In a commemoration ceremony held in Comoros for the accident victims on July 6 , Comoran President Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi declared a month of national mourning in his island nation and honored Maturaffi Sélémane Libounah , the sailor who had rescued Bahia Bakari , telling him : " You saved someone else 's life at the risk of losing yours . " According to Aviation Safety Network 's database , Bakari is a survivor of the deadliest sole survivor ocean crash , and the second-deadliest sole survivor crash ever . The only other sole survivor crash that was deadlier involved Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 , in which 156 were killed , including two on the ground . In January 2010 , Bakari released an account of her ordeal in a French memoir , " '' Moi Bahia , la miraculée '' " ( " I 'm Bahia , the miracle girl " ) , published by '' Jean-Claude Gawsewitch Éditeur '' in Paris , France . In the book , co-authored with French journalist Omar Guendouz as ghostwriter , Bakari provides details about her survival and rescue . She discloses that immediately after the crash , she thought she had fallen out of the airplane by pressing her forehead too hard against the window , and that her mother &mdash; who she believed had landed safely without her &mdash; would scold her for not wearing her seat belt . Then , floating on debris in the midst of a jet fuel slick released from the aircraft 's burst fuel tanks , she recalls having " ... this taste of fuel in my mouth , mixed with salt , which burned my throat , my lungs and my stomach . " Bakari writes that she only realized her plane had crashed and that she was the sole survivor when she was in the hospital , believing until then that she had simply fallen out into the ocean . '' AOL News '' reports that Steven Spielberg approached Bakari to make a film based on her book , but she turned him down , worried that " it would be too terrifying . "
Northwest Airlines Flight 255
Northwest Airlines Flight 255
Bahia Bakari