Aviation Disasters
UN Leader Dag Hammarskjold Died in Mysterious Circumstances in 1961. What Really Happened?
Shortly after midnight on September 18, 1961, a chartered DC-6 airplane carrying United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold on a peacekeeping mission to the newly independent African nation of the Congo crashed in a forest near Ndola, in the British protectorate of ...read more
Automation of Planes Began 9 Years After the Wright Bros Took Flight—But It Still Leads to Baffling Disasters
The first successful airplane pilot, Wilbur Wright, flew his 1903 craft by lying on his stomach, pushing and pulling levers as the wind swept over his head. Since then, piloting a plane has become a lot less physical thanks to automation and autopilot functions that do a lot of ...read more
EgyptAir flight 804 disappears over the Mediterranean Sea
On May 19, 2016, 66 passengers and crew flying from Cairo to Paris on EgyptAir flight 804 disappeared over the Mediterranean Sea. It took a month to find the wreckage. At first the flight was thought to be a casualty of terrorism, but the true cause was revealed the next year. ...read more
Snapshots of Amelia Earhart’s Legendary Life
1. First woman to make a transatlantic flight In 1928 Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger with pilots Wilmer Stultz and Luis Gordon. With this feat she gained international attention, providing an opportunity for her to become a ...read more
The Mysterious Disappearance of L’Oiseau Blanc
On the night of May 21, 1927, aviator Charles Lindbergh touched down at France’s Le Bourget Field, having completed history’s first nonstop flight between New York and Paris. Upon exiting the Spirit of St. Louis, the 25-year-old American was mobbed by a crowd of 150,000 people ...read more
Germanwings pilot intentionally crashes plane, killing 150 people
On March 24, 2015, the co-pilot of a German airliner deliberately flies the plane into the French Alps, killing himself and the other 149 people onboard. When it crashed, Germanwings flight 9525 had been traveling from Barcelona, Spain, to Dusseldorf, Germany. The plane took off ...read more
History’s Missing Passenger Flights
1. British South American Airways Star Tiger (January 30, 1948) The waters of the Atlantic Ocean in what would be dubbed the Bermuda Triangle had already been the scene of a mysterious aviation incident in 1945 when five American torpedo bombers on a routine training mission all ...read more
Remembering the 1988 Lockerbie Bombing
Tensions between Libya and the United States had been mounting for years when, in March 1986, the two sides fired on each other in disputed waters off the Libyan coast. The following month, a bomb went off in a West Berlin disco popular with American servicemen, killing two U.S. ...read more
The Hunt for L’Oiseau Blanc
Nungesser, the pilot of L’Oiseau Blanc, was an aristocrat and French flying ace; Coli, his navigator, was a mariner and former infantryman who had lost one of his eyes in an earlier injury. The two men were competing for the Orteig Prize, a $25,000 reward offered by a New York ...read more
Pilot Sully Sullenberger performs “Miracle on the Hudson”
On January 15, 2009, a potential disaster turned into a heroic display of skill and composure when Captain Chesley Burnett Sullenberger III safely landed the plane he was piloting on New York City’s Hudson River after a bird strike caused its engines to fail. David Paterson, ...read more
Boeing 707 crashes into a mountain near Agadir, Morocco
On August 3, 1975, a chartered Boeing 707 jetliner crashes in the Atlas Mountains near Agadir, a coastal city in Morocco. All 188 people aboard the plane were killed, in the fourth worst air disaster to that date. Owned by the Jordanian airline Alia and chartered to Royal Air ...read more
JAL flight 123 crashes into Mount Otsuka
At 6:50 p.m. local time, a Japan Air Lines Boeing 747SR crashes into Mount Otsuka, 70 miles northwest of Tokyo. There were 524 people aboard, and all but four were dead by the time rescuers reached the remote crash site 12 hours later. JAL flight 123 took off from Tokyo’s Haneda ...read more
Jumbo jets collide at Canary Islands airport
On March 27, 1977, two 747 jumbo jets crash into each other on the runway at an airport in the Canary Islands, killing 582 passengers and crew members. Both Boeing 747s were charter jets that were not supposed to be at the Los Rodeos Airport on Santa Cruz de Tenerife that day. ...read more
Dirigible crash kills 73 in New Jersey
On this day in 1933, a dirigible crashes in New Jersey, killing 73 people in one of the first air disasters in history. The Akron was the largest airship built in the United States when it took its first flight in August 1931. In its short life of less than two years, it was ...read more
Plane crashes on Canary Islands, killing 146
A Dan-Air Boeing 727 carrying British tourists to the Canary Islands crashes and kills all 146 on board on April 25, 1980. This terrible crash came just three years after another even deadlier accident at the Canary Islands airport. In 1977, a KLM jumbo jet had collided with a ...read more