.55
Sergei:
We were flying low. Very. We saw that under the wing there is no runway - only snow. A man behind me asked: “Where are we sitting down? In field?"

13.56
Sergei:
- The plane fell on its left side somehow too much. And then there was such a sound outside the window - iron, as if something was coming off. People started to look at each other.

Dmitry Dorokhov escaped with a slight fright: “The leg will heal! The main thing is that he is alive.

Dmitriy:
- We were waiting for the pilots to announce now: they say, everything is fine. But the cockpit was silent. And then the plane went down steeply. Someone shouted: “Everything, b ...! We're falling!

Alexei:
- I was shocked that only one screamed in the cabin. The rest silently pressed themselves into chairs or began to hide their heads between their knees.

Sergei:
“They didn’t say anything over the loudspeaker. Only some strange sound, as if the pilots turned on the microphone, but immediately turned it off. The stewardess was also silent - she did not try to calm the people.

13.57
Sergei:
- I saw in the window how the plane touched the ground with its wing. He couldn't close his eyes, he stared and that was it. After that, the pilots obviously tried to level the plane, we jumped up a little. And crashed into the snow!

Alexei:
- Fell silently. Very fast. Everyone sat in a daze. Now many newspapers say that the pilots were blinded by a flash of sunlight reflected from the icy strip. That's bullshit! There were no outbreaks. Only a blow.
I didn't lose consciousness. Only two seconds in the eyes was dark. You know, like after being punched in the jaw. For about five seconds there was complete silence in the cabin. And then all at once stirred, groaned.

13.58 - 14.00
Alexei Abramov rescued four from a burning plane. His godmother says, "He's a real hero!"

Sergei:
- The plane lay on its side, and there was a hole in the wall. In the salon, someone was constantly wailing: “It hurts! Hurt!" I climbed out and crawled down the aisle.

Dmitriy:
- The worst thing is that all the people were plagued - they could not come to their senses. They just didn't understand what happened. I shake my neighbor: “Alive?” And he hums. And then the gas tank caught fire. There was no explosion. The flames crawled through the cabin gradually.

Sergei:
- People sitting closer to the bow began to light up and scream. The clothes flashed in an instant. And these "living torches" jumped up and ran to the tail. On us.
Someone shouted: "Take things, put them out!" We started grabbing sheepskin coats and jackets from luggage racks and throwing them at people. Three minutes fussed - extinguished. But I was shocked: even when people were on fire, they did not panic. They screamed in pain, not fear.

14.01 - 14.08
Sergei:
- Then someone commanded: “We climb outside! Now everything is going to explode here…” Me and someone else got out through a hole in the fuselage.

Dmitriy:
- The stewardess saved us all. She kicked out the emergency hatch and led people through it.

Alexei:
- I was one of the first near the hatch. He helped four people get out, it was clear that they themselves could not - their arms and legs were broken. I shout at them: "Crawl!" - and pull. Pulled out. Then he jumped out.

14.09
Sergei:
- There were some warehouses near the plane. And people from there immediately ran to the plane. And everyone who got out of the cabin, they dragged away. And shouted all the time: “Come on! Let's!"

Dmitriy:
- Immediately drove the "Ural". Those who could not get up on their own were loaded and taken to the village. And we sat down on the snow and looked around like newborn babies.

Alexei:
- Nobody then remembered about things - jackets, bags, mobile phones. I did not even feel the cold, although I was in one sweater. And only in the hospital, when the first shock had passed, did I see that many had tears rolling down their faces...

And here is how it happens on earth (from reports on the crash of TU-154 Anapa - St. Petersburg):

eyewitness testimony

Residents of the Donetsk region who saw how the Tu-154 fell
The Pulkovo Airlines plane took off from Anapa yesterday afternoon.
Among the 160 passengers on board were almost fifty children, because Anapa is a popular children's resort.
Approximately at 15.30 Moscow time, the ship's commander transmitted an SOS signal to the ground. And literally two minutes after that, the plane disappeared from the radar.
We got through to the inhabitants of the village of Novgorodskoye, not far from the place where the plane crashed.
- He circled around the ground for a long time, and just before landing, he caught fire, - Galina STEPANOVA, a resident of the village of Novgorodskoye, Donetsk region, near which this tragedy happened, told us. - We have fields of the state farm "Stepnoy" outside the village. That's where the plane crashed. It rolled over several times in the air, stuck its nose into the ground and exploded. Our local residents, until the police arrived and cordoned off everything, went to look. They say everything is charred there. Well, wow, for a month and a half it was so hot, everyone was waiting for the rain. We waited. There was such a downpour, and a thunderstorm - it took your breath away. Most likely, because of the thunderstorm, the trouble happened.
“Before the catastrophe, a strong thunderstorm began,” says eyewitness Gennady KURSOV from the village of Stepnoe, near which the plane crashed. - The sky was covered with clouds. Suddenly there was the sound of a low-flying airliner. But until the last moment it was not visible! We and the inhabitants of other surrounding villages noticed it only when there were 150 meters left to the ground. I thought that it would fall right on us. It was spinning around its axis like a helicopter...

In the airport

Information about Flight 612 disappeared from the scoreboard as soon as contact with the aircraft was lost.
The flight from Anapa was supposed to land at Pulkovo at 17.45. But at about 16.00, the line "Anapa - Petersburg" suddenly went out on the scoreboard. Few people paid attention to this - the meeting people had not yet arrived at the airport.
And this was the very moment when communication between the controllers and the crew was irretrievably lost ...
When it became clear that the plane had died, the calm voice of the announcer sounded at Pulkovo:
- Those meeting flight 612 from Anapa are invited to the cinema room ...
- Why cinema? - those who met were worried and, still not understanding anything, but already suspecting the worst, rushed there. And there are lists of passengers who have registered for this flight posted on the glass doors of the cinema hall. People stood in silence in front of these sheets for several minutes. They didn't believe.
And only when almost all the bars of the Pulkovo airport at once started working televisions with horrific news - the first heartbreaking cry was heard in the corridors of the airport.

From the words of a passenger flying on the same days:

we flew from Anapa on August 13th, I was there with my family ...
and before leaving, he wrote a will for an apartment ...
and on the car - so that it would be easier for my friends-loan guarantors to pay for me in case of something irreparable ...
how they laughed at me and as soon as they did not name my act
laughed - until yesterday, when dozens of families went to eternity
now almost everyone called back and my act no longer seems so "wild" to them
it hurts me to think about it
that these people also sat on the same benches in the reservoir of the Anapa port
sat and looked at the runway, planes, takeoffs and landings ...
and now they are gone, and the world lives on as before, but already without them...
how painful it is to realize that death does not change the world as a whole, but only breaks the fate of individual people.
I already wrote this somewhere here on the branches, but these thoughts do not go away, they go in circles all the time and do not give rest.
and the mother is crying for the 2nd day - she says that she has a feeling that WE "slipped through"
past death, although we are separated from the catastrophe by 9 days...
I will repeat again and again:
let the earth rest in peace to passengers
eternal clear sky to the crew
let the dead children become angels.

I've always wondered what people experience in a falling plane. Summarizing the experience of eyewitnesses who survived plane crashes, one interesting conclusion can be drawn - the devil is not so terrible as he is painted ...

First, be more afraid when you drive to the airport. In 2014, over 33 million flights were made in the world, there were 21 air crashes (moreover, most of the trouble in the sky falls on cargo transportation), in which only 990 people died. Those. the probability of a plane crash is only 0.0001%. During the same year, in Russia alone, 26,963 people died in traffic accidents, and according to WHO, 1.2 million people die in road accidents and about 50 million are injured annually in the world.

Secondly, judging by the statistics, you have a much greater chance of dying on an escalator in the subway or contracting AIDS than dying on an airplane. So the chance of dying in a plane crash is 1 in 11,000,000, while, for example, in a car accident - 1 in 5,000, so now it is much safer to fly than drive a car. Moreover, every year aviation technology becomes safer. By the way, Africa remains the most unfavorable continent in terms of flight safety: only 3% of all flights in the world are operated here, but 43% of air crashes have occurred!

Thirdly, with strong overloads, you will not remember anything According to research by the Interstate Aviation Committee, the consciousness of a person in a falling plane is turned off. In most cases - in the first seconds of the fall. At the moment of impact with the ground there is not a single person in the cabin who would be conscious. As they say, a protective reaction of the body is triggered. This thesis is confirmed by those who managed to survive in plane crashes. Silence also accompanies minor air incidents, a selection of videos

Fourth, the experience of surviving plane crashes. The story of Larisa Savitskaya is listed in the Guinness Book of Records. In 1981, at an altitude of 5220 meters, the An-24 aircraft in which she was flying collided with a military bomber. 37 people died in that crash. Only Larisa managed to survive.

I was then 20 years old, - says Larisa Savitskaya. - Volodya, my husband, and I flew from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Blagoveshchensk. I fell asleep immediately after takeoff. And woke up from the roar and screams. His face was cold. Then I was told that our plane had its wings cut off and the roof blown off. But I don't remember the sky above my head. I remember it was foggy, like in a bathhouse. I looked at Volodya. He didn't move. Blood splattered across his face. I knew right away that he was dead. And prepared to die too. Then the plane broke up, and I lost consciousness. When she came to herself, she was surprised that she was still alive. I felt like I was lying on something hard. It turned out to be in the aisle between the chairs. And near the whistling abyss. There were no thoughts in my head. Fear too. In the state I was in - between sleep and reality - there is no fear. The only thing that came to my mind was an episode from an Italian film where a girl, after a plane crash, soared in the sky among the clouds, and then, having fallen into the jungle, remained alive. I didn't expect to survive. I just wanted to die without pain. I noticed the crossbars of the metal floor. And I thought: if I fall sideways, it will be very painful. I decided to change position and regroup. Then she crawled to the next row of chairs (our row stood near the break), sat down in a chair, clutched the armrests and rested her feet on the floor. All this was done automatically. Then I look - the earth. Very close. She grabbed the armrests with all her might and pushed herself away from the chair. Then - like a green explosion from larch branches. And again a memory failure. When I woke up, I saw my husband again. Volodya sat with his hands on his knees and looked at me with a fixed gaze. It was raining, which washed the blood from his face, and I saw a huge wound on his forehead. Under the armchairs lay a dead man and woman...

Later it was established that a piece of the plane - four meters long and three wide, on which Savitskaya fell, planned like an autumn leaf. He fell into a soft marshy clearing. Larisa lay unconscious for seven hours. Then for two more days I sat in a chair in the rain and waited for death to come. On the third day I got up, started looking for people and came across a search party. Larisa received several injuries, a concussion, a broken arm and five cracks in her spine. You can't go with these injuries. But Larisa refused the stretcher and reached the helicopter herself.

The plane crash and the death of her husband remained with her forever. According to her, her feelings of pain and fear are dulled. She is not afraid of death and still quietly flies on airplanes.

Another case confirms the disconnection of consciousness. Arina Vinogradova is one of the two surviving stewardesses of the Il-86 aircraft, which in 2002, having barely taken off, fell into Sheremetyevo. There were 16 people on board: four pilots, ten flight attendants and two engineers. Only two flight attendants survived: Arina and her friend Tanya Moiseeva. They say that in the last seconds, your whole life scrolls before your eyes. This didn’t happen to me, ”Arina tells Izvestia. - Tanya and I were sitting in the first row of the third cabin, at the emergency exit, but not in service chairs, but in passenger ones. Tanya is in front of me. The flight was technical - we just had to return to Pulkovo. At some point, the plane shook. This happens with the "IL-86". But for some reason I realized that we were falling. Although nothing seemed to happen, there was no siren or roll. I didn't get scared. Consciousness instantly swam somewhere, and I fell into a black void. I woke up with a sharp shock. At first I didn't understand anything. Then it slowly unraveled. It turned out that I was lying on a warm engine, littered with chairs. She couldn't pull herself away. She began to scream, pound on the metal and shake Tanya, who either raised her head or lost consciousness again. We were pulled out by firefighters and taken to different hospitals.

Arina still works as a flight attendant. The plane crash, she said, left no trauma in her soul. However, the incident affected Tatyana Moiseeva very strongly. Since then, she no longer flies, although she has not left aviation.

Fifth, a plane crash is a positive experience for survivors! Scientists came to unique conclusions: people who survived plane crashes later turned out to be healthier from a psychological point of view. They showed less anxiety, anxiety, did not fall into depression and did not experience post-traumatic stress, in contrast to the subjects from the control group, who had never had such an experience.

In conclusion, I bring to your attention, the speech of Rick Elias, who was sitting on the front row of the plane that made an emergency landing in the Hudson River in New York in January 2009. You will find out what thoughts came to his mind as the doomed plane fell down...

Still afraid to fly?-)

As a result of a plane crash, the victim's body is often damaged simultaneously or in rapid succession by the following several factors, and the action of one factor often overlaps with another:
1) dynamic and shock overloads;
2) counter air flow;
3) explosive decompression;
4) atmospheric electricity;
5) thermal impact;
6) toxic products of combustion and pyrolysis;
7) blunt objects located inside the aircraft;
8) blast wave;
9) external parts of the aircraft;
10) running engines;
11) high-altitude decompression;
12) shaking, vibration.

When an aircraft collides with an obstacle, they can cause overloads that reach very large values of the order of tens and even hundreds of g units. At the same time, the body is torn off the back of the chair and is held by seat belts. Depending on the magnitude of the overload, the consequences for the victims can be of a different nature - from functional disorders of breathing and blood circulation associated with the relative movement of the internal organs of the chest and abdomen, and loss of consciousness - to mechanical damage caused by seat belts in the form of abrasions, bruises, sometimes skin tears and soft tissues, injuries of the spine, and in the event of a collision of an aircraft at high speed with an obstacle or the ground - in the form of gross damage to all tissues at the level of seat belts up to the separation of the upper body. In the latter case, as a rule, subsequent significant destruction of the head and torso occurs as a result of the impact of these parts of the body on objects located in front.

Radial accelerations and the corresponding overloads occur when trying to get out of a dive in emergency situations. In these cases, there is a significant displacement of soft tissues, internal organs, and especially blood in large vessels, accompanied by a sharp violation of breathing, circulation, functions of the central nervous system, visual impairment, loss of consciousness, as well as traumatic injuries to tissues and vital organs.

When the overload is directed in the direction of the head-legs, a significant part of the circulating blood (up to 1/4 of the total mass) moves into the vessels of the abdominal cavity and extremities, as a result of which the work of the heart is disturbed, anemia of the brain develops with loss of consciousness. The outcome in such a situation will depend on the duration of the unconscious state and the flight altitude at which the loss of consciousness occurred. As a result of the displacement and deformation of the internal organs and tissues of the abdominal cavity and their sharp overflow with blood, multiple hemorrhages can be observed in the mesentery of the intestine, under the capsule and in the ligaments of the internal organs, loose fatty tissue.

Overloads directed from the legs to the head, a person endures much harder. Already at an acceleration of the order of 4-5 g, a strong rush of blood to the head occurs, accompanied by redness and swelling of the face, nosebleeds, multiple small hemorrhages in the skin of the face, conjunctiva of the eyes, membranes and substance of the brain. A sharp increase in intracranial pressure leads to rapid loss of consciousness and death. In this case, fractures of the upper and lower extremities, compression fractures of the spine, fractures of the base and cranial vault, injuries of soft extremities can be observed.

The oncoming air flow at high flight speeds (800-1000 km / h or more) has the properties of a solid body, since the pressure force of the air flow under these conditions exceeds the weight of a person by 50-70 times. The oncoming air flow can rip off household items and clothing. When the oxygen mask is torn off, a sharp deformation of the soft tissues of the face occurs with extensive hemorrhage and their detachment from the underlying bones, rupture of the corners of the mouth, and damage to the eyeballs. A jet of air that has penetrated under high pressure into the upper respiratory tract and esophagus can lead to barotrauma of the lungs and stomach; reflex violation of breathing and cessation of oxygen supply causes acute oxygen starvation. As a result of the breakdown of the arms from the armrests and the legs from the footrests,
scattering of limbs, accompanied by dislocations, sprains of articular ligaments, muscle tears, hemorrhages.

Explosive decompression is observed in flight at an altitude of over 8-9 thousand meters as a result of emergency depressurization of the cabin. As a result of a sharp pressure drop, a person may experience barotrauma of the lungs and hearing aid, as well as gas embolism. Barotrauma of the hearing aid is accompanied by a rupture of the tympanic membrane, damage to the auditory ossicles, hemorrhage in the tissues of the middle and inner ear and the tympanic cavity.

With barotrauma of the lungs, there is liquid blood in the airways, acute swelling of the lungs, multiple focal hemorrhages and ruptures of the lung tissue. Along with the macrofocal nature of changes in the lung tissue along the branching of the bronchi, small ruptures and hemorrhages are also observed.

Blunt objects located inside the aircraft are the main damaging factor in the fall and impact of the aircraft on the ground. In this case, deformation and destruction of its structure occurs, as well as the mutual displacement of the people in the aircraft and the objects surrounding them. The resulting shock overloads, depending on the speed and angle of incidence of the aircraft, can exceed hundreds and even thousands of times the impact forces on the victims observed in ground transport accidents.

The result of shock overloads of enormous force can be gross destruction of the body with separation of its individual parts (head, limbs, pelvic region) with extensive ruptures and crushing of the skin and soft tissues, crushing of bones, opening of body cavities and crushing, separation, displacement of internal organs or their ejection out.

The blast wave is the most powerful damaging factor that occurs as a result of an explosion of fuel in fuel tanks or a terrorist attack. Most often, the first explosion occurs at the moment the aircraft hits the ground, sometimes in the air after touching the ground. When a jet aircraft falls to the ground in a dive mode, followed by an explosion, the funnel can reach a depth of several meters. A powerful blast wave causes complete destruction of aircraft structures and bodies. At the same time, the remains are found both in the funnel itself and outside it, scattered over an area with a radius of up to 300-500 m. In the event of an explosion in the air after touching the ground, the remains of people who were on the plane are scattered at a distance of up to 3 km in the direction of flight and up to 1.5 km away from the explosion site.

With the complete destruction of the body as a result of an explosion, separate small flaps of skin are usually found without settling their edges, auricles with part of the temporal bone, pieces of internal organs, bone fragments with fragments of soft tissues, sometimes hands, feet or parts of them. In a terrorist attack, extensive injuries with separations of body parts, multiple penetrating and blind shrapnel wounds are received by persons located directly near the explosion site, the rest most often die as a result of mechanical damage during the subsequent fall of the aircraft and its impact on the ground.

As a result of the action of the flame, clothing can be ignited, body burns, as well as post-mortem burning of corpses, reaching extreme degrees with charring of soft tissues and bones up to their incineration. Sometimes a fire is preceded by an explosion, in these cases, the remains of corpses are already exposed to thermal effects.

"The speed of the pulses is below the speed of the explosion"

In the area of the village of Stepanovskoye, Ramenskoye district, Moscow region, search work continues at the crash site of the AN-148 aircraft of Saratov Airlines. Local residents, meanwhile, organized a memorial here and lit 71 candles - according to the number of dead passengers and crew members. The answer to the question: "Why did the disaster happen?" after decoding the data from the flight recorders, experts will give. But after each such emergency, the relatives of the victims, and many other people who often board the aircraft not without fear, are also tormented by other questions: “What did the person feel at the time of the disaster? Was he in pain? Did he know he was dying? We asked Sergei Savelyev, Head of the Laboratory for the Development of the Human Nervous System of the Research Institute of Human Morphology, Russian Academy of Sciences, to answer them.

salon AN-148.

- Sergey Vyacheslavovich, tell me, during an explosion, does the human brain manage to transmit pain sensations to the body?

Since all this happens very quickly, I can say that, most likely, the victim of a plane crash does not have time to feel pain. Everything is very simple. The speed of conducting impulses in our body along the nerves to the receptors is much lower than the speed of the explosion. It's just instant death.

- Does the brain have time to understand that death is about to come?

Again, it all depends on the situation. If you mean, again, an explosion, then of course not. And if we consider that a person flies in a plane that has lost control for several seconds, then here everything is already happening according to a different scenario. The fact is that we are programmed in such cases for a positive outcome. A person always hopes that he will get out and stay alive. It resists to the last, while the brain is alive. And he dies last. This is due to our blood supply system.

Sergey Vyacheslavovich, is it true that before a flight, the intuition of some people may tell them not to board an airliner that is about to crash?

There is no intuition in this regard. Well, imagine, you approach the plane and see that everything is in order with it. What will life experience tell you in this case? Nothing. And sometimes you approach the plane (I had such a case), and one of its engines smokes. Sat and flew. Everything went fine. Astral tails don't help here.

Is it possible to trick the brain during a flight if it is too scary? Let's say you close your eyes and imagine that you are on a train?

...Always interested in what people experience in a falling plane. Summarizing the experience of eyewitnesses who survived plane crashes, one interesting conclusion can be drawn - the devil is not so terrible as he is painted ...
...According to research by the Interstate Aviation Committee, the consciousness of a person in a falling plane is turned off. In most cases - in the first seconds of the fall. At the moment of impact with the ground, there is not a single person in the cabin who would be conscious...

-First, be more afraid when you drive to the airport. In 2014, over 33 million flights were made in the world, there were 21 air crashes (moreover, most of the trouble in the sky falls on cargo transportation), in which only 990 people died. Those. the probability of a plane crash is only 0.0001%. During the same year, in Russia alone, 26,963 people died in traffic accidents, and according to WHO, 1.2 million people die in road accidents and about 50 million are injured annually in the world.

-Secondly, judging by the statistics, you are much more likely to die on an escalator in the subway or get AIDS than to die on an airplane . So the chance of dying in a plane crash is 1 in 11,000,000, while, for example, in a car accident - 1 in 5,000, so now it is much safer to fly than drive a car. Moreover, every year aviation technology becomes safer. By the way, Africa remains the most unfavorable continent in terms of flight safety: only 3% of all flights in the world are operated here, but 43% of air crashes have occurred!

-Thirdly, with strong overloads, you will not remember anything According to research by the Interstate Aviation Committee, the consciousness of a person in a falling plane is turned off. In most cases - in the first seconds of the fall. At the moment of impact with the ground in the cabin there is not a single person who would be conscious. As they say, a protective reaction of the body is triggered. This thesis is confirmed by those who managed to survive in plane crashes. Silence also accompanies minor air incidents, a selection of videos

-Fourth, the experience of surviving plane crashes. The story of Larisa Savitskaya is listed in the Guinness Book of Records. In 1981, at an altitude of 5220 meters, the An-24 aircraft in which she was flying collided with a military bomber. 37 people died in that crash. Only Larisa managed to survive.

The plane crash and the death of her husband remained with her forever. According to her, her feelings of pain and fear are dulled. She is not afraid of death and still quietly flies on airplanes.

I woke up with a sharp shock. At first I didn't understand anything. Then it slowly unraveled. It turned out that I was lying on a warm engine, littered with chairs. She couldn't pull herself away. She began to scream, pound on the metal and shake Tanya, who either raised her head or lost consciousness again. We were pulled out by firefighters and taken to different hospitals.

Arina still works as a flight attendant. The plane crash, she said, left no trauma in her soul.

However, the incident affected Tatyana Moiseeva very strongly. Since then, she no longer flies, although she has not left aviation.

-Fifth, a plane crash is a positive experience for survivors! Scientists came to unique conclusions: people who survived plane crashes later turned out to be healthier from a psychological point of view. They showed less anxiety, anxiety, did not fall into depression and did not experience post-traumatic stress, in contrast to the subjects from the control group, who had never had such an experience.