The next flight? Air France 447.
"Survivors" like these often need psychological counseling, said Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc, whose father was among the 170 people killed in 1989 when Libyan terrorists downed UTA Flight 772 with a suitcase bomb. He now heads an association that helps victims of airline disasters.
"They can have big psychological problems. We meet a lot of people like that," said Denoix de Saint-Marc, who was asked by French authorities to counsel relatives of the victims of Flight 447 at a crisis center at Paris' airport.
In the case of UTA flight 772, some of the pilots and cabin crew who had flown the French DC-10 jetliner before handing it over to the doomed crew "couldn't resume their careers," Denoix de Saint-Marc said.
"They lost their flying licenses because of big psychological problems or alcoholism," he said.
Such traumas have a name: "Survivors' syndrome," seen often in combat and other crisis situations in which those who make it feel as though they fled, deserted their buddies or were cowardly, said psychiatrist Ronan Orio.
But being saved by the ticket counter, traffic or other caprices of life should not be considered traumatic, said Orio, who has worked with victims of hostage situations, terror attacks and airline crashes.
Instead, near-miss situations should be viewed in a positive light, he said.
"People who take a plane and have a second chance win the lotto. They have the right to continue where the others died," he said.
Benouargha-Jaffiol and her husband Claude Jaffiol got a second chance last Sunday.
The couple, who live in Montpellier, France, had pulled strings to try to get on Flight 447, even drafting a family friend, a Dutch diplomat, to phone Air France and try to get them seats on the overcrowded plane.
"My husband demanded that Air France put us on that flight," Benouargha-Jaffiol said. "But nothing doing, the flight was totally full."
She and her husband finally left the airport, returning Monday after the disaster.
"This type of tragedy should give us all a lesson in humility and humanism," she said. "No one lives forever. We often forget that."
Associated Press writers Ali Zerdin in Ljubljana, Slovenia; Hubert Vialatte in Montpellier, France, and Elaine Ganley in Paris contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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----------- You get to live but are like dead while living --- thats all what survival syndrome means ----------
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Achievement becomes automatic when Goal becomes inner commitment.
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