Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
If you are unfortunate enough to fall out of a hole in a aircraft that was flying at 35,000 feet when it is shot down, you will have 3 and a half minutes to think about your approaching doom when you hit the ground.
Soon you will probably pass out from the lack of oxygen. That's good news.
The bad news is that you will wake up again when the air gets thicker, and then you will still have a couple minutes to think about the ground again - until you actually hit it.
If on the other hand, you are not outside the aircraft, you will still feel and know it is headed down, maybe a little faster than the person outside... But maybe not, depending on the attitude of the remainder of the aircraft you are in.
Either way, if you are not initially killed by the impact of the missile, and if you do not have an instant heart attack and die, you have a horrible long couple of minutes ahead of you. It will not be good.
Look up the details of the Pan Am flight that was bombed over Scotland. They found one flight attended alive, they found several other people later that appeared to have survived but later died of exposure. They had landed in tall grass and had crawled several meters before dying.
There were no survivors of the Pan Am Lockerbie bombing.
That plane was up and down over and over prior to hitting the ocean. They knew.
Yep, flight 447 experienced extreme flight disruption for many minutes before it plunged into the ocean. I imagine for those of us that don't mind, and even like turbulence on a flight, (as another post here describes) some of it would have felt like that- more terrifying to most and terrifying to all at the end.
The crashes that come to mind that for the passengers would have been especially horrifying and knowledgable with their impending doom would be those mid-air crashes: the two Mexican airlines over L.A., the PSA in San Diego in 1978, also the AirFrance Concorde- the last two staring outside at a wing on fire, and, like flight 447, Alaska Airlines flight 261 failed jackscrew to the horizontal stabilizer which resulted in many minutes of nearly uncontrolled flight before going inverted into the Pacific. Yikes!
I don't really want to know the answer to this, but those who have been following the MH17 news coverage - someone above said that witnesses said they saw the plane impacted near the tail. Do the witnesses happen to say what the plane did after that? Like ... did it just nosedive cleanly?
The other crash I thought of - the Helios crash in Greece where they lost oxygen shortly into the flight but the pilots lost consciousness before they realized what was happening, and the plane crashed when it ran out of fuel outside Athens. They believe that one flight attendant was alive for the 4-hour flight (all the passengers would have used up their oxygen within 15 minutes), using up reserve oxygen bottles, and tried to reach air traffic control in the cockpit. I can't imagine being the only person conscious on a plane, knowing you might not know how to land it yourself (he'd taken flying lessons), no one's responding on the radio (it was set to its departure airport frequency) and then realizing it had run out of fuel. I think Payne Stewart's plane had ... rolled as it dived. I dunno if that's what happened here, but it's pretty awful to think about that flight attendant.
I think the last words of the pilot of the Alaska Air that nosedived inverted in the ocean were, "Well, here we go." The pilot of the San Diego PSA jet said something like, "Mom, I love you." I don't know if I'd be that collected.
It is amazing that people can survive this type of accident. Look up the details of the Pan Am flight that was bombed over Scotland. They found one flight attended alive, they found several other people later that appeared to have survived but later died of exposure. They had landed in tall grass and had crawled several meters before dying.
I can't imagine how you'd survive that having looked down at how high 38,000 feet is.
Some (if not all) of the astronauts on the Challenger flight likely survived the initial breakup and 3 of the 4 personal oxygen apparatus present on the flight deck were activated and found to contain an amount of oxygen that would have remained during the nearly 3 minute free fall after the breakup indicating that the users were possibly conscious until impact. Investigators also found several switches near pilot Mike Smith that were switched from their normal launch condition in what was believed to be an attempt to restore electrical circuits after the separation.
Well, there were survivors in the village of Lockerbie but no, there most certainly were no survivors from the plane.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
