Emin Hasic: The Most Lucky Man in the World

A sombre-looking Hasic holding the original ticket in his hands.

A 39-YEAR-old man from Germany who was booked on Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic, was given a seat on an earlier flight to Paris when he arrived early at Rio de Janeiro airport.
Emin Hasic, from the north German town of Barssel, said he got to Rio airport well ahead of Flight 447's Sunday evening departure even though he had a problem finding the right terminal.



Mr Hasic confirmed the details of his story that appeared in German media yesterday, but, sounding shaken, said he did not want to elaborate.

"I'll never forget how the woman at the counter took my luggage and said it was no problem at all (to fly early)," Hasic was quoted telling the Ostfriesen Zeitung newspaper.

"I've flown 15 times in my life before but was never offered an earlier flight like that," said the physical therapist, who had been in Brazil attending a conference.

Mr Hasic found out about the crash on May 31, in which 228 people are believed to have died, after returning to Germany on Monday afternoon. He heard a news bulletin on the radio in a car while driving home from Bremen airport.

"I was in a state of shock and felt a great emptiness inside me," Hasic told the Nordwest-Zeitung newspaper's online edition.



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UPDATE: 12 June 2009

NOT SO LUCKY




An Italian woman has been killed in a car crash only days after she narrowly avoided being a victim of the Air France plane crash.

Johanna Ganthaler and her husband Kurt were on holiday in Brazil and were supposed to take Air France flight 447 back to Paris.

But they missed the doomed flight and decided to take a different flight home to Europe instead.

All 228 people onboard the Air France flight were killed when it crashed in the Atlantic.

But the two pensioners had barely managed to digest the terrible tragedy they had managed to avoid when they involved in a car accident.

Their vehicle crashed after veering across a road in Kufstein, Austria, according to the Italian news agency ANSA.

The car swerved into an oncoming truck and Mrs Ganthaler was killed.
Her husband was seriously injured.

Mrs Ganthaler was from the Italian province of Bolzano-Bozen.