There was the woman in the fur coat who asked a stranger to go back inside the slowly sinking plane to fetch her purse. The man who carried his suit bag on to the wing with him. The mother who had to climb over seats holding her nine-month-old son to avoid a stampede and the man who eventually helped them to safety. An older woman who walked with great difficulty and a young one who tenderly kissed her fiancé before the landing. And the prayers: from simple pleas to the heavens to the Lord’s Prayer, only halfway completed when the jet began to swim.