Have you ever imagined yourself actually being aboard a plane when things like this happen?Passengers on a Garuda plane in which dozens of people are feared dead have told of panic and screams as people tried to escape the flaming wreckage. Dozens of people were killed when the aircraft crashed and burst into flames after landing in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta.
Dien Syamsuddin described the moment when the plane crashed, saying it landed heavily before overshooting the runway by about 300 metres.
"The aircraft was swaying and there was maybe something wrong with the engine. (The landing) was very hard the first time and the second time, the aircraft was outside the boundary of the airport. The lights on board went out and the cabin filled with smoke after the plane came down heavily. I felt the emergency exit was empty, nobody there, behind me there was also screaming. That was all I can tell."
Ruth Bamggadan said she was sitting near the emergency exit when the plane came to rest.
"One of my colleagues, she told everybody to stay calm and leave their belongings. People were panicking, it was really chaotic. Some people were helping the older ladies but we were really close to the door so we had to get out first. After I get out of the plane an explosion started. I think it is from the right side of the plane because we get out from the left side and the left side there are no fire yet at the moment.Then some explosions come again and I didn't see the whole flames.''
One of the crashes I always come back to is the Tenerife crash between KLM and Pan Am. It keeps coming back to haunt me because I know every detail of it. We're always just 'that' far away from it. The closest I came, apart from turbulence and steep drops, was at Heathrow in 2000, when the BA plane suddenly dropped 5 000 feet, as it was circling, on orders from the tower. We all saw the other plane out of the windows, so the pilot came on to the intercom and said:
"You've probably seen our neighbour over on the starboard side. Don't worry, he's on a different flight path to us."
Er, yeah.
How simply horrifying !!
ReplyDeletetea
xo
The one time I've been in a situation that's in any way comparable was when my wife and I were on holiday in India and the bus coming down the mountain from Simla lost its brakes, with a 500 foot ravine on the right hand side of the road.
ReplyDeleteThere were a few seconds -- which felt considerably longer -- while the driver stuggled to control the vehicle and steer us of the road onto the land side, while I had the experience of knowing that the next few seconds would determine whether we lived or died, and there was nothing whatsoever I could do about it.
The odd thing was, everyone was astonishingly calm. No shouts and screams, no nothing. My wife and I just looked at each other, held hands, and waited. I said a very quick prayer -- in manos tuos, o Domine , which seemed about the only thing you can say under the circumstances -- and waited to see what happened next.
Obviously the driver was able to take the bus off the road on the land side, but he turned it over, onto its side, in the process. Again, total calm, and silence broken only by a baby crying and moans from someone who'd been badly injured.
We all started to clamber over the seats to get out of the emergency exit -- no pushing or shoving. I think instinct must take over in something like that, because a panic would have done no one any good. That's certainly what I felt when I smelled petrol; that was a moment of real fear, since that is not a way I hope to die, but I was able, immediately, to push my fear down because it flashed through my mind that panic would do neither me nor anyone else any good and might get us all killed. My wife later said she'd felt exactly the same; terror, and then 'No, that's not going to help. I can't afford it'.
The bus, mercifully, didn't catch fire and everyone was safely evacuated; had a fire started, things would doubtless have been very different. And, after we'd managed to take in what had happened, we were very badly shaken -- we changed our travel plans, checked into the best hotel in Chandigarh, at the bottom of the mountain, and spent the next couple of days restoring our shattered nerves with room service and several extremely burra pegs of Indian brandy (quite pleasant, if you forget it's supposed to be brandy).
But I'll forget the feeling of complete calm while we waited to see if we'd go into the ravine or not.
Garuda- Still on my avoid like the plague list !
ReplyDeleteJames I have spent my life both imagining it and trying not to. There's a fairly graphic description in one of Will Self's novels, which I foolishly bought in the airport about to take my first flight. Awful. Just awful. but then - drowning is pretty awful too and yesterday was 20 years since Zeebrugge.
ReplyDeleteNS - that's a terrifying story and you have recounted it brilliantly. I can see it vividly. I've never been in that situation but I've made some pretty hairy overtaking maneouvres in my time and you do kind of see everything very slowly and calmly. Odd.
ReplyDeleteNotsaussure, that was simply rivetting. Tin Drummer - my feelings too. Tea and Margaritas - sorry! Guthrum - I simply shudder as I went Garuda - once.
ReplyDeleteTerrifying. And every time I'm on a plane, I imagine it, yes. And I get really scared when there's turbulence but no one else seems to worry. Then you read about all the near misses over Heathrow, in particular. Tin drummer is right, though.
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