# Has there ever been a case of an ADULT surviving ...from an airplane crash...

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-case-of-an-adult-surviving-from-an-airplane-crash/821939>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 26, 2018, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-case-of-an-adult-surviving-from-an-airplane-crash/821939 "2018-09-26T11:03:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![yendis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ed8c4c/32.png) [@yendis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yendis)\
**Post date:** [September 27, 2018, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-case-of-an-adult-surviving-from-an-airplane-crash/821939/21 "2018-09-27T10:47:50Z")

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> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#):
>
> Nicholas Alkemade, Alan Magee, and Ivan Chisov all left their airplanes at 20,000 feet (ish). All three took significantly less than 30 minutes to hit the ground (closer to 2 minutes, I think), and all three lost consciousness on the way down.
> 
> I’m not sure if their planes were pressurized, what oxygen they may have had on-board, or how long they had been at 20,000 feet before their bombers were destroyed.

None of the planes were pressurised, very few were in WW2, they were all breathing from some kind of oxygen source and bombers would typically spend 3 to 4 hours at that altitude on route to their targets.

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**Author:** ![joema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9adbd/32.png) [@joema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joema)\
**Post date:** [September 27, 2018, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-ever-been-a-case-of-an-adult-surviving-from-an-airplane-crash/821939/22 "2018-09-27T12:09:46Z")

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> [@Steven\_Estes](#):
>
> Has there ever been a case of an ADULT surviving in pretty good condition from an airplane that crashed from approximately 30,000 feet?

In 1966, an SR-71 flying at 79,000 feet and Mach 3 disintegrated in mid air. Pilot Bill Weaver survived with few injuries: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnEgS3buPb8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnEgS3buPb8)

As already mentioned, Juliane Koepcke survived free falling from 10,000 ft when the Lockheed Electra she was in broke up in mid air.

> **[Juliane Koepcke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliane_Koepcke)**
>
> Juliane Margaret Beate Koepcke /Joo-lia-nay, KOP-kay/ (born 10 October 1954), also known by her married name Juliane Diller, is a German-Peruvian mammalogist who specialises in bats. The daughter of German zoologists Maria and Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke, she became famous at the age of 17 as the sole survivor of the 1971 LANSA Flight 508 plane crash; after falling 3,000 m (10,000 ft) while strapped to her seat and suffering numerous injuries, she survived 11 days alone in the Peruvian Amazon rainfor...

> **[Woman describes what it was like to be the only survivor of a flight...](https://www.businessinsider.com/what-its-like-to-be-survivor-of-flight-2015-8?r=UK&IR=)**
>
> It was Christmas Eve 1971, and she had just graduated from high school.

There are many sole survivors of aircraft accidents. You’d have to research how many happened at high altitude: [List of sole survivors of aviation accidents and incidents - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sole_survivors_of_airline_accidents_or_incidents)

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