Your odds of being in some air catastrophe are 1 in 11 million! But these things do happen, like the story of Orenair Flight 554. The Russian airliner was departing from Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic and heading to Moscow. This was a routine 12-hour direct flight, full of happy, tanned Russian tourists who, I imagine, had just had the time of their lives on a long-awaited sunny beach vacation in escape of the cold February weather back home. 

There were 351 passengers on board, along with 20 crewmembers. Everything was going smoothly, people were either chatting, listening to music, or closing their eyes to get some rest. After all, they had a long flight ahead of them, might as well spend most of those 12 hours snoozing! Well, turns out, the flight wasn’t quite as long as it should’ve been…

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices