Although the plane is considered the safest mode of transport, aircraft accidents have more tragic consequences. Such incidents are characterized by a large number of casualties, significant damage or destruction of the aircraft, public outcry, and close media attention.
Accident Classification
Accidents and incidents are classified according to several criteria. Distinguish between ground and flight accidents. Terrestrial incidents are those that occurred before or after the flight. Aircraft flight accidents are those disasters that are associated with a crew performing a flight mission.
In addition, breakdowns, accidents and disasters are distinguished. Damage leads to minor damage to the aircraft, there are no casualties and injuries. An accident is an incident that did not result in loss of life, as a result of which the aircraft sustains significant damage or collapses. Disasters are aviation accidents that are characterized by:
- damage to the aircraft so that repair is not economically feasible or impossible; complete destruction of the aircraft;
- death of passengers or crew members, as well as people on board, within the next 30 days from the moment of the incident.
Causes of Accidents
The most common cause of air crashes are pilot errors, i.e. the human factor. In 42% of cases, for other reasons, aviation accidents occur. Disaster factors are distributed as follows:
- 58% of incidents resulting in the death of one or more passengers or crew members occur due to pilot errors.
- 22% of tragic cases occur due to equipment failure.
- 12% of incidents occur in adverse weather conditions during the flight.
- 9% of disasters occur due to terrorist attacks.
- 7% are errors of ground personnel at airports.
- 1% of aviation incidents occur due to the influence of a different kind of reasons.
Accidents and incidents caused by the human factor in 29% of cases occurred by coincidence, due to the carelessness or forgetfulness of the pilots, 16% were errors caused by difficult weather conditions, in 5% of cases the cause of accidents was the failure of equipment.
Air crash investigation methods
Each tragic accident with an aircraft is subject to mandatory review and analysis. The rules for investigating aircraft accidents and incidents require the rapid creation of a rapid response team, which includes specialists from areas directly or indirectly related to this area. Subsequently, the case is referred to the commission for the investigation of an accident or aircraft incident in Russia, to the National Transportation Security Council in the USA, or to other services.
The analysis of accidents and incidents involves the following steps:
- Search for the main four parts of the aircraft to determine if the aircraft crashed to the ground or decayed in the air.
- Search and listening to flight recorders.
- Checking the negotiations of the pilots with the dispatcher.
- Analysis of weather reports.
- Search and collect all the wreckage of the aircraft.
- Tests of similar models of technology in simulators.
- Analysis of the personal files of the pilots and identification of possible psychological factors that influenced the fact of the disaster.
- Checking passengers and cargo according to documentation in order to exclude or confirm the version of the attack.
- Survey of survivors and eyewitnesses of the tragedy, watching videos of what happened.
- Pathology of corpses.
Air crash statistics by country
The statistics of the number of disasters with civil aircraft by a large margin are led by the United States. So, from 1945 to 2013 in the United States, more than seven hundred accidents with human casualties occurred. Accident statistics for the same period indicate that the number of passengers and crew members killed in disasters amounted to ten and a half thousand people.
Russia in sad statistics is located on the second line. Canada, Brazil, Colombia, Great Britain, France, India, Indonesia and Mexico also included in the top ten countries in the number of accidents and disasters. The large gap between the United States and other countries in the ranking is explained by the fact that the United States accounted for 28% of civilian sorties in the world.
The largest disaster in Russia
There were major aviation accidents in Russia. The most terrible in terms of the number of victims of the tragedy was the collision of a Tu-154 aircraft, flying on the route Krasnodar-Novosibirsk through Omsk, with three official cars of the airport on the runway in 1984. As a result of the accident, the plane crashed, out of 179 people on the plane, only five survived.
Some sources call the largest disaster on the territory of Russia the border incident near Sakhalin Island in 1983. After a double violation of the USSR border, a South Korean Boeing 747 was shot down. The death toll was 269 people.
The largest disaster in the USSR
Aircraft accidents of the USSR have one hundred or more fatalities in only three cases in the entire history of Soviet aviation. The largest incident is the fall of the Tu-154 near Uchkuduk, in Uzbekistan. The aircraft performed a passenger flight along the Karshi-Ufa-Leningrad route, but forty-six minutes after takeoff, the ship lost control and went into a tailspin. The cause of the tragic incident was a management error. According to another version, the pilots' rest mode was violated. Killed all two hundred people on board.
September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the USA
The two largest accident victims in the world are incidents with flights 11 Boston - Los Angeles and 175 Logan - Los Angeles, which were captured by terrorists and sent to the towers of the World Trade Center with a difference of 17 minutes. In the first aircraft (Boeing 767-223ER) there were 92 passengers, pilots and cabin crew, including 5 hijackers, in the second - 65 people, including 5 hijackers. As a result of the first collision, a total of about 1,692 people died (passengers and the crew of the aircraft, terrorists, people who were in the WTC and rescuers), after the second, about 965 people became victims.
Collision at Los Rodeos Airport
Another major accident happened at the end of March 1977 in the Canary Islands. On the runway, two Boeings collided, flying on the routes Amsterdam - Las Palmas and Los Angeles - Las Palmas via New York. The official cause of the disaster, the investigation recognized a misinterpretation of dispatcher commands and crew errors. The incident killed 583 people.
The crash of a Boeing 747 near Tokyo
In 1985, aviation accidents replenished with another tragic incident that occurred in Tokyo. The plane that operated the Tokyo-Osaka domestic flight lost its tail stabilizer twelve minutes after takeoff, as a result of which it lost control and crashed into a mountain 112 kilometers from the capital of Japan.
Of the 524 people who were on board, only four survived. Many passengers died not at the moment of impact, but on the ground - from hypothermia and injuries received. Perhaps if help had arrived earlier (four survivors were found fourteen hours after the crash), some of them could have been saved.
Clash over Charhi Dadri
The first in terms of the number of casualties in a plane crash in an air crash is the crash of a Boeing 747-168B of Saudi Arabia Airlines and Kazakhstan Airlines. The incident occurred in the sky over the Indian city of Charhi Dadri. The crash killed 349 people aboard both aircraft. Among the victims of the incident are citizens of India, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, the USA, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the United Kingdom (to reduce the death toll).
The reasons for the accident, the official commission recognized the following factors:
- poor knowledge of English by flight attendants and aircraft pilots;
- lack of pilot skills and poor crew performance;
- lack of standard professional phraseology among pilots;
- the presence of only a single corridor for takeoffs and landings;
- lack of radar at the airport of Indian Delhi.
Turkish Airlines crash near Paris
The catastrophe over Paris occurred in early March 1973. The Turkish Airlines airliner operated the Istanbul-London route through Paris, when the cargo compartment door opened six minutes after take-off. The plane lost control and collapsed into small fragments when it fell. All aboard were killed, i.e. 334 passengers and twelve crew members.
Attack on the Atlantic Ocean
The terrorist act that occurred in 1985 over the Atlantic Ocean, claimed the lives of 329 people. The plane crash occurred in neutral waters, the plane broke into fragments as a result of an explosion in the cargo compartment. Three extremist groups in the United States and Canada immediately claimed responsibility for the incident.
Saudi Arabian Airlines crash in Riyadh
In 1980, a Saudi airline operated a flight on the Karachi – Riyadh – Jeddah route. A few minutes after takeoff, a fire occurred on board. The crew managed to make an emergency landing, but rescue operations began only twenty-three minutes after landing. Flight attendants could not open the doors and begin the evacuation, and airport services took time to understand the relevant instructions in English. As a result of the delay, all 287 passengers and fourteen crew members were killed.
The tragedy over Donetsk in 2014
The largest plane crash of the twenty-first century in the post-Soviet space occurred in the summer of 2014 over the territory of armed confrontation between government forces and units of the Donetsk People’s Republic. The Boeing 777, flying the Amsterdam – Kuala Lumpur route (capital of Malaysia), was shot down from the Buk self-propelled anti-aircraft system. The search operation and the investigation of the incident were complicated by the fact that the territory where the plane crashed was between two fronts.
As a result of the disaster, 298 people died. The flight was used by a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, a senator for the Netherlands Labor Party, an Australian writer, and participants in a conference of the International AIDS Society. The incident became a significant factor in the introduction of new sanctions against Russia, influenced the stock indices and the bankruptcy of Malaysia Airlines.
Accident of cargo AN-32 in Zaire
The top ten accidents are closed by the incident with the cargo AN-32, which occurred in Zaire. The plane could not fly into the air and crashed into a market that was very close to the runway. As a result of the accident, a flight engineer on board the aircraft and 297 people on the ground died, among whom were mostly women and children. Of the deaths, only 66 people were identified.