Terrifying Air Disasters

A terrifying air disasters or an  aviation incident is an incident or accident occurrence, associated with the aircraft operation due to affect of negligence on the safety operations or an accident in which the aircraft damage is such that it must be a total loss or write-off, or in which the plane is destroyed is a hull loss accident. An aviation accident is defined by the Convention on International Civil Aviation Annex 13 as an incident associated with the aircraft operation, taking place during a person boards the aircraft with the flight intention  between the time or until such time as all passengers aboard have disembarked, or when the aircraft sustained damages or structural failure or the aircraft is missing or completely inaccessible, where a passenger is fatally or seriously injured. There are terrifying air disaster incidents or the deadliest aviation-related disaster of any kind, on both the aircraft and the ground with numbers of fatalities, which one of the most shocking air disaster was the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center destruction in New York City.

1)   American Airline Flight 11 (crashed the Twin Tower- World Trade Center) and American Airline Flight 77 (crashed the Pentagon)

The September 11 attacks of the passenger flight American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 which was hijacked by five al-Qaeda members on September 11, 2001, deliberately crashed it into the World Trade Center, North Tower in New York City, killing all 92 passengers aboard and an unknown number of people in the building’s impact zone. The aircraft involved, a Boeing 767-223ER, was flying American Airlines daily scheduled morning transcontinental service from Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts to Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, California. The hijackers injured at least three people or possibly killing one, fifteen minutes during flight, forcibly rift the cockpit, and overpowered the captain and first officer. An al-Qaeda member and licensed commercial pilot, Mohamed Atta, took over the controls. Then the Air-traffic controllers noticed the flight was in distress when the crew was no longer responding, and realized the flight had been hijacked when announcement made by Mohammed Atta for passengers were transmitted to air traffic control. While on board, flight attendants Amy Sweeney and Betty Ong contacted American Airlines and provided information about the hijackers and injuries to passengers and crew. The American Airlines Flight 11  aircraft crashed into the North tower of the World Trade Center at 08:46 local time. News agencies began to report on the air disaster incident and speculated that the crash had been an accident before the hijacking was confirmed. The impact of the aircraft crash on the North Tower of the World Trade Center causing blasts and collapsed on the North Tower, 102 minutes after the crash, resulted in additional and hundreds of casualties due to the collapse of the tower. Workers and rescue teams recovered and identified dozens of remains from Flight 11 victims, during the recovery effort at the site of World Trade Center, but many body fragments could not be identified. The aircraft Boeing 767-223ER, an American Airlines Flight 11 delivered in 1987, with registration number N334AA. The aircraft’s capacity was 158 passengers, but during the fateful flight of the September 11, it carried 81 passengers and 11 crew members, which was a light load at 51 percent capacity, but higher than the average load factor for Flight 11 on Tuesday mornings of September 11. The 11 crew members of the American Airlines Flight 11, were Captain John Ogonowski, First Officer Thomas McGuinness, and flight attendants Barbara Arestegui, Jeffrey Collman, Sara Low, Karen Martin, Kathleen Nicosia, Betty Ong, Jean Roger, Dianne Snyder, and Amy Sweeney. In all, 92 passengers on board were killed, include some notable people such as David Angell (the television sitcom Frasier creator and executive producer) with his wife Lynn Angell, and actress Berry Berenson, the widow of late actor Anthony Perkins. While at the American Airlines Flight 77, there were two passengers on the aircraft that was able to made phone calls to contacts on the ground, flight attendant Renee May called her mother, Nancy May, in Las Vegas at 09:12 a.m., which lasted nearly two minutes, May said her flight was being hijacked by six persons, and crew, staffs and passengers had been moved to the rear of the airplane. May asked her mother to contact American Airlines, which she and her husband promptly did; and passenger Barbara Olson (a lawyer and conservative American television commentator who worked for CNN, Fox News Channel), called her husband, United States Solicitor General Theodore Olson, and reported that the airplane had been hijacked and that the hijackers had box cutters and knives. Barbara Olson reported that the passengers, crew and the pilots, had been moved to the back of the cabin and that the hijackers were unaware of her call. A minute during the conversation, the call was cut off. Barbara Olson was a passenger on board the American Airlines Flight 77, on her way to Los Angeles for a taping of Politically Incorrect, when it was flown by hijackers crashing the aircraft into the Pentagon in the September 11 attacks after minutes crashing the World Trade Center in New York. Barbara Olson’s name is located on Panel S-70 of the South Pool in the National September 11 Memorial, along with those of other passengers of Flight 77.

United Airlines Flight 93

United Airlines Flight 93 was a passenger flight which was hijacked by al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001, as part of the September 11 attacks, that crashed into a field near the Diamond T. Mine in Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania near Shanksville, during an attempt by some of the passengers to regain control, and overpower the hijackers, killing all 44 people aboard including the four hijackers. No one on the ground was injured. The aircraft involved, was a Boeing 757-222, was flying United Airlines Flight 93 with daily morning scheduled domestic flight from Newark International Airport in Newark, New Jersey to San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco, California. The hijackers forcibly rift the aircraft’s cockpit about 46 minutes after take off and overpowered the flight crew. A trained pilot, Ziad Jarrah then took control of the aircraft and diverted it back toward the east coast direction of Washington, D.C., which the specific target is not known, but was believed that the hijackers were heading for either the White House or the Capitol Building. Some passengers and flight attendants were able to make telephone calls after the hijackers took control of the Flight 93 and learn that attacks had already been made by other hijacked airlines on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. A passenger on board United Airlines Flight 93, Mark Kendall Bingham, an American public relations executive who founded his own company, was believed to have been attempting to gain control against the hijackers along with three passengers Todd Beamer, Tom Burnett and Jeremy Glick, however, during the attempt the plane crashed into a reclaimed strip mine in Stonycreek Township, near Shanksville in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, about 65 miles (105 km) southeast of Pittsburgh and 130 miles (210 km) northwest of Washington, D.C. Analysis of the recovered flight recorders fro the crash sites, revealed how the passengers prevented the aircraft from the hijacker’s failed main target. Report from the news agencies spread after some witnesses saw the impact crash from the ground of the ill fated Flight 93. Of the four aircraft hijacked on September 11 namely American Airlines Flight 11, American Airlines Flight 77 and United Airlines Flight 175, only the United Airlines Flight 93 failed to reach its hijackers’ intended target. All 44 people on board was killed. The aircraft involved in the hijacking was a Boeing 757-222, registration number N591UA. The airplane had a capacity of 182 passengers, but the September 11 flight carried 37 passengers and seven crew, a load factor of 20 percent, considerably below the 52 percent average Tuesday load factor for Flight 93. The UA Flight 93′s seven crew members were Captain Jason Dahl, First Officer LeRoy Homer, Jr. and flight attendants Lorraine Bay, Sandra Bradshaw, Wanda Green, CeeCee Lyles and Deborah Welsh.

 2)  American Airlines Flight 587

An American Airlines Flight 587 N14053, an airbus A300 B4-605R delivered in 1988 with seating configuration for 267 passengers (16 first class seats and 251 economy seats) and powered by two GE CF6-80C2A5 engines, was a regularly scheduled passenger flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City to Santo Domingo’s Las Americas International Airport in the Dominican Republic,crashed into Belle Harbor, a New York City residential area, shortly after take off from the JFK International Airport On November 12, 2001. The Airbus A300-600 airliner operating the flight crashed shortly after takeoff killing all 261 people on board the flight, along with five people on the ground. This incident is the second-deadliest aviation disaster that involves an Airbus A300 after Iran Air Flight 655 and the second-deadliest aviation incident to occur on the United States soil, after American Airlines Flight 191. The accident generate fears of another terrorists attacks since the Flight 587 crash took place two months and one day after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in Manhattan and the Pentagon, but the National Transportation Safety Board, attributed the cause of the disaster of overuse of rudder (used primarily to counter adverse yaw and p-factor also known as asymmetric blade effect and asymmetric disc effect, and is not the primary control used to turn the airplane) by the first officer in response to wake turbulence or jet wash from a Japan Airlines Boeing 747-400 which took off five minutes before American Airlines Flight 587 took off, thus, terrorism was officially ruled out as the cause of the crash. All American Airlines Flight 587′s  260 people aboard  (246 ticketed passengers, 5 infants unticketed and the crew of 9 with 2 flight crew members, 8 flight attendants, Captain Pilot Ed States and First officer Sten Molin ) was killed including with 5 Belle Harbor residents on the ground.

3)  1990 Guangzhou Baiyun airport collisions

The 1990 Guangzhou Baiyun airport collisions is the hijacking of Xiamen Airlines Flight 8301 on October 2, 1990, when the hijacked aircraft collided first with China Southwest Airlines inflicting with only minor damages, but then collided  with China Southern Airlines Flight 2812 on the old Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport runways while attempting to land and flipped on its back. On the hijacked Flight 8301 fatalities included 7 of 9 crew members and 75 of 93 passengers and on Flight 2812, the fatalities were 46 of 110 passengers. Xiamen Airlines Flight 8301, using a Boeing 737-200, was hijacked by 21-year old Jiang Xiaofeng a purchasing agent, who was seeking political asylum in Taiwan, from Hunan, People’s Republic of China (PRC) on Tuesday, October 2, 1990.  This hijacking incident was the last fatal hijacking (or attempted hijacking) on Chinese soil until on June 29, 2012, the hijacking of Tianjin Airlines Flight 7554, nearly 22 years later. The airline accident remains the third-deadliest air disaster in China, after, the hijacking of China Southern Airlines Flight 3943 and China Northwest Airlines Flight 2303. According to a Time article, before the the hijacking incident and shortly after the aircraft took off from Xiamen, China, Jiang Xiaofeng approached the cockpit while holding flowers, and the security guards allowed him, believing that Jiang was offering flowers to the pilots as a gift for the Moon Festival. In the article it was also stated, that Jiang, once in the cockpit, he opened his jacket to reveal strapped to his chest, what appeared to be fifteen pounds of explosives, that Jiang ordered all crew members out of the cockpit, except for Pilot Cen Longyu whom Jiang commanded to fly to Taipei, Taiwan. However, Pilot Cen Longyu, did not comply, instead continuing toward the original destination of Guangzhou. There was no explanation why the pilot did not comply to Jiang’s demand according to official Xinhua News Agency reports. During the flight incident,  communication was lost, until it was finally re-established by the officials in Guangzhou airport, which authorized the pilot to land at any airport available, or any of PRC’s inside or outside of the borders. The pilot reported that the only other airport was Hong Kong airport that the aircraft still had sufficient fuel to reach. Guangzhou flight controllers agreed to allow the plane to land and refuel in Hong Kong, and proceed to Taipei. However, hijacker Jiang Xiaofeng refused to allow and threatened to blow up the aircraft if it landed in Hong Kong. The pilot continued to circled Guangzhou, attempting to reason with Jiang, managed to take over the control of the aircraft from Pilot Longyu, and was forced to land the plane when it ran dangerously low on fuel. Xiamen Airlines Flight 737 landed at an excessive speed, and sideswiped a parked China Southwest Airlines Boeing 707-320B, injuring slightly the pilot at the cockpit at that time. The out of control Flight 737, still unable to stop, and collided with the second aircraft, China Southern Airlines Flight 2812, a Boeing 757 waiting to depart to Shanghai, skidding to a halt before flipping over on its back. On the Xiamen Airlines 737 Aircraft fatalities listed, 7 of 9 crew members and 75 (including one American citizen, 30 Taiwanese nationals and 3 Hong Kong nationals) of 93 passengers died. While on the China Southern 757 Aircraft all 12 crew members survived and 46 of 110 passengers died, 8 were from Taiwan was killed. Hijacker Jiang Xiaofeng was one of the fatalities among the total of 128 people died in the disaster.

4)  Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961

On November 23, 1996, an Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961, a Boeing 767-200ER, was hijacked by three Ethiopians seeking asylum in Australia, en route from Addis Ababa to Nairobi, Kenya on a Bombay-Addis Ababa-Nairobi–Brazzaville-Lagos-Abidjan service. The plane crash-landed in the Indian Ocean near Grande Comore, Comoros Islands, due to fuel starvation where 125 people of the 175 passengers and crew on board died, along with the Ethiopian hijackers with the rest of the passengers on board survived with injuries. It was noted the deadliest hijacking involving a single aircraft or commercial plane during the time of the incident, and known as to second place with the September 11 2001 attacks. The crash incident is the only water landing of an airliner with survivors. Among the passengers, 42 boarded in Bombay, India, including, 3 Americans, 9 Nigerians, 9 Sri Lankans and 19 Indians, while the rest of the passengers boarded in Addis Ababa. One 125 of the 175 passengers and crew members were killed, as well as all three hijackers. Several of the passengers who survived the crash, died of drowning, when they had disregarded or may be did not hear Leul’s warning not to inflate their life jackets while inside the aircraft, when the water flooded in, causing them to be pushed and pinned against the ceiling of the fuselage by the inflated life jackets. While some passengers still strapped to their seats of an estimated 60 to 80 passengers, were presumed drowned. Pilot Leul Abate and co-pilot  Yonas Mekuria both survived, for his actions, Leul was awarded the Flight Safety Foundation Professionalism in Flight Safety Award. The Ethiopian hijackers were identified as two unemployed high-school graduates and a nurse, their names were Alemayehu Bekeli Belayneh, Mathias Solomon Belay, and Sultan Ali Hussein by the Ethiopian state-operated radio broadcasting but did not elaborate who had which description. The three hijackers threatened to blow the plane up if the pilot Leul Abate and co-pilot Yonas Mekuria, respectively, if did not obey their demands, forcibly locking Yonas into the cabin, and announced over the intercom that they were opponents of the Ethiopian government seeking political asylum, having recently been released from prison, and also said that there were eleven of them when in fact there were only three. It was later determined that the bomb was a covered bottle of liquor by the Authorities.

5)  Air France Flight 4590

  A Concorde flight operated Air France Flight 4590 which was scheduled to fly from Charles de Gaulle International Airport  near Paris, bound to John F. Kennedy Airport on July 25, 2000, it crashed into a hotel in Gonesse, France, killing all one hundred passengers and nine crew members on board the flight, while on the ground, four people were killed and one seriously injured. The Air France Flight 4590  flight was chartered by Peter Deilmann Cruises, a German company, the passengers were on their way to board the MS Deutschland cruise ship in New York City for a 16-day cruise to Manta, Ecuador. During the 27-year operational, this was the only fatal Concorde accident, and was the beginning of the end for Concorde as an airliner, which was retired after three years. Investigation revealed that the aircraft was over the maximum takeoff weight for ambient temperature and other conditions, and 810 kg over the maximum structural weight after the crash. During the aircraft taxiing, the fuel transfer may have overfilled the number five wing tank. A spacer of twelve-inch that normally keeps the left main landing gear in alignment had not been replaced after maintenance recently, however, the 2002 investigations of French Bureau Enquetes-Accidents concluded that this did not contribute to the accident. The crew proceeded with take-off in place of additional taxiing to make the take-off into a headwind as desired normally after over an hour delayed from its schedule. A Continental Airlines DC-10 departing for Newark, New Jersey, had lost a titanum alloy strip about 17.i in long and about 1.1 to 1.3 in wide during takeoff from the same runway, where the Concorde Air France Flight 4590 also takeoff five minutes after, and run over this piece of debris, still lying on the runway, cut a tyre, rupturing it, and a large chunk of tyre debris about 4.5 kilograms struck the underside of the aircraft’s wing at an estimated speed of 140 meters per second or 310 mph. The tyre debris, though did not punctured directly any of the fuel tanks, it sent out a shockwave pressure that ruptured the number five fuel tank at the weakest point, just above the undercarriage that caused fuel to leak, gushing out from the bottom of the wing and may have ignited by an electric arc in the landing gear bay or through contact with severed electrical cables. Engines one and two both surged and lost all power, during the ignition, but engine one slowly recovered over the next few seconds, creating a large plume of flame, then the Flight Engineer then shut down engine two, in response to a fire warning and the Captain’s command. Gilles Logelin, the air traffic controller, noticed the flames before the Concorde took off, however with only 2 km of runway remaining and traveling at a speed of 328 km/h, its only option was to take off. The Concorde would have needed at least 3 km of runway to abort safely, but having passed V₁ speed (Engine failure recognition speed), the crew continued the take-off but the plane failed to gain enough airspeed with the three remaining engines, preventing the retraction of the undercarriage by the severed electrical cables. The aircraft was unable to ascend, maintaining a speed of 200 knots or (370 km/h; 230 mph) at an altitude of 200 ft. The fire caused damage to the port wing, and it began to break or decompose into constituent elements, parts, or small particles, melted by the extremely high temperatures. Engine number one suddenly become forceful increase again but this time failed to recover. Because of the asymmetric thrust, the starboard wing lifted, banking the aircraft to over 100 degrees. The crew reduced the power on engines three and four in an attempt to level the aircraft, but they lose control with falling airspeed and the jetliner plunged, crashing into the Hôtelissimo Les Relais Bleus Hotel near the airport.  All of the Concorde Flight 4590 passengers and crew were killed in the incident, which most of the passengers were German tourists flying to New York for a cruise. The crew were pilot Captain Christian Marty, 54, First Officer Jean Marcot, 50 and Flight Engineer Gilles Jardinaud, 58, and on the ground casualties, were 4 Hotelissimo hotel employees were killed in the incident. French authorities began a criminal investigation on March 10, 2005,  of Continental Airlines, whose plane dropped the debris on the runway.  

6)  SilkAir Flight 185

SilkAir Flight 185 a Boeing 737-300 was the newest aircraft in SilkAir’s fleet, delivered to the airline on February 14, 1997, just 10 months before crashing, and was a scheduled passenger flight from Jakarta, Indonesia to Singapore, which crashed into the Musi River on December 19, 1997, killing all 104 people on board. The Boeing 737 Flight 185 has seven crew and 97 passengers on board, departed Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta’s runway 25R at 15:37 local time or 08:37 UTC for a planned 80-minute flight to Singapore Changi Airport, with former A-4 Skyhawk pilot, captain Tsu Way Ming , age 41,  and the 23 year-old co-pilot Duncan Ward, a New Zealander, at the controls. During the route, there was generally fair weather expected, except for some thunderstorms near Singkep Island, 120 kilometers or 75 mi south of Singapore, which remained level at FL350 until it began a rapid and nearly vertical dive around 16:12. While the aircraft was plunging through 12,000 feet, parts of the aircraft, a great extent of the tail section, that began to separate from the aircraft’s fuselage because of high forces arising from the almost supersonic dive, and few seconds later, the aircraft dived into the Musi River, near Palembang, Sumatra. The SilkAir Flight 185  aircraft broke into pieces before impact, with the debris spread over several kilometers, though most of the aircraft wreckage plunged at the bottom of the river by 200 ft by 260 ft area. Not a single complete body nor body part or limb found, as the entire aircraft and passengers disintegrated upon impact. Only six positive identifications were later obtained from the few recovered human remains. Among those killed in the crash was a Singaporean-Eurasian model and author Bonny Susan Hicks, died at age twenty-nine.

7) Dana Air Flight 992

 

Dana Air Flight 992 was a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 aircraft with a scheduled commercial passenger flight from Abuja to Lagos, Nigeria, flying on June 3, 2012, Sunday when the ill fated aircraft crashed into a neighborhood’s furniture works and printing press building in the Iju-Ishag, Lagos. The Flight 992 crash, may have been caused by dual engine failure and subsequently forced to land, with all 153 passengers on board killed and more than ten casualties on the ground. The terrifying air disaster had the highest 2012 lists of fatalities in an aviation incident, and is the deadliest involving a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 and the second-deadliest involving a McDonnell Douglas MD-80 behind Inex-Adria Aviopromet Flight 1308, also the second-deadliest plane crash on Nigerian soil, behind only the Kano air disaster in January 22, 1973,  a chartered Boeing 707 passenger flight which crashed while attempting to land at Kano International Airport, with 176 passengers and crew perished in the crash. The Dana Air Flight 992, was the recent and worst aviation disaster to ever take place in Nigeria.The Flight 992 aircraft crashed after the cockpit crew reported engine trouble and declared an emergency 11 nautical miles or 20 km from the airport, crashed into a crowded neighborhood near the airport, causing a blasts and fire, apparently landing on its tail. Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan, Nigerian President, declared three days of national mourning, and stated that the accident had “sadly plunged the nation into further sorrow on a day when Nigerians were already in grief over the loss of many other innocent lives in the church bombing tragedy in Bauchi state”.

8)  Bhoja Air Flight 213

Bhoja Air Flight 213 (B4-213) was a domestic plane scheduled passenger flight operated by the Bhoja Air, a Pakistani airline. On 20 April 2012, The Boeing 737-236 aircraft, flying from Jinnah International Airport, Karachi, crashed in bad weather during its approach to Benazir Bhutto International Airport Islamabad on April 20, 2012, killing all 121 passengers and 6 crew members aboard. The Bhoja Air Flight 213 was the inaugural flight of second daily service of Bhoja Air on this route. Flight 213 was the 2nd deadliest aviation accident in Pakistan, the first air disaster after the crash of Airblue Flight 202 in 2010 killing all 152 on board, and is the fourth deadliest accident involving the Boeing 737-200 series. Initial reports suggested that as The pilots attempted to land despite of heavy rain and strong winds, which the aircraft may have flown into an unexpected rapid change of wind speed, crashing it onto the ground below. Some  eyewitnesses revealed that the aircraft might have been struck by lightning before it crashed to the ground, describing it as a ball of fire. An Airblue Flight landed safely at the Jinnah International Airport, five minutes after the terrifying aircraft accident.

Airblue Flight 202

Airblue Flight 202 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight which crashed on July 28, 2010 near Islamabad,  the capital of Pakistan, with 146 passengers and six crew on board, was considered as the deadliest air disaster to occur in Pakistan. The Airblue aircraft, an operated Airbus A321-231 narrow body jet airliner, crashed in the Margalla Hills north of Islamabad during a flight from Jinnah International Airport in Karachi to Benazir Bhutto International Airport. The air traffic controllers claimed they lost contact with the flight crew during an attempt to land in dense fog and heavy monsoon rain. Among the noted passengers killed in the flight were; 19 year-old Pakistani footballer Misha Dawood of Diya Football Club, Karachi, and former national athlete Director General of the Sindh Workers Welfare Board Zafar Saleem. The Flight 202 pilot captain, Pervez Iqbal Chaudhry, age 62, had 35 years experience, First Junior officer (Sqn Ldr) Muntajib Ahmed, a former F-16 Pakistan Air Force fighter pilot, had logged one year of experience on the Airbus A321 aircraft. The Flight 202 passengers, 110 were men, twenty-nine were women, five children, and two infants, six Youth Parliament of Pakistan members were on board, three off duty flight stewardess, and four foreign nationals.

9) Mount Salak Sukhoi Superjet 100 (SSJ-100) crash

The Mount Salak Sukhoi Superjet 100 (SSJ-100) crash occurred May 9, 2012 when a Sukhoi SSJ-100-95, registration 97004 msn 95004, aircraft crashed on a demonstration flight operating from Halim Perdanakusuma Airport, Jakarta, Indonesia. The aircraft wreckage of the Sukhoi Superjet was spotted on a cliff in a volcano in the West Java province called Mount Salak, 0n May 10, the following day, where rescuers and officials concluded that there were no chance of survival, due to the impact of aircraft hitting the rocky mountain side of Mount Salak, due to the widespread debris field where the aircraft plunged. On May 12, 2012, the remains of several victims’ bodies had been recovered and airlifted to Halim Airport and then taken to the National Police Hospital for identification according to reports. On December 18, 2012, the final report was released, indicated that the accident was caused by crew members who ignored and had turned off the terrain warnings that they had incorrectly attributed to a database problem and were unaware that they are engaging close proximity to the mountains. The Superjet Captain Alexander Yablontsev, a former Russian test pilot, first officer Alexander Kotchetkov   and the crew, were engaging in conversation with potential customers as the aircraft impacted the ground. The 45 passengers on board included 14 people from the Indonesian airline Sky Aviation, Director of Operations for Kartika Airlines, Captain Aan Husdiana and five reporters, journalist Dody Aviantara and  photographer Didik Nur Yusuf from Angkasa aviation magazine, Ismiati Soenarto and Aditya Sukardi of Trans TV and Femi Adi of the American Bloomberg News. Also on board is Peter Adler, an accomplished and experienced pilot, a US passport holder, acting as a consultant and a passenger on the flight; according to Vladimir Prisyazhnyuk, the head of Sukhoi Civil Aircraft, two Italians and one French citizen of Vietnamese descent were also on board was killed in the crash.

10)  2012 Carterton hot air balloon crash

A scenic hot air balloon flight on January 7, 2012, from Carterton, New Zealand, collided with a high voltage power line while attempting to land, that caused the hot air balloon to catch fire, break into parts and crash just north of the town, killing ten passengers and one pilot on board. The air disaster was concluded by the Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) that the pilot of the hot air balloon made an error of judgement when the balloon contact with the power lines became imminent, trying to out-climb the power lines instead of using the rapid descent system to drop the balloon immediately to the ground below. The balloon pilot Lance Hopping was tested positive for tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)  by Toxicology analyst, after the accident, suggesting he may have been under the influence of cannabis at the time of the crash, which ultimately lead to the error of judgement. The hot air balloon crash was the deadliest air disaster to occur in mainland New Zealand since the New Zealand National Airways Corporation Flight 441 crash in July 1963, killing 23 people, in the Kaimai Ranges, and the deadliest crash involving a New Zealand aircraft since the Air New Zealand Flight 901 also known as the Mount Erebus disaster, killing all 237 passengers and 20 crew on board, in November 1979 into Mount Erebus. The 2012 Carteton Hot Air Balloon tragedy is the third-deadliest hot air balloon disaster on record after a 2013 balloon crash in Luxor, Egypt that occurred in February 2013,  killing 19 people, and the 1989 Alice Springs hot air balloon crash in August 13, 1989 in the Northern Territory, Australia that killed 13 people.

11) 2012 Ljubljana hot air balloon crash

 

The 2012 Ljubljana hot air balloon crash occurred on August 23, 2012 on the Ljubljana Marshes in central Slovenia, killing six people. A hot air balloon carrying 32 passengers, crashed and caught fire during a thunderstorm on the Ljubljana Marshes, in the Municipality of Ig  between Lavrica, Črna Vas and Ig next to Ig Street (Ižanska cesta), two hundred meters from the turn for Matena, seven kilometers south of Ljubljana. While on air, a sudden change of weather caused the pilot to try to land immediately, but the emergency landing was prevented by sudden rapid winds where the balloon hit nearby trees. Fire blast followed, killing four people on board injuring other 28 passengers. The four dead passengers are from Ljubljana, a couple with their 11 year old daughter and an old woman age 56, who were killed at the scene were charred beyond recognition.

12)  2013 Luxor hot air balloon crash

The Luxor hot air balloon crash occurred February 26, 2013, at 07:00 Egypt Standard Time (05:00 UTC), crashed near Luxor, Egypt. The hot air balloon crash killing 19 out of 21 passengers, 18 on the crash-site and one in hospital few hours later. The Luxor hot air balloon tragedy,  was the deadliest ballooning disaster in history, surpassing the 1989 Alice Springs hot air balloon crash in Australia. The Hot air balloons are usually used for tourism in Egypt with an aerial view of the country’s landscape and famous landmarks. Way back in April 2009, 16 people were injured during a tour in Luxor when a balloon crashed. After the ht air balloon crash, flights were grounded for six months while doing improvement for safety measures. Following the 2011 fall of Hosni Mubarak, the rule of law has largely been ignored. In October 2011, the operator of the balloon, Sky Cruise, had suffered a previous accident, claiming that the company it is properly insured and prepared to compensate victims’ families. The Ultramagic N-425 balloon, registration SU-283, operated by Sky Cruise, departed on a sight-seeing flight, on early February 26, 2013, carrying twenty passengers and a pilot, Mornin Murad, which according to Mohamed Youssef, a balloon pilot nearby, a fire started when it appeared that a gas leak in one of the balloon tanks, in the Sky Cruise balloon a few meters off the ground as it was attempting to land, while the ground crew attempts to anchor the balloon. While another source says that a mooring cable got wrapped around a gas cylinder, as the fire engulfed the basket, the pilot and one passenger leaped to safety as the craft rose rapidly aided by a wind gust. As the balloon ascended, seven passengers approximately jumped to their deaths to escape the fire. At an altitude of approximately 300 meters or 980 ft, an explosion could be heard several kilometers away. The balloon and remaining passengers plunged to the ground, killing everyone remaining on board and crashed into a sugar cane field west of Luxor, followed by second explosion was 15 seconds later. Bodies were scattered across the sugar cane field when rescue workers arrived on the scene. The accident killed 18 of the passengers on site, while the pilot, Murad and two passengers survived the initial crash.The pilot’s license had been renewed one month prior to the accident.

13)  Asiana Airlines Flight 214

Asiana Airlines Flight 214 was a scheduled transpacific passenger flight that took off at 5:04 p.m., 34 minuts after its scheduled departure time, and scheduled to land at San Francisco International Airport at 11:04 a.m., from Incheon, South Korea, that crashed on July 6, 2013, on its final approach to San Francisco International Airport in the United States. On board the Boeing 777 Flight 214 were 307 passengers, with two passengers died at the crash scene, while one victim died from being run over by an airport crash tender, and a third died in a hospital several days later, with 181 others injured, 12 of them were in critical condition. The three flight attendants who were thrown onto the runway were among the people injured from the crash, while still strapped in their seats when the tail section broke off after hitting the seawall short of the runway. Upon arrival at the San Francisco International Airport, the flight 214 was cleared for a visual approach to runway 28L at 11:21 a.m. PDT, and told to maintain a speed of 180 knots (330 km/h; 210 mph) until the aircraft was 5 miles (8.0 km) from the runway.  However, the Flight 214 crashed short of runway 28L’s threshold. The tail and the landing gear hit the seawall that protect the San Francisco Bay, where both engines and the tail section separated from the aircraft. After a minute or so, a Dark plume of smoke was observed rising from the wreckage after a few minutes from the crash, which the leaking oil fell into the hot engine and ignited, and fire was traced to a ruptured oil tank above the right engine. Two evacuation slides were deployed on the left side of the airliner and used for evacuation. The Flight 214 aircrew has three captains at the time of flight, with three captains and one first officer. Captain Lee Jeong-min aged 48, in the right seat (co-pilot position filled the dual role of a check/instructor captain and pilot in command, responsible for the safe operation of the flight. Captain Lee Kang-kook aged 45, in the left seat (captain’s position) was the pilot receiving his initial operating experience (IOE) training and was halfway through Asiana’s IOE requirements. This was Lee Kang-kook’s first landing at San Francisco in this aircraft type, although he had previously landed there in a Boeing 747 and other aircraft. At the time of the crash, Relief first officer Bong Dong-won, 41, was observing from the cockpit jump seat, Relief captain Lee Jong-joo, 52, occupied a business-class seat in the passenger cabin. Twelve flight attendants were on board, ten South Korean and two Thai nationalities. Six flight attendants received physical and emotional treatment. The other six returned to South Korea. The two fatalities, both 16-year-old girls with Chinese passports were found dead outside the aircraft soon after the crash, which one was allegedly been pulled from the aircraft by a firefighter and left near the plane’s wing where she was covered in fire fighting foam and was run over by an airport crash tender. The San Mateo County Coroner’s office confirmed on July 19, 2013, that the girl was still alive prior to being run over by a rescue vehicle, and was killed due to blunt force trauma. However, no charges filed for the accidental death involving the firetruck. The San Francisco General Hospital announced on July 12, 2013, that a third passenger, a 15-year-old Chinese girl, had died of her injuries.

14) Lion Air Flight 904 (JT904)

Lion Air Flight 904 (JT904) was a scheduled domestic passenger flight which crashed on final approach to Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali, Indonesia. All 101 passengers and 7 crew on board survived the accident. The Boeing 737-800 aircraft, registration PK-LKS, operated by Lion Air flying from Husein Sastranegara International Airport, Bandung Indonesia to Ngurah Rai International Airport Bali, Indonesia, on April 13, 2013 at 15:10 local time (07:10 UTC), crashed while attempting to land, into a shallow coastal sea, approximately 0.6 nautical miles (1.1 km) short of the seawall protecting the threshold of Runway 09. The Flight 904 fuselage broke up into two parts and 46 passengers on board were injured, 4 of them seriously injured, but there were no fatalities. While clearing operations and  emergency services attended the crash scene, the airport was closed for almost ninety minutes. The first officer reported that the runway was not in sight at 900 ft or 270 m AGL, at approximately 150 feet (46 m) AGL, and again, the pilot reported he could not see the runway. The  Flight data showed that the pilots attempted to perform a go-around at approximately 20 feet (6.1 m) AGL, but instead contacted the water surface a few minutes later, but no indication that the aircraft was suffering from any mechanical malfunction.

15)  Continental Airlines Flight 1404

Continental Airlines Flight 1404 was a Continental Airlines flight from Denver International Airport, Denver, Colorado to George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas, crashed on December 20, 2008 evening, while taking off from Denver airport, that resulted with two passengers with critical injuries, 36 non-critical injuries and a Boeing 737-524 aircraft hull loss. On Saturday, December 20, 2008, Saturday, at approximately 18:18 (06:18PM) local time, after being cleared for take off at Denver International Airport on runway 34R at, the Flight 1404 Boeing 737-524 aircraft veered off several yards from the runway side before taxiway WC (less than 4,000 feet (1,200 m) from the threshold, skidded across the taxiway and a service road and crashed in a 40-foot-deep (12 m) ravine. Seconds after the crash, the plane caught fire at some point. Firefighters were on scene immediately for rescue operations, as the aircraft came to rest near one of the airport’s four fire departments, soon they arrived, most of the right side of the plane was on fire while passengers were climbing out of the left side, being assisted by one off duty and on duty flight attendants. The Continental Flight 1404 aircraft sustained severe damages, the fuselage was cracked just behind the wings,collapsed nose gear, the engine number 1 and main landing gear were sheared off. The seats were burnt caused by fire that caught overhead luggage compartments. The Flight 1404 crash is one of the most serious incident in DIA’s history.  Although everyone on board survived, with zero casualties among the 110 passengers and 5 crew on board, 38 passengers sustained injuries including the Captain who sustained serious back injuries and bone fractures.

16) Air France Flight 358

Air France Flight 358, a flight from Paris, France, bound for Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on August 2, 2005, using an Airbus A340 airliner, departed Paris without incident at 11:53 UTC, later touching down on runway 24L at Toronto Pearson International Airport at 20:01 UTC (16:01 EDT). However, the aircraft failed to stop on the runway or overshot the runway, plunged into Etobicoke Creek nearby, and came to rest, bursting into flames, approximately 300 meters past the runway end. The Flight 358 Airbus A340-300, with 297 passengers with two unseated infants, and 12 crew all of whom survived, a total of 309 passengers on board, with 12 people sustaining serious injuries. The Canadian Minister of Transport Jean Lapierre, referred to Flight 358 as a miracle because all of the passengers survived, thus some of the press sources named  the accident as the “Miracle in Toronto“,the “Toronto Miracle“the “Miracle” Escape, and the Miracle of Runway 24L“. Out of the 297 passengers, there were 168 adult males, 118 adult females, 8 children and 3 infants. Among them, 3 passengers were seated in crew seats, one in the third occupant seat of the flight deck and two in the flight crew rest area. Also among the passengers were 3 wheelchair passengers and 1 blind passenger, the rest of the passengers suffered minor or no injuries. The aircraft landed during a bad weather with severe winds, heavy rain, and localized thunderstorms near the airpot and touched down and overshot the runway. Some passengers reported that before the plane’s landing, it was rocking from side to side, may be due to turbulence and gusty winds associated with the storm systems. One passenger also described that the crash is like a car accident, but it keeps going and going, non-stop.

17)  Turkish Airlines Flight 1951

Turkish Airlines Flight 1951 also known as the Poldercrash, was a passenger flight that crashed during landing at the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, Netherlands, on February 25, 2009, killing nine passengers and crew including all three pilots.The Flight 1951 consists of 128 passengers and seven crew members on board. The Turkish Airlines Flight 1951 was under the command of Instructor Captain Hasan Tahsin Arisan, one of the airline’s most experienced senior pilots and a former Turkish Air Force fleet commander. The other flight deck crew members were safety pilot Olcay Özgür, sitting in the cockpit’s center jump seat, and co-pilot Murat Sezer, under line training, flying as co-pilot. The cabin crew consisted of Figen Eren, Perihan Özden, Ulvi Murat Eskin, and Yasemin Vural. The Flight 1951 was cleared for an approach on runway 18R otherwise known as the Polderbaan runway but came down short of the runway threshold,  skidded through the wet clay of a plowed field, where the aircraft sustained severe damages. Although the aircraft’s fuselage broke into three pieces, it did not catch fire, but both engines separated and came to rest about 100 metres (300 ft) from the fuselage. The bodies of three crew members were the last to be retrieved from the plane’s cockpit, at around 20:00 that evening, because the cockpit had to be examined before it could be cut open to retrieved the three bodies. Some of the survivors stated that one of the pilots was still alive after the crash. It is a common tradition for airlines to retire a flight number involved in an accident, but the Turkish Airlines continues to use Flight 1951 on its route from (Atatürk) Istanbul to Amsterdam.

18)  British Airways Flight 38

British Airways Flight 38 (call sign Speedbird 38) was a scheduled flight on January 17, 2008, operated by a British Airways Boeing 777 from Beijing Capital International Airport which crash landed just short of the runway at its destination, London Heathrow Airport, after an 8,100-kilometre (5,000 mi) flight. Although no recorded fatalities but there were 47 people sustained injuries with one passenger seriously injured. The cause of the accident, were the ice crystals in the fuel, clogging the fuel-oil heat exchanger (FOHE) of each engine. This restricted fuel flow to the engines when force was demanded during the final touch down or approach to Heathrow. Boeing identified the problem as common to the Rolls-Royce engine fuel-oil heat exchangers, and Rolls-Royce subsequently developed a modification to its FOHE, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) mandated that all affected aircraft were to be fitted with the modification before January 1, 2011. The Boeing 777 aircraft powered by General Electric or Pratt & Whitney engines were not affected by the problem. The aircraft had a  configuration on cabin for a maximum seating capacity of 216 passengers. During the aircraft crash, the impact and short ground roll, the nose gear collapsed, the right main gear separated from the aircraft penetrating the central fuel tank and cabin space, and the left main gear was pushed up through the wing, and came to rest on the threshold markings at the runway start. Four crew members and eight passengers received minor injuries, and one passenger received serious concussion and a broken leg. The British Airways Chief Executive released a statement and praised the flight and cabin crew for a magnificent job and safely evacuated all of the 136 passengers. Captain pilot Peter Burkill, who has been flying for almost 20 years, said during a press conference, a day after the incident, that he would not be publicly commenting on the cause of the incident while the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) investigation was in progress. Captain Burkill  revealed that Senior First Officer John Coward was flying the aircraft, and that First Officer Conor Magenis was also present on the flight deck at the time of the accident. Burkill and Coward were grounded for a month following the crash while they were assessed for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  Burkill flew again taking charge of a flight to Montreal, Canada five months after the accident, but he remained haunted by the accident, and in August 2009, he took voluntary redundancy from British Airways.

19)  LAM Mozambique Airlines Flight 470

LAM Mozambique Airlines Flight 470 was a scheduled passenger flight from Maputo International Airport, Mozambique, that crashed on November 29, 2013 into the Bwabwata National Park, Namibia flying to Quatro de Fevereiro Airport, Angola. The Flight 470 aircraft departed Maputo at 11:26 Central Africa Time (CAT) or (09:26 UTC) and was due to land at 14:10 WAT (13:10 UTC), but failed to arrive at its time destination. The Flight 470 wreckage was found the following day on November 30, 2013 at the Bwabwata National Park in northern Namibia, halfway between its departure and scheduled arrival airport. All 33 people, including 6 crew members, who were on board the aircraft were killed. Weather was reported to be poor at the time of the accident with heavy rainfalls in the vicinity of the flight path. It was the first fatal accident for the airline since 1970, and the deadliest for a Mozambican airline since the Mozambican presidential aircraft Tupolev Tu-134A-3 crashed, on board carrying 1986 President Samora Machel. The aircraft Flight 470 was cruising over Botswanan airspace, between Maputo and Luanda, at an altitude of 38,000 feet (11,582 m) when it began to lose altitude abruptly. The aircraft descended and dived rapidly at a rate of about 100 feet (30 m) per second and was being tracked on radar, and the track was lost from screens at 3,000 feet (914 m) above sea level. The air traffic control last contact was made at 13:30 Central Africa Time, or CAT (11:30 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) over northern Namibia during heavy rainfall. Deputy Commissioner Willy Bampton of the Namibian Police Force stated that none of them survived the accident and that aircraft was completely burned to ashes.The Flight 470 crew comprised two pilots which the Captain pilot was Herminio dos Santos Fernandes, three cabin attendants, and a technician. The Mozambican Civil Aviation Institute (IACM) head Joao Abreu presented the preliminary investigation report on December 21, 2013, that  Captain Herminio dos Santos Fernandes had a motive or intention to crash the aircraft and manually changed its autopilot settings, in which the reported altitude of the aircraft changed three times from 38,000 feet (11,582 m) to 592 feet (180 m), and the speed was manually adjusted as well. The voice recorder in the cockpit has captured alarms many times going off during the descent, as well as repeated loud bangs on the co-pilot’s door, who was locked out of the cockpit until shortly before the crash. The pilot’s suicidal actions remained unknown and the investigation would continue until a final report is released.

20)  Lao Airlines Flight 301

 Lao Airlines Flight 301 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Wattay International Airport, Vientiane capital and largest city of Laos to Pakse, Laos,  operating flight ATR 72-600 on October 16, 2013,control was lost, crashed into the Mekong River in Pakse, killing all 49 passengers on board. The ATR 72-600, was the first aircraft involved in an accident and the deadliest ever to occur in Laos and the second-deadliest involving an ATR 72 behind Aero Caribbean ATR-72-212 Flight 883, an international passenger flight from Port-au-Prince, Haiti to Havana, Cuba, via Santiago de Cuba crashed on November 4, 2010, in the central Cuban province of Sancti Spiritus, killing all 61 passengers and 7 crew members aboard and American Eagle Flight 4184 an American Eagle ATR 72 that crashed after flying into unknown icing conditions on Monday, October 31, 1994. Lao Airlines Flight 301 was also the first fatal accident for Lao Airlines since 2000. The Lao Airlines Flight 301 flight departed from Vientiane at 14:45 local time (07:45 UTC) and crashed into the Mekong River at 15:55 local time (08:55 UTC) while approaching Pakse for the second time, less than 6 kilometers from the airport. Because of poor weather, due to Typhoon Nari aftermath, the Flight 301 aircraft had already gone around and was in the downwind leg for another approach when the aircraft lost control and crashed the nearby river. The aircraft have five crew and 44 passengers on board, all of whom are presumed to have died upon extreme impact, which the marks on the ground indicated that the aircraft crashed heavily on the ground before landing the Mekong River. Due to fast-flowing, deep water of the Mekong River, recovery of the victims bodies and aircraft wreckage was very difficult. On October 18, 2013, eighteen of the victims were recovered with the help of 50 divers from Thailand, and by October 23, another 44 bodies out of 49 passengers had been recovered. Twenty seven victims identification had been confirmed. The Flight 301,  44 passengers on board, were 16 Laotians, as were four of the five crew, while the pilot was a Cambodian national. The remaining casualties consisted of seven French nationals, six Australians including two children, five Thai nationals, three South Koreans, three Vietnamese, and one each from China, Taiwan, Malaysia and theUnited Sates.