How did a single teenage girl survive the Yemenia crash?
Jul 1, 2009 | Alexandra Marks | The Christian Science Monitor New York – Rescue efforts are continuing along with the search for the flight-data recorders from the Yemenia Airlines plane that crashed early Tuesday morning on its way from the capital Sanaa to the Comoros Islands. French officials now say earlier reports that a “pinger” signal from the black boxes was located were inaccurate. The signal that was detected came from a distress beacon. In the meantime, the recovery of a sole survivor – reported to be 12-year-old Baya Bakari, reported to be 12 or 13 years old – from Tuesday’s early-morning crash has raised the perplexing question of how one person could live through a catastrophic accident in which everyone else perishes. The answers are not simple, and aviation analysts say. They involve the complex physical dynamics in each individual accident. Since 1970, there have been 12 cases in which there has been only one survivor, according to a study by Airsafe.com. Two-thirds of
