Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 departed Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on the night of 8 March 2014 and disappeared. At 01:21 MYT, its transponder stopped transmitting. Malaysian military radar tracked it turning back across the Malay Peninsula, then flying northwest before leaving radar coverage entirely. The aircraft flew for approximately six more hours — tracked only […]

PIA Flight 8303 made a gear-up touchdown at Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport, scraping both engine nacelles on the runway, then went around, and crashed into a residential neighbourhood on the second approach when both engines failed from nacelle damage. Ninety-seven of ninety-nine people on board died. Both crew members were on personal mobile phones during

American Airlines Flight 191 is the deadliest aviation accident on US soil. During the takeoff roll at Chicago O’Hare, the entire Number 1 engine and pylon separated from the left wing as a single unit, rolling over the wing and severing hydraulic lines to the left wing’s leading edge slat actuators. As the slats retracted,

TransAsia Airways Flight 235 crashed into the Keelung River in Taipei after the crew shut down the functioning left engine while attempting to manage a malfunction of the right engine, leaving the aircraft with zero thrust at low altitude over a densely populated area. The aircraft struck a highway overpass, a taxi, and fell into

Crossair Flight 3597 struck a wooded hill 7 kilometres south of Zurich Airport while conducting a night visual approach to Runway 28, killing 24 of the 33 people on board. The captain descended below the minimum safe altitude for his position while conducting a type of approach for which his qualification had not been confirmed

American Airlines Flight 1420 overran Runway 04R at Little Rock National Airport in a severe thunderstorm and struck approach lighting structures, killing 11 people. The flight had been a long, delayed, weather-affected sector. The crew had been on duty since the early morning. The approach was unstabilised — high and fast — past the stabilisation

Pinnacle Airlines Flight 3701 crashed on a repositioning flight after the crew flew the empty CRJ-200 to FL410 — 4,000 feet above its certified service ceiling — to see if it could do it. Both engines flamed out from compressor stall at the extreme altitude. The crew failed to restart them within the available altitude

Air Midwest Flight 5481 stalled immediately after takeoff from Charlotte because the elevator control cables had been incorrectly rigged during maintenance — reducing the available pitch-up authority — and because the aircraft was heavier than its weight and balance calculations indicated, due to a systematic underestimate of average passenger weight that had not been updated

UPS Flight 1354 struck terrain 1.6 miles short of Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport’s Runway 18 during a night instrument approach while the crew managed a cargo fire indication. Both crew members died. The accident combines two independently challenging operational scenarios — cargo fire management and precision instrument approach in darkness — and demonstrates what happens when

Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 experienced an uncontained engine failure when a CFM56-7B fan blade separated due to a metal fatigue crack at its leading edge root — a crack that had grown through at least one previous inspection cycle undetected. A blade fragment struck the fuselage, breaking a passenger window. Passenger Jennifer Riordan was partially