1/Tenerife airport disaster
The Tenerife airport disaster occurred on March 27, 1977, when two Boeing 747 passenger aircraft collided on the runway of Los Rodeos Airport (now known as Tenerife North Airport) on the Spanish island of Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands. With a total of 583 fatalities, the crash is the deadliest accident in aviation history.
Early reports suggest a Boeing 747, belonging to Dutch national airline KLM, and a Pan American 747 travelling from Los Angeles to Las Palmas were involved in the accident.No-one survived from the Dutch airliner which was carrying 249 passengers including crew, and was travelling from Schipol airport, Amsterdam.The Pan-Am plane was a charter flight carrying 16 crew and 378 passengers and there were said to be about 60 survivors, the majority of whom were injured.
2/Japan Airlines Flight 123
Japan Airlines Flight 123 was a Japan Airlines domestic flight from Tokyo International Airport (Haneda) to Osaka International Airport (Itami). The Boeing 747-SR46 that made this route, registered JA8119, suffered mechanical failures 12 minutes into flight and 32 minutes later crashed into two ridges of Mount Takamagahara in Ueno, Gunma Prefecture, 100 kilometers from Tokyo, on Monday 12 August 1985. The crash site was on Osutaka Ridge, near Mount Osutaka. All 15 crew members and 505 out of 509 passengers died, resulting in a total of 520 deaths and 4 survivors.The Japanese public’s confidence in Japan Airlines took a dramatic downturn in the wake of the disaster, with passenger numbers on domestic routes dropping by one-third. Rumors persisted that Boeing had admitted fault to cover up shortcomings in the airline’s inspection procedures, thus protecting the reputation of a major customer.In the months after the crash, domestic traffic decreased by as much as 25%. In 1986, for the first time in a decade, fewer passengers boarded JAL’s overseas flights during New Years than the previous year. Some of them considered switching to All Nippon Airways as a safer alternative.
3/1996 Charkhi Dadri Mid Air Collision
This plane crash was the worst mid air collision in history and happened in November 1996 over the village of Charkhi Dadri in India. The Saudi Arabian Airlines 747 had just departed from New Delhi and was travelling along the same airway as the Kazakhstan Airlines Illyushin 76, which was descending in preparation for landing at New Delhi. The pilot of the Kazakhstan jet had descended to below his cleared altitude. In order to correct this error, he applied full throttle to climb, and ended up hitting the left wing of the Saudi 747. The collision killed 349 people. The Kazakhstani pilot’s poor grasp of English was attributed as being the primary cause of the crash.The commission determined that the accident had been the fault of the Kazakh Il-76 commander, who (according to FDR evidence) had descended from the assigned altitude of 15,000 feet (4,600 m) to 14,500 feet (4,400 m) and subsequently 14,000 feet (4,300 m) and even below that. The report ascribed the cause of this serious breach in operating procedure to the lack of English language skills on the part of the Kazakh aircraft pilots; they were relying entirely on their radio operator for communications with the ATC who in turn did not have his own flightinstrumentation but had to look over the pilots’ shoulders for a reading.Kazakh officials stated that the aircraft had descended while their pilots were fighting turbulence inside a bank of cumulus clouds.
4/Turkish Airlines Flight 981
The accident with the Boeing 737 at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam is not the first plane of Turkish Airlines that has crashed. According to statistics gathered by the Belgian newspaper De Morgen, the website www.airdisaster.com and The Daily Telegraph, the 75-year old airline experienced 21 accidents since 1973. Ten planes were lost. The crash resulted from the failure of the rear cargo hatch latching system, which allowed the hatch to blow off in flight. The resulting decompression of the cargo hold caused the cabin floor above the hatch to collapse. The flight control cables for the airplane that ran through the floor were severed, leaving the pilots with almost no control over the aircraft. Problems with the latching system and the potential failure mode that led to the crash were known to Convair, the fuselage’s builder, with the information passed on to McDonnell Douglas several years prior to the accident.
5/Air India Flight 182
On 23 June 1985, the airplane operating on the route — a Boeing 747-237B named after Emperor Kanishka — was blown up by a bomb while in Irish airspace at an altitude of 31,000 feet (9,400 m), and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.A total of 329 people were killed, including 280 Canadians, 27 British citizens and 22 Indians.The incident was the largest mass murder in modern Canadian history. It was the first bombing of a 747 jumbo jet, preceding the better-known 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, which was also brought down by explosives placed in a radio inside a bag without its passenger boarding. The explosion and downing occurred within an hour of the fatal Narita Airport bombing, which also originated from Canada.
6/Iran Air Flight 655 (IR655)
Iran Air Flight 655 (IR655) was a civilian jet airliner shot down by U.S. missiles on 3 July 1988, over the Strait of Hormuz, toward the end of the Iran–Iraq War. The aircraft, an Airbus A300B2-203 operated by Iran Air, was flying from Bandar Abbas, Iran, to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, when it was destroyed by the U.S. Navy’s guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes, killing all 290 passengers and crew aboard, including 66 children, ranking it seventh among the deadliest airliner fatalities. It was the highest death toll of any aviation incident in the Indian Ocean and the highest death toll of any incident involving an Airbus A300 anywhere in the world. Vincennes was traversing the Strait of Hormuz, inside Iranian territorial waters, and at the time of the attack IR655 was within Iranian airspace.
According to the US government, the crew identified the Iranian Airbus A300 as an attacking F-14 Tomcat fighter. The Iranian government maintains that the Vincennes knowingly shot down the civilian aircraft. The event generated a great deal of controversy and criticism of the U.S. Some analysts have blamed U.S. military commanders and the captain of the Vincennes for reckless and aggressive behavior in a tense and dangerous environment.
7/American Airlines Flight 191
On May 25, 1979, the McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10 operating the route crashed moments after takeoff from Chicago. All 258 passengers and 13 crew on board were killed, along with two persons on the ground. The accident remains the deadliest airliner accident to occur on United States soil, as well as the second deadliest involving a DC-10, afterTurkish Airlines Flight 981.The accident investigation revealed that, when the engine separated, it disabled the Captain’s control panel, which contained both of the slat disagreement systems. The severed hydraulic lines allowed the slats on the left wing to gradually retract, and the stall speed on the left wing rose considerably. When the aircraft slowed through 164 knots, the left wing aerodynamically stalled because of its clean configuration, while the right wing continued to produce lift with its slats still in takeoff position. With one wing stalling and one wing producing full lift, the airplane eventually rolled past a 90%uFFFD bank, and fell to the ground. The crash killed two people on the ground when it hit a field directly adjacent to a trailer park. All 270 passengers and crew aboard were also fatally injured.
8/Korean Air Lines Flight 007
Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was a Korean Air Lines civilian airliner that was shot down by Sovietinterceptors on 1 September 1983, over the Sea of Japan, near Moneron Island just west of Sakhalin island. All 269 passengers and crew aboard were killed, including Lawrence McDonald, a sitting member of the United States Congress. The aircraft was en route from New York City to Seoul via Anchorage when it strayed into prohibited Soviet airspace around the time of a planned missile test.KAL 007 started out in New York City and had made a stopover in Anchorage, Alaska, before heading to its final destination: Seoul, Korea.The Soviets, not recognizing that KAL 007 was a passenger airplane, sent two jet fighters to intercept it. They tried to make contact and failed to receive a response.
The event sparked tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. President Ronald Reagan called it a “massacre” and said that the Soviets had turned “against the world and the moral precepts which guide human relations among people everywhere.”
9/American Airlines Flight 587
The accident took place two months after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in Manhattan. Several factors, such as the date, time, aircraft size, airline, eyewitness accounts, and location in New York, raised concerns that the crash was caused by another terrorist attack.Al-Qaeda listed the crash among its successes,and a Canadian militant cooperating with authorities suggested that it had been brought down with a shoe bomb. Nonetheless, terrorism was officially ruled out as the cause by the National Transportation Safety Board, which instead attributed the disaster to the first officer’s overuse of rudder controls in response to wake turbulence.With 260 fatalities on board and 5 on the ground, this accident has the third highest death toll of any accident involving an Airbus A300.Iran Air Flight 655 and China Airlines Flight 140 had higher fatalities.
10/Pan Am Flight 103
On Wednesday, 21 December 1988, the aircraft flying this route — a Boeing 747–121registered N739PA and named “Clipper Maid of the Seas” — was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew members.Eleven people in Lockerbie, in southern Scotland, were also killed as large sections of the plane fell in the town and destroyed several houses, bringing total fatalities to 270. As a result, the event is also known as the Lockerbie bombing.All 243 passengers and 16 crew members were killed. Eleven residents of Lockerbie also died. Of the total of 270 fatalities, 189 were American citizens and 43 British citizens. No more than 4 of the remaining 37 victims of the bombing came from any one of the 19 other countries
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