Miracle air crash evacuations
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Officials investigating the burnt Japan Airlines plane at Haneda Airport following a crash, on Jan 3. All passengers and crew escaped from the aircraft.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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PARIS - Miraculous air disaster survivals, of the kind that saw all 379 Japan Airlines passengers and crew escape a wall of flames
The collision on Jan 2 between the passenger jet and a coast guard plane killed five people aboard the latter craft.
Here are three other heroic air evacuations:
2005: Crew praised after Toronto crash
On Aug 2, 2005, an Air France Airbus A340 arriving from Paris overshot the runway and landed in a ravine just outside Toronto’s Lester B. Pearson International Airport.
All 297 passengers and 12 crew members were able to evacuate before a fire consumed most of the fuselage.
The operation took under two minutes, with around 40 people suffering only minor injuries.
Officials praised the crew for the speedy evacuation, with the co-pilot singled out for checking the plane before exiting last and advising rescue crews.
2009: ‘Miracle on the Hudson’
Pilot Chesley Sullenberger was hailed as a hero in January 2009 for saving all 155 passengers and crew on US Airways flight 1549 by conducting a miraculously soft landing in the Hudson River.
The Airbus had just taken off from New York’s LaGuardia airport for Charlotte in North Carolina when both engines stopped, apparently after a collision with birds.
Following an extraordinarily skillful landing, frantic passengers scrambled out onto the airplane wings, the chilly river water lapping at their feet. Ferryboats steamed to the rescue as the aircraft slipped under the water.
New York governor David Paterson hailed the near-disaster as the “Miracle on the Hudson”. The story was made into the movie “Sully”
2019: Hostess decorated for saving 43
On June 27, 2019, a small Antonov An-24 aircraft overshot the runway by around 100m at Nizhneangarsk in eastern Siberia, crashing into a building before catching fire.
The only female member of the cabin crew, Ms Elena Laputskaya, managed single-handedly to evacuate the 43 passengers of the flight. She was decorated for her bravery by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Ms Laputskaya survived along with the co-pilot but the pilot and another crew member died.
The plane belonging to the regional airline Angara was travelling from Ulan-Ude near the border with Mongolia. AFP
