It’s been almost 24 hours since the crash of Air India Flight AI171 (VT-ANB) en route from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad, India, to London’s Gatwick Airport.
It was the first fatal crash of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, a fuel efficient, widebody aircraft and a model that just a few months ago, celebrated a milestone of over one billion passengers carried since it went into service in 2009.
Boeing says there are over 1,175 Dreamliners in service around the globe.
According to aviation analytics firm Cirium, VT-ANB, a 787-8 series jet, had been in service with Air India since 2014 and had logged some 41,000 hours of flight time with over 8,000 cycles (takeoffs and landings).
[VIDEO BELOW: Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashes in India]
Investigators believe the aircraft only got to a height of about 425 feet after takeoff from Runway 23 before a slow glide took it into buildings on the campus of B J Medical College and Civil Hospital barely 3 kilometers away. The plane was only in the air for about 12 seconds; the root cause of the crash is unknown at this time.
[READ: Sole survivor narrates his escape]
Air India has reported that of the 242 people on board the aircraft (230 passengers and 12 crewmembers), there was just one survivor: Viswash Kumar Ramesh.
Ramesh was seated in seat 11A – his brother was across the aisles in seat 11J and did not survive the crash. Early reports are that five other people on the ground were also killed in the crash.
[VIDEO BELOW: New footage shows plane erupting into fireball]
Air India Flight AI171 is far from the first commercial aircraft to crash where only one person has survived. Since 1960, more than a dozen people have miraculously been the sole survivors of plane crashes worldwide.
Here’s a partial list:
This first story has one person initially surviving the crash but later dying.
December 16, 1960; (134 total deaths- 44 on the TWA flight/84 on board the United flight/6 on the ground): New York City, New York- A TWA Lockheed Super Constellation (N6907C-Flight 266) collided in mid-air with a United Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC-8 (N8031U-Flight 826) over Staten Island. The United plane (en route to JFK from Chicago) was able to continue flying, but eventually crashed into the heavily populated Park Slope section of Brooklyn at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Sterling Place (editor’s note: I lived on Sterling Place in Brooklyn for three years as a kid). Speculations among witnesses and historians note pilot Richard Sawyer initially tried to steer the plane towards LaGuardia Airport but then opted for an emergency landing in the open fields of Prospect Park. Flight 826 crashed two blocks away from the park.
The TWA aircraft (en route to LaGuardia from Columbus, Ohio), was sliced open by the right wing of the United jet, broke into three pieces and plunged into Miller’s Field Army base in Staten Island. All forty-four people (39 passengers and five crewmembers) on board the TWA flight were killed; all eighty-four on board the United plane (77 passengers and 7 crewmembers) also died. Investigators also noted one woman was sucked out of the TWA aircraft and “ingested” into an engine on the United DC-8. That engine and part of the wing eventually fell off the plane and was found in Dongan Hills in Staten Island. Six people on the ground in Brooklyn were killed by the debris of the Flight 826; the wreckage from the aircraft set fire to ten apartment buildings, a church, a funeral home, a Laundromat and a delicatessen.
Initially, one person survived the crash: eleven-year-old Stephen Baltz (from Wilmette, Illinois) was aboard the UA flight and was found alive at the crash scene in a snowbank. Baltz, who had broken both of his legs, suffered from burns and inhaled a large amount of smoke from burning debris, was able to describe the crash to investigators before dying in the hospital the next day. The child had sixty-five cents in his pocket when he was brought to New York Methodist Hospital in Park Slope, Brooklyn; those coins were later mounted to a plaque for display in the hospital’s chapel.
The United aircraft had a non-functional navigational receiver and drifted twelve miles off course from its holding pattern over Preston, NJ (reserved for planes landing at Idlewide/JFK). The TWA flight was in a holding pattern in its proper airspace (over Staten Island) preparing for a landing at LaGuardia Airport when the collision occurred. The crash was the first time in American aviation history that cockpit voice and flight data recorders were used in a subsequent investigation to determine the cause of a plane crash.
On the 50th anniversary of the mid-air collision (December 16, 2010), an eight-foot granite monument was unveiled at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn honoring those killed. The memorial (near Fifth Avenue and 32nd Street) was erected on an unmarked grave that held the unidentified remains of three crash victims.
August 9, 1970; (101 total deaths, 8 crew/91 pax/2 on the ground): San Jeronimo Hill, Peru- A LANSA Airlines (Líneas Aéreas Nacionales S.A.) Lockheed L-188A Electra (OB-R-939- Flight 502 en route from Cuzco to Lima) crashed shortly after takeoff from Quispiquilla Airport. The Electra’s number 3 engine failed as the aircraft left the ground; the flight crew requested a turnaround back to Cuzco, but as the plane turned to the left after the takeoff, the wings could not maintain lift at the slow speed (the pilots had not retracted the flaps) and the Electra banked and impacted the ground some six miles away from the airport. Aside from the eight crewmembers and 91 passengers killed, two farmers on the ground were also killed.
Among the dead were 49 American high school students living in Peru via a student exchange program sponsored by International Fellowship of Buffalo, New York. The students were on their way back to Lima after visiting the Inca ruins of Macchu Picchu near Cuzco. There were a number of miracles among the sadness: fifteen American students didn’t make the trip to the Inca ruins choosing instead to stay in Lima with their exchange families.
26-year-old pilot trainee Juan (John) Loo Lock somehow lived through the crash. Loo, the sole survivor, was found in part of the cockpit in a tree, badly burned and with serious injuries. Loo eventually moved to the United States.
A subsequent investigation revealed the engine that had failed had gone well beyond the allowed regulated time for operating hours and the aircraft was overloaded. Additionally, LANSA had not properly trained its flight crew to handle an engine failure during takeoff. LANSA’s operating license was suspended for 90 days as a result of this crash. The airline folded operations on January 4, 1972 after a second high profile fatal crash involving another of its Lockheed Electras and the operating license not being renewed at the end of 1971.
July 22, 1973; (78 total deaths, 10 crew/68 pax): Near Papeete, Tahiti- En route from Auckland to Los Angeles, a Pan Am World Airways Boeing 707-321B (N417PA (also known as the Clipper Winged Racer)- Flight 816 making stops in Tahiti and Honolulu) crashed into the water shortly after takeoff from Tahiti. Thirty seconds after the aircraft departed Faaa International Airport, the 707 banked slowly to the left and crashed into the water.
Flight 816 never got any higher than about 300 feet off the ground.
Authorities were never able to determine the exact cause of the crash as the CVR and FDR were never recovered (the aircraft sank into water about 2,300 feet deep). Theories about the crash include everything from the crew becoming distracted by an instrument problem and not realizing they were so close to the water (there were no visual references because the crash occurred at night and over the ocean) to a multiple engine failure.
Only ten bodies were recovered from the crash site. There was one survivor of the crash: (Neil) James Campbell of Toronto, California was sitting in the tourist class section of the aircraft
August 24, 1981; (31 total deaths, 5 crew/26 pax): Zeleznogorsk (east of Zavitinsk), USSR- An Aeroflot Antonov An-24RV (CCCP-46653 en route from Komsomolsk-na-Amure’den to Blagoveşensk’e) crashed into the ground after a mid-air collision. The An-24 (which holds about 60 passengers) was hit as it cruised at about 18,000 feet high by a much bigger Tupolev-16K Soviet bomber. The force of the collision tore both wings and the roof off of the An-24; the Tu-16K also sustained major damage. Both aircraft crashed.
Miraculously, one person survived the mid-air collision. Larissa Sovitskaya was a passenger on the An-24 returning from her honeymoon with her husband to the small Russian town of Blagoveşensk’e (near the Chinese border). The collision between the two aircraft instantly killed her husband Vladimir and sent Sovitskaya hurtling towards the back of the aircraft. Sovitskaya, who was awakened out of a sound sleep, scrambled forward and held on to a seat with the bodies of her husband and two other passengers still strapped in. The fuselage crashed into a patch of birch trees; experts estimate that it took Sovitskaya eight minutes to fall the 18,000 feet to the ground. Everyone else aboard the An-24 was killed in the collision.
It took rescuers three days to reach Sovitskaya, who was just 20 years old at the time. Rescuers found her with spinal injuries, a broken hand, a broken rib, cuts and bruises. The young newlywed said she survived on blackberries until the search team found her.
Sovitskaya spent over a year recovering from her injuries and was eventually paid less than $500 total compensation from Aeroflot (part for her injuries and part for the death of her husband). Larissa Sovitskaya was warned by the KGB to keep her mouth shut because the crash involved a Soviet military aircraft; she did so for years until about 1990 when Mikhail Gorbachev’s “glasnost” allowed her to reveal her story. Ten years later, a full account of Sovitskaya’s story was published in among other places London’s Sunday Times.
January 21, 1985; (70 total deaths, 6 crew/64 pax): Reno, Nevada- A Galaxy Airlines Lockheed L-188C Electra (N5532- Flight 203, a non-scheduled charter flight/gambling junket en route from Reno to Minneapolis) crashed as the flight crew was attempting to return to the Reno International Airport. Immediately after takeoff (shortly after 1:00 am), the pilot, co-pilot and flight engineer noticed a heavy vibration throughout the aircraft. Fearing a small problem could turn into a major disaster and that the problem was with the engine propellers, the captain ordered a reduction in engine power and had the first officer request a return back towards the airport.
Being just 200 to 250 feet off the ground with reduced power and at low speed, the aircraft didn’t have enough engine power to maintain flight. Flight 203 stalled and the plane went into a dive before crashing into a field, bouncing and then sliding into a set of mobile homes before bursting into flames. The wreckage was about three miles away from the airport. Three people initially survived the crash, but two later died in the hospital (January 29th and February 4th). The lone survivor of the crash was seventeen-year-old George Lamson Jr. Lamson was thrown from the wreckage during the crash while still strapped into his seat where he was found by rescue personnel.
An NTSB investigation found that ground handlers from Reno Flying Service had failed to properly close an air start access door as the plane was taxiing for takeoff. Initially, the headset being used by the crew to communicate to the pilot malfunctioned and the ground supervisor had to revert to hand signals. As this was going on, the supervisor noticed one of the crew members having problems disconnecting the air start hose from the aircraft. After an emergency stop and the supervisor disconnecting the air hose, neither the supervisor nor the female crewmember remembered closing the air start door (located between the fuselage and number 2 engine on the right wing of the aircraft). The open door was the cause of the vibration, but that alone wouldn’t have caused the crash (in fact in other incidents, pilots reported similar vibrations stopped once the aircraft reached higher speeds).
The NTSB blamed the crash on pilot error: specifically, Captain Allen D. Heasley failed to maintain control of the flight and First Officer Kevin C. Fieldsa failed to monitor airspeed and the aircraft’s flight path.
August 16, 1987; (156 total deaths, 6 crew/148 pax/2 on the ground): Detroit (Romulus), Michigan- Flight 255, a Northwest Airlines McDonnell Douglas MD-82, (DC-9-82), crashed just 22 seconds after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport. The aircraft was en route from Detroit to Orange County, California (with a stopover in Phoenix). Only one person survived the crash.
Upon leaving the runway, Flight 225’s left wing dipped and struck a light pole. The aircraft then struck another light pole, slashed through the roof of an Avis rental facility and then broke apart and burned as it slammed into the ground. The NTSB determined the crash occurred because the cockpit crew (pilot John Maus and co-pilot David Dodds) did not follow proper protocol during the pre-flight taxi checklist and had incorrectly set the flap position on the aircraft. Also, according to the NTSB, the aural takeoff warning “…was not enunciated by the CAWS” (Central Aural Warning System) because a tripped circuit breaker had disabled the CAWS power supply.
The lone survivor of the crash was a four-year-old girl named Cecelia Cichan. Wayne County Sheriff’s Deputy James Arnold found Cecilia buried among burning debris after he heard the sound of her crying. The child was found strapped into her seat which had toppled over so she was face down, protected by the back of the seat. Cecilia suffered a broken left leg, skull fracture, fractured collarbone and burns to over 20-30% of her body (scaring her arms and legs). She was hospitalized for 54 days at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor.
Cecilia’s parents (Michael Cichan and Paula Ciamaichela-Cichan) and her six-year-old brother (David Cichan), all died in the crash. The family was traveling back to their home in Tempe, Arizona after visiting family in Pennsylvania. David Cichan was a professor at the University of Arizona. As word spread of the lone survivor, Cecilia was quickly dubbed the “miracle girl” by the media, but initially, no one knew who she was. Cecilia Cichan was not the only infant on Flight 255; she was finally identified after her grandparents asked rescuers if the one surviving infant had pink fingernail polish, braided hair, and a chipped tooth.
It was originally reported that Cecilia Cichan was pulled from the wreckage still wrapped in the arms of her mother. Three months after the crash, the NTSB revealed that Cecilia was actually found about 35 yards away from Paula Ciamaichela-Cichan, 60-70 yards away from her father. The agency kept that detail secret because it was the one positive story to emerge from the tragedy. As one official said, “Nobody really wanted to burst the bubble.”
Cecilia was adopted by her maternal aunt and uncle (Rita and Frank Lumpkin from Birmingham, Alabama). Her guardians had always done their best to keep Cecilia away from the media; on January 19, 1988, Washtenaw County (Michigan) Probate Judge John Kirkendall ordered her court records sealed so she could “grow without the glare of publicity.” Cecilia’s paternal grandfather, Anthony Cichan said of his granddaughter, “We want her to have a private life and have agreed not to talk to the media or let the media know where she is.” Anthony Cichan (of Willow Groce, Pennsylvania) and Pauline Ciamaichela (Cecilia’s maternal grandmother of Warminster, Pennsylvania) were both named conservators of a fund set up by donations from the public (over $140,000). A total of 157 lawsuits were filed against Northwest Airlines by relatives of the crash victims.
July 8, 2003; (116 total deaths, 11 crew/105 pax): Port Sudan, Sudan- A Sudan Airways Boeing 737-200C (ST-AFK- Flight 139 en route from Port Sudan to Khartoum) crashed shortly after takeoff. Approximately 10 minutes after departing the airport, the cockpit crew contacted the Port Sudan tower stating they were having engine problems. The flight crew turned the aircraft around to attempt a landing back at Port Sudan; the airliner crashed into an open area about three miles away from the airport after a missed approach.
This Boeing 737 was almost thirty years old (built in 1975).
The only survivor of the plane crash was a 2-year-old boy – Mohammed el-Fateh Osman (also earlier reported as Mohammed Fatih) had his right leg severed in the crash. He was found in a small tree; his mother was among those on board that were killed. To date, this was the worst plane crash in the country of Sudan.
At the time of the crash, Sudan had still been blacklisted by the United States (since 1997); trade sanctions had reduced critical airplane parts for American made aircraft in the Sudan Airways fleet.
August 27, 2006; (49 total deaths, 2 crew/47 pax): Lexington Kentucky- A Comair Bombardier CRJ200 (N431CA- Flight 5191 en route from Lexington to Atlanta), crashed immediately after takeoff from Lexington-Blue Grass Airport. The plane came down just a mile off of Runway 8/26 after crashing through a perimeter airport fence. Investigators quickly determined that the plane took off from the wrong runway: Runway 8/26 was only 3,500 feet long while Runway 4/22 at Lexington-Blue Grass was 7,003 feet long. N431CA simply didn’t have enough runway to get enough speed to become airborne (CRJ200s need a minimum of about 4,500 feet of runway for takeoff).
Captain Jeffrey Clay taxied the plane to the runway while first officer James Polehinke, was actually at the controls when the plane took off. Only one air traffic controller was on duty at the time of the crash; a recent change in FAA rules (November 2005), prohibited the control tower from having just one controller on duty unless air traffic control was handling radar approach. The on-duty controller (a 17-year veteran) watched Flight 5191 start its initial taxi, but turned his back on the plane for the takeoff to handle other administrative duties just before the crash occurred.
Investigators discovered that the pilots ended up taking a wrong turn onto the incorrect runway even though they were both familiar with the airport; Clay had been to Lexington six times in the last two years, Polehinke ten times over a two-year period. Lexington-Blue Grass Airport had just finished a repaving project of the main runway over the previous two weeks as well as altering the taxiway approach. Neither man had been to the airport since the completion of the project; the flight attempted its takeoff in the pre-dawn darkness. There were no lights illuminating Runway 8/26 because it is used only during the daytime and only for smaller aircraft.
Interestingly enough, the pilots initially got into the wrong aircraft when they arrived at the airport before being alerted by a grounds crewmember and directed to the right aircraft. One person survived the crash (Polehinke); he suffered a broken leg, broken ribs, a spinal fracture and a pelvis fracture in the crash. Polehinke was pulled from the burning wreckage by Lexington police officer Bryan Jared and Blue Grass Airport safety officers James “Pete” Maupin and Jon Sallee. Most of the victims of the crash died from blunt trauma, not fire. N431CA was delivered to Comair on January 30, 2001.
On July 26, 2007, the NTSB final report said the pilots were primarily responsible for the crash because they failed to cross check which runway they were on and did not maintain a sterile cockpit environment as there was “non-pertinent chit-chat” between them just before the crash. On August 2, 2008, a federal judge in Lexington, Kentucky dismissed a trial of multiple lawsuits against the airline when both sides reached settlements in all but one of the cases. The lone Kentucky case to be settled was brought forth by Jamie Hebert, the widow of crash victim Bryan Keith Woodward.
September 7, 2011; (44 deaths, 7 crew/37 pax): Tunoshna, Russia- A chartered YAK Service Yakovlev 42D (RA-42434- Flight 1993 en route from Yaroslavl-Tunoshna Airport in Russia to Minsk-1 International Airport in Belarus), crashed shortly after takeoff. The aircraft had problems gaining altitude; the plane traveled approximately 400 feet past the end of the runway and struck a beacon tower upon lift off. Flight 1993 barely climbed before it crashed close to a water intersection of the Volga and Tunoshna Rivers about 1.2 miles away from the airport.
The Yak-42D was carrying members of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl ice hockey club who were on their way to their season opener against Dinamo Minsk. Initially two people survived the crash, hockey player Aleksandr Galimov and flight engineer Aleksandr Sizov. Despite staggering away from the crash site, Galimov succumbed to his injuries days afterwards; he died on September 12, 2001. Galimov had burns to 90% of his body and to his respiratory tract. Sizov told authorities he was in the cabin during takeoff with his seatbelt unfastened and that he “survived by a miracle,”
The Lokomotiv Yaroslavl ice hockey club was part of the Kontinental Hockey League. In all, 28 players, two coaches, and seven staffers of the team were killed along with seven of eight crewmembers of the flight.
In 2010, Lokomotiv Yaroslavl finished third in the Kontinental Hockey League; following the crash, the team withdrew from the league for a full year as it rebuilt the franchise. Among those killed in the crash were Canadian born Brad McCrimmon, the team’s coach and a former assistant coach of the Detroit Red Wings. McCrimmon played for NHL teams in Boston, Detroit, Hartford, Philadelphia, and Phoenix. Also killed in the crash was Pavol Demitra, a former member of the Vancouver Canucks and St. Louis Blues, Ruslan Salei, a former player for the Anaheim Ducks, Colorado Avalanche, Detroit Red Wings, and Florida Panthers, and Stefan Liv, a former member of the Swedish Olympic Hockey Team (gold medal winners in 2006).
At the time of the crash, there were about sixty Yak 42-Ds still in service (about a total of 92 Yak 42s of all different variants). The aircraft involved was built in 1993. An initial analysis of the flight data recorder showed all three engines were working normally as the plane tried to takeoff.
On November 2, 2011, the CIS Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK) announced pilot error was to blame. The report detailed that one of the pilots made two fatal errors: first the brakes were accidentally activated during takeoff and then one of the men pulled up too abruptly on the control yoke (almost to his chest) causing the plane to rise too sharply and eventually crash into the river. The MAK said the pilots should have aborted the takeoff. Further complicating the event: an autopsy found that the co-pilot of the plane had traces of the barbiturate Phenobarbital in his blood. Commercial pilots are not allowed to take Phenobarbital (it’s used to control seizures) when flying as it has been shown to slow down a person’s central nervous system.
This last entry is the summary of an often mistakenly reported sole survivor story:
September 3, 1997; (66 total deaths, 6 crew/59 pax): Phnom Penh, Cambodia- A Vietnam Airlines Tupolev Tu-134B-3 (VN-A120- Flight 815 en route from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh) crashed on approach to Phnom Penh-Pochentong Airport during heavy rain. The aircraft crash was blamed strictly on pilot error: Captain Pham Van Tieu ignored air traffic control requests to change runways and overruled his first officer and flight engineer who both advised a go-around because of decreased visibility. The result: because enough power could not be applied quickly enough for the go-around, the aircraft clipped a cluster of palm trees with its left wing and then crashed into a dry rice field and burst into flames. Investigators later reported that Captain Tieu displayed “psychological unreadiness to abort the landing.”
Five people initially survived the crash, but two men at Calmette Hospital died of their injuries shortly after the crash. A four-year-old boy, Oh Sung-hyuk (who was also at Calmette Hospital) died as a result of severe burns. Everyone believed that just left one sole survivor: one year-old Chanayuth Nim-Anong from Thailand who suffered a broken leg. However, media outlets (as well as most of the government) didn’t realize another victim, four-year-old Vu Hung Thinh, was shuffled between a number of different hospitals. Because of the mix up, this incident is mistakenly listed as a sole survivor crash when in fact, it is not.
Another extraordinary circumstance surrounding Flight 815 – local villagers looted the wreckage, going through dead passengers’ pockets and even stealing one of the plane’s black boxes. A looter later returned the flight data recorder in exchange for $200.