Accidents

In April, 2003, a Beech B200 King Air on approach to Fitchburg, Massachusetts, crashed about a mile from the airport. It had made a normal approach before overflying the runway, making a couple of steep turns and then diving into a single-story industrial building, penetrating the wall just below the roof. Of the King Air’s […]

The November 2001 crash, shortly after takeoff from JFK, of American Airlines Flight 587 sent a tremor through the aviation community. It involved an extremely rare event: the structural failure, and complete separation, of one of the major flying surfaces-namely, the vertical stabilizer-of the airplane, an Airbus A300-600. In the ensuing loss of control, the […]

As homebuilt airplanes become more and more numerous, they naturally figure more prominently in the accident statistics. As you might expect, they are more prone to accidents arising from design or construction errors than certified airplanes are. A look at their fatal accidents for a single month-July, 2001-reveals this pattern and others as well. The […]

In the past 10 years, the National Transportation Safety Board has used the phrase “inadequate preflight inspection” in the probable causes of 15 fatal accidents. The most common direct cause is fuel contamination, usually with water, which typically leads to power loss after takeoff and a subsequent stall-spin. Other oversights include improperly latched baggage doors; […]

On the morning of a late fall day in 2000, a Utah rancher took up two passengers in his Cessna 175 to search for stray cattle. It was part of the fall roundup, an “annual event looked upon with anticipation by many.” After spotting a few head, they flew toward a bluff where several cowboys […]

A 337 breaks up and rains down from 27,000 feet. Amazingly, the right seat passenger lives to tell how it happened.

The wreckage of a Grob G115D, a German-built, all-composite, aerobatic two-seat trainer, was spread out over an area nearly half a mile long and 400 feet wide-this despite the fact the airplane was sighted shortly before the accident by a witness on the ground who estimated its height, in level flight, as only 500 feet. […]

It was a Saturday in June, in the middle of the afternoon, a clear day, in open country-a most perilous time and place. Three sport airplanes-a Pitts S-1, an Acro Sport and an RV-6-were on their way from an airshow at the Longmont Airport, on the north side of Denver, to Centennial Airport at Englewood, […]

A private pilot and his father-in-law made a 300-mile trip to visit a friend. It was winter. They arrived in late morning. They reported that they had encountered instrument conditions but had been able to drop down below the overcast and continue to the destination, an uncontrolled airport. This must have required some fairly low […]