Eight Miracle Kids Who Survived Plane Crashes
Updated: 1 day 14 hours ago
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Brigid Sweeney
AOL News
(May 12) -- They're calling it a miracle, and it's easy to understand why. But the
8-year-old Dutch boy who survived today's Libyan jet crash is just one of a number of young people who have lived to tell about their airline disasters:
AFP / Getty Images
Bahia Bakari
1. Bahia Bakari: The 14-year-old from suburban Paris was
the sole survivor of a June 2009 Yemeni jetliner crash that killed 152 others, including her mother, when the aging Airbus plane crashed into the Indian Ocean. Bakari survived 13 hours in the water, despite being a poor swimmer, clinging to aircraft debris until a passing boat rescued her. She lives with her father outside Paris.
Pool / AP
Francesca Lewis
2. Francesca "Frankie" Lewis: Lewis' best friend, 13-year-old Talia Klein, and Klein's father, California-based hedge fund manager Michael Klein, died when their "adventure tourism" flight hit the side of a Panamanian volcano in 2007, but
she survived. Lewis, then 12,
survived 52 hours by hanging in the fetal position in the four-seater Cessna's wrecked cabin, trapped by luggage that insulated her from the freezing conditions.
AFP / Getty Images
Mohammed al-Fatih
3. Mohammed al-Fatih: The sole survivor of a July 2003 Sudan Airways plane that
crashed shortly after takeoff in Port Sudan, killing 10 crew members and 105 passengers, al-Fatih suffered major burns and a severed right leg. News reports at the time speculate that the 3-year-old was thrown clear of the burning plane on a piece of wreckage and may have landed on a bush.
4. Erika Delgado: When an Intercontinental Colombia flight crashed south of the resort city Cartegena in March 1995, the 10-year-old escaped with only a broken arm. Found by nearby farmers,
Delgado had landed on seaweed in a marsh. She told rescuers that her mother shoved her out of the burning plane. Her parents and younger brother were among the 47 passengers and five crew members dead.
5. Cecilia Cichan: In August 1987, Northwest Airlines Flight 255
crashed into a bridge near Detroit after the crew failed to set the plane's flaps for takeoff. Cichan, then 4, survived with serious injuries; 148 other passengers and six crew members died,
including Cichan's parents and 6-year-old brother. After the crash, Cichan went to live with an aunt and uncle in Alabama. She now goes by their surname, Lumpkin, and recently graduated from the University of Alabama.
6. George Lamson: The 17-year-old landed upright, still buckled into his seat, near an RV dealership after a January 1985
Galaxy Airlines flight crashed outside Reno, Nev. Two other passengers initially survived but died of injuries; all told, 64 other passengers and six crew members perished. The flight, bound for Minneapolis, experienced unexpected vibrations shortly after takeoff.
AP
Vesna Vulovic
7. Vesna Vulovic: In January 1972, a suitcase bomb planted by Croatian separatists exploded on a Yugoslav Airlines flight near Hermsdorf, Czechoslovakia.
Vulovic, a flight attendant, was the sole survivor of the 28 people on board. Serving food at the time of the explosion, Vulovic woke up on a snow-covered mountain after a 33,000-foot fall that fractured her skull and both legs and broke her back in two places. She eventually returned to a desk job at the airline. She still holds
the world record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute. (Note to sticklers: Yes, at 22, she was hardly a kid. But "youths" looked terrible in the headline.)
AP
Juliane Koepcke
8. Juliane Koepcke: The 17-year-old German girl survived a Lockheed Electra turboprop crash in the Peruvian rainforest on Christmas Eve, 1971. Her parents, renowned zoologists, ran a wildlife research station in the Amazon; Koepcke and her mother were trying to reunite with her father for Christmas. Six crew members and 91 other passengers perished, while Koepcke fell 10,000 feet into the jungle and spent 10 days wading through waters infested with crocodiles and piranhas before being rescued by Peruvian lumberjacks. Now a 56-year-old librarian at Munich's Zoological Center, she recently
told CNN about maggots taking up residence in her wounds and being forced to search among bodies for her mother.
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