Airplane, though considered the safest mode of transport, accidents with aircraft have more tragic consequences. Such incidents are characterized by a large number of victims, significant damage or destruction of the aircraft, public outcry and close media attention.
Classification of flight accidents
Aviation accidents and incidents are classified according to several criteria. Distinguish ground and flight accidents. Ground incidents are those incidents that occurred before or after the flight. Aviation accidents are those disasters that are associated with the performance of a flight mission by the ship's crew.
In addition, breakdowns, accidents and disasters are distinguished. The breakdown leads to minor damage to the aircraft, while there are no victims or injured. An accident is a non-fatal incident in which the aircraft is severely damaged or destroyed. Disasters are aviation accidents, which are characterized by:
- damage to an aircraft such that repairs are not economically viable 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 date of the incident.
Causes of accidents
The most common cause of aviation accidents is pilot error, i.e. the human factor. In 42% of cases, aviation accidents occur for other reasons. Disaster factors are distributed as follows:
- 58% of incidents resulting in the death of one or more passengers or crew are due to pilot error.
- 22% of tragic accidents are caused by equipment failure.
- 12% of accidents are due to inclement weather during flight.
- 9% of disasters are caused by terrorist attacks.
- 7% due to airport ground personnel errors.
- 1% of aviation incidents are due to other causes.
Aviation accidents and incidents caused by the human factor, in 29% of cases occurred by chance, due to inattention or forgetfulness of pilots, 16% are errors caused by difficult meteorological conditions, in 5% of cases the cause incidents becomes equipment failure.
Air crash investigation methods
Every tragican accident with an aircraft is subject to mandatory review and analysis. The rules for the investigation of aviation accidents and incidents require the rapid creation of a rapid response team, which includes specialists from areas directly or indirectly related to this area. In the future, the case is transferred to the commission for the investigation of an aviation accident or an aviation incident in Russia, the National Transportation Safety Board in the United States or other services.
The analysis of aviation accidents and incidents involves the following steps:
- Search for the main four parts of the aircraft to determine if the aircraft crashed on the ground or disintegrated in the air.
- Search and listen to flight recorders.
- Checking the negotiations between the pilots and the controller.
- Meteorological report analysis.
- Search and collect all the wreckage of the aircraft.
- Testing similar vehicle models in simulators.
- Analysis of personal files of pilots and identification of possible psychological factors that influenced the fact of the disaster.
- Checking passengers and cargo according to the documentation in order to exclude or confirm the version of the terrorist attack.
- Interrogation of survivors and eyewitnesses of the tragedy, viewing the video of what happened.
- Patological anatomy of corpses.
Air crash statistics by country
The United States leads by far the number of civil aircraft accidents. So, from 1945 to 2013 in the United States there were more than seven hundred accidents with human casu alties. aviation statisticsof accidents over the same period shows that the number of passengers and crew members who died in the accidents amounted to ten and a half thousand people.
Russia in the sad statistics is on the second line. Canada, Brazil, Colombia, Great Britain, France, India, Indonesia and Mexico also entered the top ten countries in terms of the number of aviation accidents and disasters. The large gap between the United States and other states in the ranking is due to the fact that the United States accounted for 28% of civil aircraft departures in the world.
The biggest disaster in Russia
There have been major accidents in Russia as well. The most terrible tragedy in terms of the number of victims was the collision of a Tu-154 aircraft flying along the Krasnodar-Novosibirsk route through Omsk with three airport service cars on the runway in 1984. As a result of the incident, the plane collapsed, of the 179 people on the plane, only five survived.
Some sources call the border incident off Sakhalin Island in 1983 the largest disaster in Russia. A South Korean Boeing 747 was shot down after a double violation of the USSR border. The death toll was 269 people.
The biggest catastrophe in the USSR
Aviation accidents in the USSR have a hundred or more deaths in only three cases in the entire history of Soviet aviation. The largest incident is the fall of the Tu-154 near Uchkuduk, on the territory of Uzbekistan. The board was carrying out a passenger flight on the route Karshi-Ufa-Leningrad, but forty-six minutes after takeoff the ship lost control and went into a tailspin. The cause of the tragic accident was a control error. According to another version, the rest regime of the pilots was violated. All 200 people on board were killed.
The September 11, 2001 attacks in the USA
The two largest aviation accidents in the world are Boston-LA Flight 11 and Logan-LA Flight 175, which were hijacked by terrorists and sent to the towers of the World Trade Center 17 minutes apart. In the first aircraft (Boeing 767-223ER) there were 92 passengers, pilots and flight attendants, 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 crew, terrorists, people who were in the World Trade Center and rescuers), after the second, about 965 more people became victims.
Collision at Los Rodeos Airport
Another major aviation accident happened at the end of March 1977 in the Canary Islands. Two Boeings collided on the runway flying on the routes Amsterdam - Las Palmas and Los Angeles - Las Palmas via New York. The investigation found the official cause of the crash to be a misinterpretation of the dispatcher's commands and crew errors. The accident killed 583 people.
Boeing 747 crash near Tokyo
In 1985, aviation accidents were replenished with anothertragic incident in Tokyo. The Tokyo-Osaka domestic flight lost its tail stabilizer twelve minutes after takeoff, causing it to lose control and crash into a mountain 112 kilometers from Japan's capital.
Out of 524 people on board, only four survived. Many passengers died not at the moment of impact, but on the ground - from hypothermia and injuries. Perhaps if help had arrived earlier (four survivors were found fourteen hours after the crash), some of them could have been saved.
Clash over Charkhi Dadri
The first accident in terms of the number of victims in a mid-air collision is the crash of a Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747-168B and a Kazakhstan Airlines aircraft. The incident occurred in the sky over the Indian city of Charkhi 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 UK (in order to reduce the number of deaths).
The official commission recognized the following factors as the causes of the incident:
- poor knowledge of English by flight attendants and aircraft pilots;
- Insufficient skill of pilots and unsatisfactory performance of duties by the crew;
- lack of standard professional phraseology for pilots;
- the presence of only a single corridor for takeoffs and landings;
- lack of radar at Indian Delhi airport.
Crash of Turkish Airlines near Paris
The disaster over Paris occurred in early March 1973. The Turkish Airlines airliner was on an Istanbul-London flight via Paris when the cargo bay door opened six minutes after takeoff. The plane lost control and broke into small fragments during the fall. Everyone on board died, i.e. 334 passengers and twelve crew members.
Attack over the Atlantic Ocean
The 1985 terrorist act over the Atlantic Ocean killed 329 people. The plane crash occurred in neutral waters, the plane broke up into fragments due to an explosion in the cargo hold. Three extremist groups in the US and Canada claimed responsibility for the incident.
Saudi Arabian Airlines crash in Riyadh
In 1980, a Saudi Arabian Airlines aircraft operated a flight on the route Karachi - Riyadh - Jeddah. A few minutes after takeoff, a fire broke out on board. The crew of the aircraft managed to make an emergency landing, but rescue work began only twenty-three minutes after landing. The flight attendants were unable to open the doors and begin the evacuation, and it took time for the airport services to understand the relevant instructions in English. As a result of the delay, all 287 passengers and fourteen crew members died.
Tragedy over Donetsk in 2014
The largest air crash of the twenty-first century in the post-Soviet space occurred in the summer of 2014 over the territory of an armed confrontation between government forces and formations of the Donetsk People's Republic. "Boeing" 777, flying on the route Amsterdam - Kuala Lumpur (the capital of Malaysia), was shot down from a self-propelled anti-aircraft complex "Buk". The search operation and investigation of the incident were complicated by the fact that the area where the plane crashed was located between two fronts.
The disaster killed 298 people. The flight was used by the press secretary of the World He alth Organization, a senator from the Labor Party of the Netherlands, an Australian writer, and participants in the conference of the International AIDS Society. The incident became a significant factor in the introduction of new sanctions against Russia, affected stock indices and the bankruptcy of Malaysia Airlines.
An-32 cargo accident in Zaire
The top ten aviation accidents are closed by the incident with the cargo AN-32, which occurred in Zaire. The plane was unable to take off and crashed into the market, which was very close to the runway. As a result of the incident, the flight mechanic who was on board the aircraft and 297 people on the ground, among whom were mostly women and children, died. Of the dead, only 66 people have been identified.
