Passengers sucked from plane

last updated 8 January 2015

Kinshasa, Congo

More than 100 Congolese soldiers and family members were sucked out of an airplane to their deaths last week when the rear door fell off in flight. The soldiers and their families were being transported from the capital, Kinshasa, to a military base in the south in a Soviet-era Ilyushin-76 cargo plane. “Thirty-five minutes after takeoff, we heard a loud noise inside the plane like hissing, and then the ramp fell off,” one survivor said. “Only the people who had the reflex to grab ropes on the walls were able to stay inside.” The Ilyushin-76, built in 1971, is a rickety craft now used mostly in Africa. It has an appalling record of 45 deadly crashes.