This is a scary story. I can't imagine the hysteria as this was happening to this poor people. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/1903103 129 dead after plane door opens over Congo Associated Press KINSHASA, Congo -- The rear door of a Russian-built cargo plane burst open as the aircraft was carrying police officials and their relatives across Congo, and 129 passengers were sucked out, airport officials said today. Defense Minister Irung Awan confirmed the accident Thursday night, but said he was unaware of any deaths among the 200 people aboard. After the accident occurred some 45 minutes into the flight, the pilots managed to turn back and land the plane in Kinshasa, Awan said. Two officials at the international airport in Congo's capital, Kinshasa, independently told The Associated Press that 129 people were feared dead. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity. Nine survivors were being treated for minor injuries and psychological trauma at Kinshasa General Hospital, said Kabamba Mbwebwe, chief doctor at the hospital's emergency ward. "They were traumatized and spoke of their baggage flying everywhere," Mbwebwe told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. The plane, a privately owned Ilyushin 76, had apparently been chartered to transport Congolese police and their families from Kinshasa to the southeastern city of Lubumbashi, a diamond city. It was not immediately known why the door came off or the altitude of the plane at the time. The Ilyushin76 is a medium- to long-range transport. The model was first flown in 1971. It is widely used around the world, particularly in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, as a civilian freighter. The plane has had a checkered safety record, including at least 45 accidents that resulted in some 393 deaths, according to the Aviation Safety Network Web site, an air safety data base. On Feb. 19, an Ilyushin 76 crashed in bad weather in Iran, killing 275, including more that 200 elite Iranian soldiers. A month earlier, another of the jets crashed while landing in thick fog in East Timor, killing all six people on board. Congo, in central Africa, is in the fifth year of a civil war. Despite a series of peace deals, fighting persists in the northeast.
Thats is absolutely horrible. Whats even crazier is that I can envision it since we jumped from a cargo plane in TN when I went skydiving. Of course I had a parachute and wasn't facing a 20,000 fall to my death.
Hopefully they were over forest or some other unoccupied area. 129 human bodies falling that far can do a lot more damage than just killing the people who fell out. Such a sad story.
Well actually,as horrible at this is,these kind of catastophies happen regularly in Africa. Last year,an overloaded boat drowned right of the coast of Senegal,killing most of the passagers. In an other Ouest African country(Ghana I believe) during a soccer game,the croud got over excited after a goal scored by the home team.It resulted by over 100 dead.It turned out the stadium had been over crouded(100,000 for a capacity of 50,000). What u have to remember is that Africa is a third world continent and that security mesures aren't the same as say US or Europe. Believe me I lived there,I know what it's like! ALA
That's a horrible way to die. It's up on my list along with getting my throat slit/slashed. Just the thought that you are tumbling out of control and you know you are gonna die, but you havt time to think about it.
This is such a sad story, plus a bad way to go. But I read somewhere that you die of a heart atack before you hit the ground, if that helps anyone.
I think they make up those stories about the heart attacks to make people feel better. People from the WTC weren't unconscious on the way down, according to the cops some were screaming as they hit. I would have preferred to believe that they died before they hit the ground but I'm not naive. There have been a couple rare instances where people have had parachute failures yet managed to live after smashing to the ground. I think one fell in a doctor's back yard...and another fell into a red ant nest and the poison from the bites triggered some sort of shock that kept him/her alive. Needless to say falling from a great height would be a terrible way to die.
