List Of Sole Survivors Of Aviation Accidents And Incidents

Within this list, "sole survivor" refers to a person who survived an air accident in which all other aircraft occupants died as a direct consequence of the accident. This list does not include initial survivors who later died (possibly in another location) due to injuries sustained during the accident. Also not included are the numerous incidents of sole survivors of accidents and combat losses related to heavy bombers during World War II which frequently had ten or more crewmembers.

Notable examples

The earliest known sole survivor is Linda McDonald. On 5 September 1936, she survived a Skyways sightseeing plane crash near Pittsburgh that killed nine other people, including her boyfriend. She was 17 at the time.

The youngest sole survivor is Chanayuth Nim-anong, who on 3 September 1997, survived a crash when he was just 14 months old. He was the sole survivor of Vietnam Airlines Flight 815, which had 65 deaths in total. The oldest sole survivor is Alexander Sizov, who was 52 years old when YAK-Service Flight 9633 crashed on 7 September 2011, with 44 fatalities.

Another sole survivor is a former Serbian flight attendant, Vesna Vulović. According to the Guinness Book of Records she holds the record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute at 10,160 metres (33,330 ft) from JAT Flight 367. Some controversy arose in 2009 when her story was reported as possible communist propaganda, but flight recorder data strongly supported the official story.

Ben S. Cauley, Jr. was an American trumpet player, vocalist, songwriter, and founding member of the Stax recording group the Bar-Kays. He was the only survivor of the 1967 plane crash that resulted in the deaths of soul singer Otis Redding and four members of the Bar-Kays.

One of the more controversial lone survivors was Huang Yu (Chinese: 黃裕, Hanyu Pinyin: Huáng Yù), who tried to hijack the Cathay Pacific aircraft Miss Macao in 1948, but ended up crashing the plane, killing the other 25 people on board.

The deadliest aviation disaster to have had a sole survivor was Northwest Airlines Flight 255, which crashed in Romulus, Michigan, on 16 August 1987, killing 154 of the 155 people on board the aircraft, as well as two people on the ground. The sole survivor of the crash was a 4-year-old girl named Cecelia Cichan, who was seriously injured.

List

Date	Sole survivor (if known)	Age	P/C	Operator	Flight / information	Fatalities	Notes
17 March 1929	Lou Foote	34	C	Colonial Western Airlines	Newark crash	14
22 August 1930	Vojtěch Kraus		P	CSA Ceskoslovenske Aerolinie	Jihlava crash	12
31 December 1935	Vernon Gorry Wilson	33	C	Imperial Airways	Nile crash near Alexandria	12
5 September 1936	Linda McDonald	17	P	Skyway	Skyway sightseeing plane	9
24 September 1936			C	Ala Littoria	CANT Z.506 crash off Benghazi	9
17 November 1939			C	Spanish Air Force	Cap Juby Ju 52 ditching	10
9 April 1940	Ogwyn George		C	RAF	Sylling crash	9
30 October 1941	Clarence Bates	41	C	Northwest Airlines	Northwest Airlines Flight 5	14
25 August 1942	Sgt Andrew Jack	20	C	Royal Air Force	Dunbeath Air Crash	15
22 January 1943	John Alfred Howard	26	P	Pan American-Grace Airways	Flight 9	14
14 June 1943	Foye Kenneth Roberts	22	P	U.S. Army Air Forces	Bakers Creek air crash	40
5 September 1946	Peter Link	3	P	Trans-Luxury Airlines	California Trans-Luxury Airlines	20
12 January 1947	William Ellis Keyes, Jr.	25	P	Eastern Airlines	Flight 665	18
28 January 1947	Paul Ashton Vick	1	P	China National Aviation Corporation	Hankou crash	25
1 February 1947	Eugene Leonard	38	P	Air France	Lisbon mountain crash	15
10 March 1948	Tripolina Meo	33	P	Delta Air Lines	Flight 705	12
15 April 1948	Mark Worst		P	Pan Am	Flight 1–10	30
12 May 1948	Moutafis		P	Sabena	Sabena Douglas DC-4 crash	31
17 July 1948	Huang Yu	24	P	Cathay Pacific	Miss Macao	25
20 November 1949	Isaac Allal	12	P	Aero Holland	Hurum air disaster	34
24 May 1950	Olga Rada	10	P	LANSA	Galeras Douglas C-47	25
27 July 1950	Sgt. Haru Sazaki		P	U.S. Air Force	Douglas C-47	25
17 May 1953	Hazel Cox	21	P	Delta Air Lines	Flight 318	19
6 January 1954	P/O P. D. Cliff		P	RAF	Aldbury Valetta accident	16
17 March 1957	Nestor Mata	31	P	Philippine Air Force	Cebu Douglas C-47 crash	25
1 May 1957	Ernest Taylor		P	Eagle Aviation Limited	Blackbushe Viking accident	34
16 January 1959			P	Austral Líneas Aéreas	Flight 205	51
30 October 1959	Ernest P. "Phil" Bradley	33	P	Piedmont Airlines	Flight 349	26
1 December 1959	Louis Matarazzo		P	Allegheny Airlines	Flight 371	25
14 April 1965	Dominique Silliere	22	C	British United Airways	British United Airways Flight 1030X	26
25 April 1967	Lt. Joseph "Leo" Guenet	29	C	U.S. Air Force	Lockheed EC-121H Super Constellation	15
29 February 1968	Vassily Andrienko		P	Aeroflot	Flight 15	83
9 March 1968	Nrs. Michèle Renard		P	Groupe de Liaisons Aériennes Ministérielles (GLAM)	Douglas DC-6B[fr]	19
4 May 1970	Capt. George A. Burk	28	P	U.S. Air Force	T-29 Convair	13
9 August 1970	Juan Loo	26	C	LANSA	Flight 502	99
6 June 1971	Lt. Christopher E. Schiess	24	C	United States Marine Corps	F-4 mid-air collision with Hughes Airwest Flight 706	50
24 December 1971	Juliane Koepcke	17	P	LANSA	Flight 508	91
26 January 1972	Vesna Vulović	22	C	JAT Yugoslav	Flight 367	27
22 July 1973	Neil James Campbell		P	Pan Am	Flight 816	78
30 May 1979	John McCafferty	16	P	Downeast Airlines	Flight 46	17
24 August 1981	Larisa Savitskaya	20	P	Aeroflot	Flight 811	31
2 September 1981	Remberto Aparicio	26	P	Taxi Aéreo El Venado	Embraer Bandeirante crash in Paipa	21
30 April 1983	AT2 Melissa Kelly	30	P	U.S. Navy	Convair C-131	14
23 December 1984		27	P	Aeroflot	Flight 3519	110
21 January 1985	George Lamson Jr.	17	P	Galaxy Airlines	Flight 203	70
22 February 1985	Ouologuem		P	Air Mali	Air Mali (TZ-ACT) crash	51
3 January 1987	Neuba Yessoh Damase		P	VARIG	Flight 797	50
16 August 1987	Cecelia Cichan	4	P	Northwest Airlines	Flight 255	156
8 December 1987	Lt. Edilberto Villar		C	Peruvian Navy	Alianza Lima air disaster	43	Captain of the flight.
11 December 1988	Fahraddin Balaev		P	Soviet Air Force	1988 Soviet Air Force Il-76 crash	77
5 October 1991	Bambang Sumadi		P	Indonesian Air Force	Indonesian Air Force A-1324 crash	135
14 November 1992	Annette Herfkens	31	P	Vietnam Airlines	Flight 474	30
26 December 1993			P	Kuban Airlines	Flight GW-5719[ru]	35
11 January 1995	Erika Delgado	9	P	Intercontinental de Aviación	Flight 256	52
21 September 1995	Ulziibayar Sanjaa	27	P	MIAT Mongolian Airlines	Flight 557	42
7 December 1996	Irianto	40	P	Dirgantara Air Service	Flight 5940	18
3 September 1997	Chanayuth Nim-anong	14 months	P	Vietnam Airlines	Flight 815	65	The final report on this accident states that there were two survivors.
15 December 1997	Sergei Petrov	37	C	Tajik Air	Flight 3183	85	Served as the navigator.
6 March 2003	Youcef Djillali	28	P	Air Algérie	Flight 6289	102
8 July 2003	Mohammed el-Fateh Osman	2	P	Sudan Airways	Flight 139	116
19 January 2006	Lt. Martin Farkaš		P	Slovak Air Force	Slovak Air Force Antonov An-24 crash	42
27 August 2006	James M. Polehinke	44	C	Comair	Flight 5191	49	First officer of Flight 5191.
9 January 2007	Abdülkadir Akyüz		P	AerianTur-M	Balad aircraft crash	34
26 August 2007		2	P	Great Lakes Business Company	Kongolo Antonov An-32B crash	14
8 October 2008	Surendra Kunwar		C	Yeti Airlines	Flight 103	18
12 March 2009	Robert Decker	28	P	Cougar Helicopters	Flight 91	17
30 June 2009	Bahia Bakari	12	P	Yemenia	Flight 626	152
12 May 2010	Ruben van Assouw	9	P	Afriqiyah Airways	Flight 771	103
25 August 2010			P	Filair	Bandundu Filair Let L-410 crash	20
4 April 2011	Francis Mwamba		P	Georgian Airways / United Nations	United Nations Bombardier CRJ-100 crash	32
7 September 2011	Alexander Sizov	52	C	Yak-Service	2011 Lokomotiv Yaroslavl plane crash	44	Oldest sole survivor as of 2024.
11 February 2014	Nimer Djelloul	21	P	Algerian Air Force	Algerian Air Force 7T-WHM crash	77
18 May 2018	Mailen Diaz Almaguer	19	P	Cubana de Aviación	Flight 972	112
14 January 2019	Farshad Mahdavinejad		C	Saha Airlines	Saha Airlines Boeing 707 crash	15	Served as the flight engineer.
24 November 2019	Muma Emmanuel		P	Busy Bee Congo	2019 Busy Bee Congo crash	26
25 September 2020	Viacheslav Zolochevsky	20	P	Ukrainian Air Force	2020 Chuhuiv An-26 crash	26

List Of Sole Survivors Of Aviation Accidents And Incidents

Notable examples

List

Notes

Bibliography

References

Tags:

🔥 Trending searches on Wiki English: