An aviation accident (as per the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board definition) is an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft which takes place between the time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of flight and all such persons have disembarked, and in which any person suffers death or serious injury, or in which the aircraft receives substantial damage, while an aviation incident is an occurrence other than an accident, associated with the operation of an aircraft, which affects or could affect the safety of operations. Aviation or Air transport refers to the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ... Alternate meanings: Accident (fallacy), Accident (philosophy), Accident (movie), Accident, Maryland An accident is something going wrong. ... The United States of America — also referred to as the United States, the U.S.A., the U.S., America, the States, or (archaically) Columbia—is a federal republic of 50 states located primarily in central North America (with the exception of two states: Alaska and Hawaii). ... The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is a U.S. government organization responsible for investigation of accidents involving aviation, highway, marine, pipelines and railroads in the United States. ... An aircraft is any machine capable of atmospheric flight. ... Flight is the process of flying: either movement through the air by aerodynamically generating lift or aerostatically using buoyancy, or movement beyond earths atmosphere by spacecraft. ... Death is either the cessation of life in a living organism or the state of the organism after that event. ... Injury is damage or harm caused to the structure or function of the body caused by an outside agent or force, which may be physical or chemical. ...

Other countries adopt a similar approach, although there are minor variations, such as to the extent of aviation-related operations on the ground covered, as well as with respect to the thresholds beyond which an injury is considered serious or the damage is considered substantial.

Capt. Christopher Stricklin ejected from his USAF Thunderbirds aircraft at an air show at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, on September 14, 2003. Stricklin was not injured.

Download high resolution version (1180x1368, 857 KB)Capt. ... Download high resolution version (1180x1368, 857 KB)Capt. ... September 14 is the 257th day of the year (258th in leap years). ... 2003 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, and also: The International Year of Freshwater The European Disability Year Events January January 1 - Luíz Inácio Lula Da Silva becomes the 37th President of Brazil. ...

History

"Flying is not inherently dangerous, but to an even greater extent than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of carelessness, incapacity, or neglect" - anon. quotation

Since the birth of flight, aircraft have crashed, often with serious consequences. This is due to the unforgiving nature of flight, where a relatively insubstantial medium, air, supports a significant mass. Should this support fail, there is limited opportunity for a good outcome. Because of this, aircraft design is concerned with minimising the chance of failure, and pilots are trained with safety a primary consideration. Despite this, accidents still occur, though statistically flying is nowadays an extremely safe form of transportation. In fact, the relative rarity of incidents, coupled with the often dramatic outcome, is one reason why they still make headline news. An aircraft is any machine capable of atmospheric flight. ...

Many early attempts at flight ended in failure when a design raised to a height for a launch would fail to generate enough lift and crash to the ground. Some of the earliest aviation pioneers lost their lives testing aircraft they built. See List of early flying machines. This is a listing of early flying machines. ...

Otto Lilienthal died after a failure of one of his gliders. On his 2500th flight (August 10, 1896), a gust of wind broke the wing of his glider, causing him to fall from a height of roughly 56 ft (17 m), fracturing his spine. He died the next day, with his last words being reported as Opfer müssen gebracht werden! ("sacrifices must be made"). Percy Pilcher was another promising aviation pioneer. Pilcher died testing The Hawk (September 20, 1899). Just as with Lilienthal, promising designs and ideas for motorized planes were lost with his death. Some other early attempts experienced rough landings, such as Richard Pearse who is generally accepted to have crash landed (survived) a motorized aircraft in some bushes, unable to gain altitude after launching from it from some height. Otto Lilienthal Otto Lilienthal ( 23 May 1848 – 10 August 1896), the German Glider King, was a pioneer of human aviation. ... August 10 is the 222nd day of the year (223rd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1896 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Percy Sinclair Pilcher (1866-1899) was an English inventor and pioneer aviator who, in one of the big what if events of history, could well have become the first person to achieve controlled powered heavier-than-air flight, well before the Wright brothers, had he not been tragically killed in... September 20 is the 263rd day of the year (264th in leap years). ... 1899 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Richard William Pearse (December 3, 1877 – July 29, 1953) was a New Zealander farmer and inventor who experimented with flying machines in the early 20th century. ...

The Wright Flyer nearly crashed on the day of its historic flight, sustaining some damage when landing. Thomas Selfridge became the first person killed in a powered airplane on September 17, 1908 when Wilbur crashed his two-passenger plane during military tests at Fort Myer in Virginia. The Wright Flyer (often retrospectively referred to as Flyer I) was the first powered aircraft designed and built by the Wright Brothers. ... Lieutenant Thomas Etholen Selfridge (February 8, 1882 - September 17, 1908) was the first person to die in a powered aircraft crash. ... September 17 is the 260th day of the year (261st in leap years). ... 1908 is a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Fort Myer is a U.S. Army base located adjacent to Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, DC. It is now the home of the Air Force Chief of Staff and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. ...

Causes

The 1984 Controlled Impact Demonstration of a Boeing 720 aircraft using standard fuel with an additive designed to supress fire. (The experiment was a failure.)

An accident survey [1] (http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm) of 2,147 airplane accidents from 1950 through 2004 determined the causes to be as follows: Download high resolution version (1200x540, 871 KB)From http://www. ... Download high resolution version (1200x540, 871 KB)From http://www. ... Practice approach Pre-impact Post-impact 1 Post-impact 2 The Controlled Impact Demonstration (or jokingly Crash In the Desert) was a joint project between NASAs Dryden Flight Research Center and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to test the impact of a Boeing 720 aircraft using standard fuel with... Pan Am 707 The Boeing 707 is a four engined commercial passenger jet aircraft developed by Boeing in the early 1950s. ...

• 37%: Pilot error
• 33%: Undetermined or missing in the record
• 13%: Mechanical failure
• 7%: Weather
• 5%: Sabotage (bombs, hijackings, shoot-downs)
• 4%: Other human error (air traffic controller error, improper loading of aircraft, improper maintenance, fuel contamination, etc.)
• 1%: Other cause

The survey excluded military, private, and charter aircraft.

Some well-known aviation accidents

• A De Havilland Comet crashed in Jalalogori, India soon after take-off from Calcutta (now Kolkata) on 2 May 1953 - first of a series of crashes that led to Comet 1 fleet being grounded and eventually scrapped.
• The Andes flight disaster of 1972, in which the passengers who survived the crash had to resort to cannibalism to stay alive.
• The Air Canada Flight 143 (a.k.a the Gimli Glider) landed in Gimli, Manitoba, Canada in a crash on July 23, 1983 after the airplane ran out of fuel because of a metric conversion error during refueling. They used a different math formula. However, only a few passengers were slightly injured, and no one killed.
• The Mount Erebus disaster: an Air New Zealand DC-10 flew into Mount Erebus, Antarctica.
• The USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf, claiming to have mistaken it for an F-14 fighter. All 290 passengers on board were killed.
• Japan Airlines Flight 123 - The worst single-aircraft disaster in history, killing 520 people.
• Korean Air Flight 7 - Shot down by Soviet Union fighters.
• The Tenerife disaster which killed almost 600 people is often regarded as the worst-ever accident in Aviation history.
• Air France Flight 4590 was a Concorde flight from Charles de Gaulle International Airport near Paris, France to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, New York, which crashed on July 25, 2000, in Gonesse, France shortly after takeoff, killing all on board and four on the ground. The crash led to the end of Concorde flights.

See List of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners grouped by year. De Havilland Comet - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins/monobook/IE50Fixes. ... This article is on Calcutta/Kolkata, the city. ... May 2 is the 122nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (123rd in leap years). ... 1953 is a common year starting on Thursday. ... On 13 October 1972 an Uruguayan Air Force twin turboprop Fairchild FH-227D was flying over the Andes carrying the Stella Maris (Christian Brothers) schools Old Christians rugby team from Montevideo, Uruguay to play a match in Santiago, Chile. ... 1972 was a leap year that started on a Saturday. ... Cannibalism in Brazil in 1557 as described by Hans Staden. ... Air Canada is Canadas flag air carrier, headquartered in Montreal, Quebec. ... The Gimli Glider after landing The Gimli Glider is the name given to a famous incident in aviation history, on July 23, 1983, when a Boeing 767-200 jet, Air Canada Flight 143, ran out of fuel at 40,000 feet over northern Canada and had to glide to a... Motto: Gloriosus et Liber (Glorious and free) Other Canadian provinces and territories Capital Winnipeg Largest city Winnipeg Lieutenant Governor John Harvard Premier Gary Doer (NDP) Area 647,797 km² (8th)  - Land 553,556 km²  - Water 64,241 km² (14. ... July 23 is the 204th day (205th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 161 days remaining. ... 1983 is an integer and composite number that represents a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Air New Zealand Flight TE901 was a non-scheduled passenger flight from Auckland International Airport in New Zealand to Antarctica and return. ... Air New Zealand is a major scheduled passenger airline based in New Zealand. ... Mount Erebus in Antarctica is the southernmost active volcano. ... The fourth USS Vincennes (CG-49) is a U.S. Navy Ticonderoga class AEGIS guided missile cruiser. ... Iran Air Flight 655 IR655 was a commercial flight operated by Iran Air, that flew on a Tehran-Bandar Abbas-Dubai route. ... Sailors prepare an F-14 Tomcat for flight on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003). ... Japan Airlines flight 123 (JAL123, JL123), a Boeing 747-100SR-46, JA8119, crashed into Mount Osutaka in Gunma Prefecture, Japan, on August 12, 1985. ... Korean Air Flight 7 (KAL007, KE007) was the flight number of a civilian airliner shot down by Soviet fighters on September 1, 1983, over Soviet territorial waters just west of Sakhalin island, killing all 269 passengers and crew. ... The Tenerife disaster took place at 17:07 on March 27, 1977, when two Boeing 747s collided on the island of Tenerife, killing 583 people. ... Icarus and Daedalus Humanitys desire to fly probably dates back to the first time prehistoric man observed birds. ... Air France Flight 4590 on fire, prior to crash Air France Flight 4590 was a France to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, New York. ... The Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde supersonic transport (SST) was one of only two models of supersonic passenger airliners to have seen commercial service. ... Charles de Gaulle International Airport ( French: Aéroport de Roissy-Charles de Gaulle), also known as Roissy Airport (or just Roissy in French), serving Paris, is one of Europes principal aviation centers, as well as Frances main international airport. ... The Eiffel Tower has become the symbol of Paris throughout the world. ... JFK redirects here. ... Midtown Manhattan, looking north from the Empire State Building, 2005 New York City (officially named the City of New York) is the most populous city in the state of New York and the entire United States. ... State nickname: Empire State Other U.S. States Capital Albany Largest city New York Governor George Pataki Official languages None Area 141,205 km² (27th)  - Land 122,409 km²  - Water 18,795 km² (13. ... July 25 is the 206th day (207th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 159 days remaining. ... 2000 is a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Gonesse is a town in the Val dOise département, north of Paris. ... Accidents and incidents on commercial airliners grouped by the year that the incident or accident occurred. ...

Commercial airliner accidents

Lists of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners are available sorted:

• By Airline
• By Location
• By Year
• By Cause
• Alphabetically

Accidents and incidents on commercial airliners grouped by airline. ... Accidents and incidents on commercial airliners grouped by location of the incident. ... Accidents and incidents on commercial airliners grouped by the year that the incident or accident occurred. ...

See also

• Aircraft hijacking
• List of deaths by aircraft misadventure
• List of people who died in aviation-related incidents
• List of space disasters

• The Day The Music Died
  • Buddy Holly
  • Ritchie Valens
  • The Big Bopper

• Cavalese cable-car disaster (Marines jet cut off ski-lift cable)
• Kegworth air disaster (Boeing 737 G-OBME crashed after an engine failure)
• Lockerbie disaster (Boeing 747 exploded in mid-air, caused by sabotage)
• Manchester air disaster (Boeing 737 caught fire on the ground after an engine failure)
• Munich air disaster (Airspeed Ambassador crashed attempting take-off during a blizzard)
• Staines air disaster (Trident stalled and crashed shortly after takeoff)
• Superga air disaster, aircraft crashed into the Superga hills outside Turin

• Air safety
  • National Transportation Safety Board (US investigation authority)
  • Air Accidents Investigation Branch (UK investigation authority)
  • Transportation Safety Board of Canada (Canada investigation authority)

See also Airport security D. B. Cooper Categories: Pages needing attention | Law stubs | Terrorism ... This is a list of famous people who have died by various forms of aircraft misadventure. ... This is a list of well-known people who have died in aviation-related tragedies. ... Test pilot Stuart Present ejects safely from the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle. ... Monument at Crash Site, September 16, 2003 The Day The Music Died refers to the events of February 3, 1959. ... Charles Hardin Holley (September 7, 1936–February 3, 1959), better known as Buddy Holly, was an American singer, songwriter, and a pioneer of Rock and Roll. ... Richard Steven Valenzuela (May 13, 1941 - February 3, 1959), better known as Ritchie Valens, was a pioneer of rock and roll and, as a Mexican-American, became the first Hispanic rock and roll star. ... Jiles Perry Richardson, Jr. ... On 3 February 1998, an EA-6B Prowler, an electronic warfare aircraft belonging to the U.S. Marines cut the lines of a ski lift cable_car in Cavalese (in the Italian Alps); twenty persons in a cabin plunged over 80 metres to their deaths. ... United States Marine Corps Emblem The United States Marine Corps (USMC) is a branch of the United States armed forces. ... The Kegworth Air Disaster occurred on January 8, 1989, when British Midland Flight 92, a Boeing 737-400, G-OBME owned by British Midland crashed onto the embankment of the M1 motorway, short of the runway of East Midlands airport, Leicestershire, close to the village of Kegworth. ... 737 in new Boeing Colors. ... The cockpit landed in a farmers field near a tiny church in Tundergarth, Scotland Pan Am Flight 103 was Pan Ams daily Frankfurt-London-New York-Detroit evening flight. ... The Boeing 747, which is also known as the jumbo jet, is the second largest passenger airliner after the Airbus A380. ... On August 22, 1985, Flight 28M, a Boeing 737-236 flying the colours of British Airtours, took off from Manchester International Airport in Manchester in England, on an international passenger flight to Kerkira Airport on the Greek island of Kerkira. ... The Munich air disaster happened on February 6, 1958, when British European Flight 609, a British European Airways Elizabethan class Airspeed Ambassador charter aircraft (G-ALZU Lord Burghley), carrying players and backroom staff of Manchester United F.C., plus a number of journalists and supporters, crashed in a blizzard on... The Airspeed Ambassador was a twin piston engined airliner that first flew on July 10, 1947 and served in very small numbers through the 1950s. ... On June 18th, 1972, British European Flight 548, a Hawker-Siddeley Trident 1B, G-ARPI, of British European Airways (BEA) crashed two minutes after takeoff from Heathrow Airport, killing all 118 passengers and crew on board. ... Trident 1F The Trident, model DH121 or HS121, was a short/medium-range airliner designed by de Havilland in the 1950s, and built by the Hawker-Siddeley Group in the 1960s when de Havilland was merged, along with several other British aviation firms. ... The Superga air disaster happened on Wednesday, May 4, 1949, when a plane carrying almost the entire Torino squad (18 players), plus management, journalists and crew, crashed into the Superga hills near Turin, killing everyone on board. ... Location Region Piedmont Province Torino Area   – Total   – Water 130 km² (50 mi²) ##.# km² (#.# mi²) #.##% Population   – Total (2002)   – Density 857,433 6,596/km² Time zone CET: UTC+1 Latitude Longitude   45°04N 7°40E (##.#######, -##.#######)1. ... During the 1920s, the first laws were passed in the USA to regulate civil aviation. ... The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is a U.S. government organization responsible for investigation of accidents involving aviation, highway, marine, pipelines and railroads in the United States. ... The Air Accidents Investigation Branch investigates air accidents in the United Kingdom. ... The Transportation Safety Board (Bureau de la Securite des Transports du Canada) is the Canadian agency responsible for maintaining transportation safety in Canada. ...

External links

• Aviation Safety Network (http://aviation-safety.net/index.shtml), large database of accidents and incidents
• [2]  (http://www.airlinesafety.com/editorials/HumanErrorVsTerrorism), editorial citing examples of most severe consequences of pilot error and other human error
• airsafe.com A comprehensive American-oriented website on air safety issues and disasters (http://www.airsafe.com/)
• airdisaster.com A comprehensive website on air disasters (http://www.airdisaster.com/)
• Check-Six.com (http://www.Check-Six.com), offering aviation history and adventure first-hand