I’ve always found the stories of human error and/or ingenuity most fascinating when it comes to aircraft accidents.
These are some of the cases that stick in my mind (many of which have been on those accident recreation shows…)
Gimli Glider
Air Canada Flight 143 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight between Montreal and Edmonton that ran out of fuel on July 23, 1983 at an altitude of 12,500 metres (41,000 ft), midway through the flight. The crew was able to glide the Boeing 767 aircraft safely to an emergency landing at a former Royal Canadian Air Force base in Gimli, Manitoba, that had been turned into a motor racing track. This unusual aviation incident earned the aircraft the nickname "Gimli Glider." The subsequent investigat...
United Airlines Flight 232, Sioux City
United Airlines Flight 232 was a DC-10, registered as N1819U, that crash-landed at Sioux City, Iowa on July 19, 1989 after suffering catastrophic failure of its tail-mounted engine, which led to the loss of many flight controls. The flight was en route from Stapleton International Airport in Denver, Colorado to O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. Of the 296 passengers and crew on board, 111 died in the accident and 185 survived in total.[note 1] Despite the deaths, the accident is considered...
Tenerife Air Disaster
On March 27, 1977, two Boeing 747 passenger jets, KLM Flight 4805 and Pan Am Flight 1736, collided on the runway at Los Rodeos Airport (now Tenerife North Airport), on the Spanish island of Tenerife, Canary Islands, killing 583 people, and making it the deadliest accident in aviation history. A terrorist incident at Gran Canaria Airport had caused many flights to be diverted to Los Rodeos, including the two accident aircraft. The airport quickly became congested with parked aircraft blocking the ...
Air Transat Flight 236, Azores Glider
Air Transat Flight 236 was a transatlantic flight bound for Lisbon, Portugal, from Toronto, Canada, that lost all engine power while flying over the Atlantic Ocean on August 24, 2001. The Airbus A330 had run out of fuel due to a fuel leak caused by improper maintenance. Captain Robert Piché, 48, an experienced glider pilot, and First Officer Dirk de Jager, 28, flew the plane to a successful emergency landing in the Azores, saving all 306 people (293 passengers and 13 crew) on board. Most of th
British Airways Flight 539
Shortly after British Airways Flight 5390 left Birmingham Airport in England for Málaga Airport in Spain on 10 June 1990, an improperly installed windscreen panel separated from its frame, causing the plane's captain to be blown partially out of the aircraft. With the captain pressed against the window frame for twenty minutes, the first officer managed to land at Southampton Airport with no loss of life. The County of South Glamorgan was a BAC One-Eleven Series 528FL jet airliner, registered a...
Aloha Airlines Flight 243, Convertible airplane
Coordinates: 20°53.919′N 156°25.827′W / 20.898650°N 156.430450°W / 20.898650; -156.430450 Aloha Airlines Flight 243 (IATA: AQ243, ICAO: AAH243) was a scheduled Aloha Airlines flight between Hilo and Honolulu in Hawaii. On April 28, 1988, a Boeing 737-297 serving the flight suffered extensive damage after an explosive decompression in flight, but was able to land safely at Kahului Airport on Maui. There was one fatality, flight attendant Clarabelle Lansing, who was ejected from the airplane. An...
Kegworth Air Disaster (not least because I grew up only a few miles away)
The Kegworth air disaster occurred when a Boeing 737-400 crashed on to the embankment of the M1 motorway near Kegworth, Leicestershire, England, while attempting to make an emergency landing at East Midlands Airport on 8 January 1989. British Midland Flight 92 was on a scheduled flight from London Heathrow Airport to Belfast Airport, when a fan-blade broke in the left engine, disrupting the air conditioning and filling the flight deck with smoke. The pilots believed that this indicated a fault in...
Ăśberlingen mid-air collision
On the night of 1 July 2002, Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937, a Tupolev Tu-154 passenger jet, and DHL Flight 611, a Boeing 757 cargo jet, collided in mid-air over Ăśberlingen, a southern German town on Lake Constance. All 69 passengers and crew aboard the Tupolev and the two crew members of the Boeing were killed. The official investigation by the German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation (German: Bundesstelle fĂĽr Flugunfalluntersuchung, (BFU)) identified as the main cause of the co...
Cessna, 727 Collision
Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) Flight 182 was a Boeing 727-214 commercial airliner, registration, N533PS that collided with a private Cessna 172 light aircraft, registration, N7711G over San Diego, California, at 9:01 am on Monday, September 25, 1978. It was Pacific Southwest Airlines' first deadly accident. The death toll of 144 made it the deadliest air disaster in the United States, until the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 eight months later. Both aircraft crashed into North Park, a S...
