24 August 1981 year
In the sky near the city Zavitinskaya A passenger An-24 flying from Komsomolsk-on-Amur в Blagoveshchensk, and a Tu-16K bomber. After falling from a height of 5220 meters, only one person survived. Larisa Savitskaya.
A moment, like an explosion, a cold scorched me, the plane was gone—a wreck, so to speak, without a roof. I realized I was about to die.
Savitskaya, a student at the pedagogical institute, was 20 at the time of the disaster. She and her husband, Vladimir, were returning from their honeymoon—they had married in the spring, but due to exams and internships, their first family trip to the seaside had been postponed until the summer.
There were plenty of empty seats on the plane, and the newlyweds moved from the middle section to the rear. Larisa fell asleep. She awoke to the impact and the sudden cold; the temperature plummeted from 25°C to -30°C. The plane no longer existed—one hour and 25 minutes after takeoff, it was destroyed in a collision with a missile carrier on a weather reconnaissance mission.
The fuselage beneath Larisa's seat split open, throwing her into the aisle. She scrambled and pressed herself into the nearest seat, unbuckled, recalling the film "Miracles Still Happen," where the heroine managed to survive a plane crash.
A 3x4 meter piece of aircraft debris with Savitskaya was planned 8 minutes. He fell into a birch grove; the trees softened the impact with the ground.
Savitskaya had spinal injuries, a broken arm, and broken ribs, but she was still able to move. It was raining, and she built a shelter from the plane's wreckage, keeping warm with the seat covers. She waved to the rescue planes, but they mistook her for a geologist. She wasn't rescued until the third day.
Several causes for the tragedy, which killed 37 people, were identified, including a lack of coordination between civilian and military air traffic controllers.
The first time Savitskaya was mentioned in newspapers was during perestroika, and even then, the circumstances were distorted, claiming she fell from a height of 5 km during testing of an aircraft of an original design.
She was twice included in the Russian Guinness Book of World Records: as the person who survived a fall from the highest height. And as the person who received the minimum amount of compensation for physical injuries—75 rubles.
