Chalk’s Ocean Airways Flight 101 lost its right wing during departure from Watson Island, Miami, killing all 20 people on board. The wing spar had fractured due to a fatigue crack that had grown from a repair weld — a crack that an adequate inspection programme would have detected before it reached critical size. The […]
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down by a Buk surface-to-air missile over eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014, killing all 298 people on board. The aircraft was flying at Flight Level 330 — within the airspace that had been assessed as safe by the Ukrainian civil aviation authority and by ICAO, who had closed
El Al Cargo Flight 1862 lost the Number 3 and Number 4 engines simultaneously when the inboard midspar fuse pin of the Number 3 pylon fractured due to fatigue cracking at a corrosion pit. As the Number 3 engine and its nacelle separated, it struck the Number 4 nacelle, separating both. The combined separation tore
China Airlines Flight 120 caught fire on the apron at Naha Airport immediately after landing, when fuel that had been leaking from a maintenance-induced puncture in the leading edge fuel tank ignited — most likely on contact with a hot engine or brake component. The aircraft was completely destroyed in approximately five minutes. All 165
TAM Airlines Flight 3054 landed at São Paulo Congonhas Airport on a wet runway with one thrust reverser locked out under the MEL, the functioning reverser’s power lever incorrectly positioned at climb rather than idle, and a runway surface whose friction had been degraded by a poorly executed groove-fill repair. The combination was unsurvivable. The
Concorde Flight 4590 is the accident that ended commercial supersonic passenger flight. On 25 July 2000, a titanium wear strip that had fallen from a previously departed Continental Airlines DC-10 lay on Charles de Gaulle Runway 26R. Concorde’s left number 5 tyre struck it at 318 knots. A large fragment of the burst tyre struck
China Airlines Flight 611 broke apart in cruise flight over the Taiwan Strait on 25 May 2002. The aircraft’s aft lower fuselage failed due to a fatigue crack that had grown — undetected — from an improperly repaired tailstrike that had occurred in 1980. Twenty-two years earlier. The repair had been performed out of specification.
Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed by a bomb concealed in a Samsonite suitcase in the forward cargo hold, killing 270 people including 11 residents of Lockerbie. The Libyan-sponsored attack used an IED embedded in a Toshiba radio-cassette player — an almost identical device to the one used against Air India 182 three years earlier.
Air India Flight 182 was destroyed by an explosive device concealed in checked baggage, killing all 329 people on board. The bomb was placed in a suitcase checked interline at Vancouver International Airport by a passenger who did not board the flight. The aviation security system of 1985 had no effective requirement for positive passenger-baggage
The captain of British Airways Flight 5390 was sucked partially out of the aircraft through the forward windscreen at 23,000 feet and held there — by cabin air pressure and by cabin crew grasping his legs — for twenty-two minutes at 300 knots and minus seventeen degrees Celsius. The first officer declared an emergency, made
