Accidents

It was a tough weekend for airshows in Europe, ending with multiple fatalities of not only airshow pilots but also unsuspecting bystanders. At the Shoreham Airport in southeastern England, a Hawker Hunter, a vintage warbird jet developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s, crashed in a massive fireball into the busy A27 freeway, killing […]

Five passengers and a pilot on a sightseeing flight were killed on Monday when their floatplane crashed in rugged terrain north of Quebec City. The de Havilland Beaver crashed into a mountainside near Quebec’s Lac Saint-Jean in good weather, according to crash investigators. The passengers included four British nationals and one woman from France. A […]

In my March Aftermath column on the 2012 crash of a Pilatus PC-12 in Florida, I faulted the National Transportation Safety Board for mixing up indicated and true airspeeds. Actually, it was I who misread the report. I am indebted to reader Timothy Burtch, an accident investigator with the NTSB, for pointing out that the […]

Two airplanes carrying as many as 40 parachutists collided over Slovakia today, raining down debris over a forested area as the occupants jumped for their lives. At least seven were killed in the collision while another 15 parachutists remain missing. The rest reportedly jumped from the airplanes during and after the collision. The Czech-built L-410 […]

South African airshow pilot Nigel Hopkins, who is in France getting prepared for the 28th FAI World Aerobatic Championships, is fortunate to be alive after his MX Aircraft MX2 airplane broke up in flight. Hopkins was on a practice flight in preparation for the competition, which is set to take place August 20 through 29 […]

A tragic accident happened on Sunday morning as a result of a midair collision northeast of Brown Field Municipal Airport located in the suburb of Otay Mesa 13 miles southeast of San Diego, California. Five people were killed when the two airplanes, which were both approaching the airport to land, plummeted to the ground in […]

Rescue workers in Indonesia have reached the crash site of an ATR-42 twin turboprop that went down in a mountainous area with 54 people on board, a senior government official told reporters. The teams on the ground have so far found at least 38 bodies at the scene and haven’t found any survivors, according to […]

The Coast Guard has suspended its search for the pilot of a Lancair Evolution that went down in the Pacific Ocean 460 miles off the California coast Thursday night. Coast Guard aircraft and ships searched for the crash site for five hours on Friday, reporting spotting aircraft debris but no signs of the pilot. They […]

A landing Ryan ST-3KR collided with a lawn mower Thursday morning, killing a 75-year-old man who was mowing the grass runway at Frazier Lake Airpark in Hollister, California. The WWII taildragger, traveling from Monte Sereno, California, had already touched down when it struck the lawn mower on the landing strip. The FAA and NTSB are […]

The National Transportation Safety Board released aviation accident statistics for 2014 showing a slight increase in fatal general aviation accidents, which rose from 222 in 2013 to 253 in 2014. The overall number of GA accidents dropped slightly from 1,224 in 2013 to 1,221 in 2014, but the accident rate increased from 6.26 per 100,000 […]