Alive against all odds: Miraculous stories of people who lived after catastrophic plane crashes - and the extraordinary man who survived TWICE
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Aviation experts have long assured nervous passengers that flying by aeroplane is the safest mode of transportation, with people taking a significantly greater risk stepping behind the wheel than they do boarding a flight. Plane crashes are, thankfully, rare. However when disaster does strike and a plane is brought out of the sky, it results in catastrophic casualties.
![[Austin grew up with dreams of becoming a top basketball player and had just received a scholarship to play at the University of Michigan when tragedy struck again in his life]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/30/16/93589675-14236005-image-a-2_1735574953248.jpg)
The Jeju Air crash at Muan International Airport on December 29 is one such tragedy which claimed 179 out of 181 people on board, after Flight 2216 from Thailand to South Korea crashed into a concrete barrier upon landing and exploded in flames. It comes just days after an Azerbaijan Airlines flight crashed in Kazakhstan on Christmas Day, killing 38 people and leaving 29 injured.
![[After spending a year in recovery following a second plane crash that killed his father and stepmother, Austin finally went to the University of Michigan where he met his now-wife Abby]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/30/16/93589677-14236005-image-m-4_1735575034021.jpg)
As rescuers continue to search through the wreckage in South Korea and families mourn their dead, two crew members miraculously survived the blast and are being treated in hospital for their injuries. They join an incredibly small group of people who are all bonded by one miraculous experience; surviving an aviation disaster that killed several other people.
![[Austin and Abby are now married with two children. Austin works as a motivational speaker and has developed a resilience programme inspired by the trauma he has worked through]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/30/16/93589941-14236005-image-m-6_1735575122526.jpg)
Around the world, ordinary human beings have somehow managed the extraordinary as they survived plummeting thousands of feet out of the sky in calamitous crashes - in a phenomenon the survivors themselves are unable to explain. Here, FEMAIL recounts the miraculous stories of people who experienced the most terrifying aviation disasters and lived to tell the tale...
![[Juliane Koepcke was just 17 years old when she was a passenger on LANSA flight 508 from Lima, Peru, to Panguana, following her high school graduation. The plane was struck by lightning as it flew through a thunderstorm on Christmas Eve in 1971 and crashed, killing 91 people including Juliane's mother. Pictured: Juliane returning to the site in 1998]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/30/16/72031875-14236005-Juliane_Koepcke_was_just_17_years_old_when_she_was_a_passenger_o-a-8_1735575266367.jpg)
Austin Hatch. Austin Hatch is one of a very select group of people who have experienced something miraculous - surviving a plane crash. Hatch, was just eight years old when his mother, sister and brother, from Indiana, died in a plane crash while the family was flying home from Michigan. Austin pictured second from left, with his father Stephen left.
![[Juliane now lives in Munich, Germany, with her husband Erich Diller, and works as a mammalogist specialising in bats]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/30/16/72031871-14236005-Juliane_now_lives_in_Munich_Germany_with_her_husband_Erich_Dille-a-7_1735575204505.jpg)
