"Maybe a few seconds later, the people will be gone."
After adjusting for 10 hours, Mao Lina still had palpitations.
Just now, she experienced an air crash. If her husband hadn't reacted quickly and smashed open the security door in time, she might have died by now.
How can a good airplane suddenly have an accident? How was Mao Lina rescued by her husband?
boarding
On December 27, 2019, Nurlan Maurina prepared to travel from Almaty, Kazakhstan, to Nur-Sultan, the country's capital. Born in China, she has been working and living in Kazakhstan for more than ten years. And married locally, had a foreign husband, and a cute mixed-race baby.
The reason why she traveled thousands of miles to come here is because she is a representative of the office of China University of Petroleum in Almaty, and she needs to travel to and from China and Kazakhstan for a long time to work on both sides.
Originally, Mao Lina should have traveled alone. But it was New Year's, and she bought some New Year's gifts for her colleagues, and there were so many things that she couldn't hold them alone. It just so happened that her parents came here, and the child was brought with her, so Mao Lina simply bought an extra ticket and took her husband on a business trip. Now she didn't know that this move of hers would help a lot later.
When they arrived at the airport and got on the plane, everything was still calm. But Mao Lina's husband frowned and looked worried. "Do you think this plane is particularly old?" He began to ask about his wife next to him.
Hearing this question, Mao Lina only felt that her husband thought too much. She hadn't flown ten times, she'd taken eight times, and although its planes were generally old, she had never heard of anything wrong. Looking at his wife's obvious lack of concern, Mao Lina's husband stopped talking and meditated alone.
Since the location of the ticket bought by his wife was right next to the aircraft safety gate, he noticed the security gate again. Thereupon. He simply took the "Instructions for Emergency Exit Seats" and studied the structure of the door.
Even if Mao Lina's husband felt that nothing was wrong, he could not stop the plane from taking off. Soon, the flight attendants had finished speaking the precautions, and the entire flight crew and crew were ready for take-off. With the roar of the engine, the plane gradually increased its speed on the runway and flew into the air.
At this time, Mao Lina also felt that something was wrong. The plane was completely different from the ones she had sat on before, not only did it not have a sense of stability, but it also made a few violent bumps from time to time. She even heard a passenger next to her say that she had just seen the tail of the plane and rubbed it against the ground several times.
All kinds of shocking signs are stressful, but in fact, less than a minute has passed. It was like a small storm in front of a storm, and in the next few minutes, the plane really ushered in a thrilling moment.
Plane crash
Suddenly, the plane began to tilt.
"Bang, bang, bang...", the luggage on the plane rack also kept falling.
It was like a switch, and the passengers screamed for an instant, and the children on the plane were crying to their parents. As the plane shook more intensely, everyone's body bound by seat belts also lost control.
From the airport staff's point of view, it was a plane that had just ascended, and suddenly shook in the sky, feeling that it was going to be shaky in the next second.
Within two minutes, the plane in mid-air, after circling around, began to fall down at an incline of 45 degrees. Soon after, it hit a concrete fence near the airport and a two-story building next to it.
Seeing that the plane crashed and white smoke began to rise around them, the staff rushed over. Just as they were trying to open the hatch, the plane's safety door moved.
A middle-aged man, pushing open the door, led a woman out. Immediately after, the other passengers on the plane, with their help, came out one after another. The first two people to escape from the plane were Mao Lina and her husband.
Just now, when she felt that the plane was completely out of control, Mao Lina's husband said to her, "You must calm down immediately, you must try to cooperate with me", while unfastening his seat belt and touching the vicinity of the aircraft safety door.
When the plane crashed to the ground, he just grasped the handle that opened and closed the door, and he realized that now was the best time to escape. He quickly pulled the handle, pushed his wife out of the safety door, and then drilled out himself.
A series of seemingly simple actions saved the lives of most of the people in the plane. If they had been slower, the plane could have caught fire and exploded.
The passenger plane, which took off from Almaty Airport, carried a total of 98 people. According to preliminary statistics, 8 people died on the spot after the crash, 4 people died after being sent to the hospital, and nearly 50 people were injured to varying degrees. This result is relatively fortunate compared with the accidents in which other planes lose control and crash into the ground.
Among the dozens of passengers, there are 4 foreign citizens like Mao Lina, and they are all safe. "I feel like I'm not conscious yet, my hands are still shaking, and I can't speak clearly. It's completely different from the plane crash movies I've seen before, and in reality, that process is really scary. When talking about her feelings afterwards, Mao Lina still felt shocked about the process of the plane crash.
Suspicious investigation
According to further statistics on the number of dead and injured passengers on December 29, the accident killed 15 people and injured 60 others. This figure is likely to increase further over time, and the accident has attracted the attention of many Citizens of Kazakhstan.
For the crash at Almaty airport, the city's municipal government lowered the flag in half the day after the accident to show its condolences. The president of Kazakhstan also expressed his condolences to the victims and to the families of the passengers who died in the accident.
Subsequently, the country immediately set up an accident investigation committee to investigate the causes of the accident. The crash's flight recorder, commonly known as the black box, was found and quickly sent to Moscow to analyze the flight data.
After investigation, the investigators gave the initial cause of the crash, that is, the pilot's operational error and the technical failure of the fuselage. But as the investigation deepened, they decided it wasn't that simple.
On the day of the accident, the model of the aircraft and the company to which it belonged were identified. The aircraft is a Model 100 model produced by a Dutch company called Hooke. Until the results were thoroughly investigated, all relevant aircraft types were ordered to suspend flights.
Since the company producing the aircraft belonged to the Netherlands, Kazakhstan also requested the Dutch side to assist in the investigation. Unfortunately, Hooker had gone bankrupt 23 years earlier, so there was little investigative value, and the company that managed the plane was called Baker Air. Founded in 1999, it is the second largest aviation enterprise in Kazakhstan and the first in the country to open a low-cost aviation business.
Since its inception, the company has mainly operated routes in Kazakhstan, which ranks second in the country in terms of transportation volume, and has more than 14 routes in the country.
The main thing is that Baker Air owns 100 Fokker 100 aircraft, that is, the same aircraft as the crash, there are actually 10 aircraft. Moreover, the 10 aircraft are unusually old, they are all more than 20 years old, and the oldest one is 30 years old. On average, the aircraft are 23.7 years old.
In general, the safest age of a passenger aircraft is no more than 10 years. On the mainland, the service life of passenger aircraft is generally 14 years. No matter how you look at it, Baker Air's aircraft have been in use for a long time far beyond these years.
Although the safety of aviation is not directly related to the age of the aircraft, when the aircraft is used to a certain age, some weak parts of its structure are easy to age and crack. If there is really such a problem during the flight, it will endanger the safety of the life of the passengers.
Because the damage was severe after the plane crashed, investigators did not fully detect whether the plane had the problem. However, Baker Air, which has suspended operations, has given evidence that in May 2019, half a year before the accident, they had just inspected and maintained the aircraft. In this way, the main reason for the crash may not really be this problem.
So what went wrong?
The results are announced
After nearly half a month of comprehensive investigation, on January 10, 2020, the Kazakh side announced the results of the investigation.
The accident occurred in winter, and as one of the 10 coldest countries in the world, Kazakhstan can reach minus 40 degrees celsius at its coldest time. In such a cold climate, even if there is no snow, all the things in the country that are open in the open are extremely susceptible to freezing. In this kind of weather, in order to maintain its own balance when the aircraft rises, the de-icing work of the aircraft fuselage is particularly important.
However, the plane involved, perhaps due to the negligence of the staff, was not completely de-icing. It may also be that the weather made the ice freeze too fast, and the ice was frozen again except once, resulting in no ice in the tail of the aircraft and a thick layer of ice in the position of the wings.
The aircraft relies on the wings to provide lift, and the wings are frozen, so that it cannot have enough lift. The wing is also the key to the balance of the aircraft, and after freezing, its function is difficult to play. This is also why the plane involved will continue to shake irregularly after taking off.
Because the wings are frozen, and the air crash seems incredible, in fact, the possibility of occurrence is not small.
In 1993, a Macedonian Airlines flight also had an air crash caused by icing. Moreover, the aircraft involved is also a Fokker 100.
The plane that crashed was parked for one night at the airport in the winter. Before takeoff, the crew was supposed to check whether the plane was frozen, but the random crew did not pay attention to the matter, did not touch the front side of the relatively high wing.
The final result was that the plane began to shake and sink only 2 seconds after taking off, falling from 17 meters into three sections, resulting in 83 people killed and 14 injured.
Because of the lack of careful pre-flight inspections, both Macedonia Airlines and Baker Air cost some passengers their lives. If de-icing is so important, why has Baker Aviation not paid attention to it? Compared with domestic low-cost airlines, foreign low-cost airlines, especially those in countries like Kazakhstan, do not regard flight safety as the most important thing.
De-icing is a time-consuming and expensive thing. Both to use de-icing trucks, but also to spray de-icing liquid, once down, without queuing, it takes an hour to complete, the amount of money spent is generally more than tens of thousands. Therefore, many airlines often do not specifically de-icing.
The same goes for Baker Aviation. This company does not only care about the meticulousness of the de-icing work, but also often ignores safety regulations. Most of Kazakhstan's airlines, led by this company, were banned from entering EU airspace by the Eu in 2009 on the grounds that they did not meet international security standards, and the ban was lifted after 7 years.
Whether it is de-icing or not, and whether it is completely cleared, these are the responsibilities of airport staff. In other words, there is a possibility that air disasters that occur for such reasons can be avoided. Unfortunately, the flight that Mao Lina was on did not care about this problem. After the main cause of the air crash was made public, the response was particularly strong. Because of this, the President of Kazakhstan also announced that the day after the accident, December 28, would be designated as a national day of mourning.
It is a very fortunate thing that Mao Lina was saved by her husband in an air crash and escaped death. But there are many passengers who have not been spared, and in the process of flying accidents, they may be going on a business trip, going on a trip, going to a family reunion...
Aircraft is a kind of transportation that will have great casualties once an accident occurs. If you want to avoid air crashes as much as possible, you need airport staff to perform their duties, perform their duties, and make all preparations before the aircraft takes off.