Air India crash: News that one man survived weighs on other sole survivors of plane crashes.
Lamson posted on Thursday that he stays in touch with other sole survivors and finds “there’s an unspoken understanding, and it’s been comforting”.
“My heart goes out to the survivor in India and to all the families waking up to loss today,” Lamson wrote.
“There are no right words for moments like this, but I wanted to acknowledge it.
“These events don’t just make headlines. They leave a lasting echo in the lives of those who’ve lived through something similar.”
Jim Polehinke was co-pilot of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky when it overran the runway on takeoff, killing all 47 passengers and two of the three crew
When his wife told him everyone else on the plane had died, Polehinke wept.
“My first concern was the passengers that were my responsibility that day,” he said in the 2013 documentary.
Adding to survivor’s guilt is the fact that the airline announced in the aftermath of the crash that Polehinke and the pilot violated policy by having an extended personal conversation when they were supposed to be focused on the flight.
But one of the investigators of that crash told the filmmakers the pilots’ personal conversation probably had nothing to do with the crash, and everyone told investigators that Polehinke and the pilot were highly competent professionals.
The accident still haunts Polehinke, though, who now uses a wheelchair to get around.
“I don’t think there’ll ever be a time that maybe I can forgive myself,” he said.
“I just hope that God can give the family members some comfort, some peace and some compassion, so their burden gets less as time goes on.”
Cecelia Crocker doesn’t just carry the marks of the 1987 crash she survived on her heart and in the scars on her arms, legs and forehead. She also got an airplane tattoo on her wrist.
Crocker, who was known as Cecelia Cichan at the time of the crash, said in the documentary that she thought about the crash every day.
She was four years old when she flew on Northwest Airlines Flight 255 and it crashed in the Detroit suburb of Romulus, killing 154 people on board, including her parents and brother. Two people also died on the ground.
The Phoenix-bound McDonnell Douglas MD80 was clearing the runway when it tilted and the left wing clipped a light pole before shearing the top off a rental car building.
The National Transportation Safety Board concluded the plane’s crew had failed to set the wing flaps properly for takeoff. The agency also said a cockpit warning system did not alert the crew to the problem.
“I got this tattoo as a reminder of where I’ve come from. I see it as – so many scars were put on my body against my will – and I decided to put this on my body for myself,” she said.
“I think that me surviving was random. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
But Lamson said in the documentary that he did not believe in random chance.
He said he couldn’t shake the feeling that “my life was spared for a reason either I wanted or something a higher power than me wanted”.
Investigators have recovered the plane’s flight data recorder, but they have not yet determined what may have caused the crash.
AP