The Worst Plane Crashes In History
Athens – The crash of a Cypriot airliner with 121 people on board near Athens looked set to be the worst air disaster in Greek history.
Following is a list of the worst plane crashes from 1977 to 2004.
1977
March 27: The deadliest airline plane crash claims 583 lives when two Boeing 747s collide at Tenerife airport in Spain’s Canary Islands.
1978
Jan 1: An Air India Boeing 747 crashes into the sea shortly after take-off from Bombay, with the loss of 213 lives.
1979
May 25: An American Airlines DC-10 loses an engine and crashes on take-off from Chicago, killing 272 people.
Nov 28: An Air New Zealand DC-10 taking tourists to the South Pole hits a mountain in Antarctica and 257 people perish.
1980
Aug 19: About 300 people die when fire engulfs a Saudi Arabian Airlines Tristar at Riyadh airport.
1983
Sept 1: Korean Air Lines 747 is shot down by a Soviet fighter after flying through Soviet air space near Sakhalin Island, off the Pacific coast. All 269 people aboard die.
1985
Aug 12: The worst accident involving a single airliner kills 520 people when a Japan Airlines Boeing 747 comes down while on a domestic flight from Tokyo to Osaka.
Dec 12: A DC-8 belonging to Arrow Airlines and chartered by the US Air Force crashes on take-off from Gander airport in Newfoundland, killing 256 people, 248 of them American servicemen.
1988
July 3: An Iran Air A300 Airbus is shot down over the Persian Gulf by the US cruiser Vincennes after being mistaken for an attacking plane, killing all 290 on board.
Dec 21: Pan Am Boeing 747 crashes in Lockerbie, Scotland, after a bomb aboard the plane explodes, killing 270 people, including 11 on the ground.
1991
May 26: A mid-air explosion destroys a Boeing 767 belonging to the Austrian airline Lauda-Air about 180 kilometres north of the Thai capital, Bangkok, killing 223 people.
July 11: A DC-8 chartered from the Canadian company Nationair to fly pilgrims to Mecca in Saudi Arabia explodes shortly after leaving Jeddah airport, with the loss of 261 lives.
1994
April 26: A China Airlines Airbus A300-600 explodes during an aborted landing at Nagoya airport in central Japan, killing 264 people.
1996
Jan 8: More than 300 people die when a Russian-built Antonov-32 freight plane plunges into a crowded market in Kinshasa, the capital of then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
July 17: A mid-air explosion destroys a Paris-bound TWA Boeing 747 shortly after take-off from New York with the loss of 230 lives.
Nov 12: A Saudi Airlines Boeing 747 leaves New Delhi and collides in mid-air with a Kazakh Ilyushin-76; a total of 349 people are killed.
1997
Aug 5: A Korean Air Boeing 747 plunges into the jungle on the US-administered island of Guam in the North Pacific with the loss of 226 lives.
Sept 26: An Airbus A300 belonging to the Indonesian airline Garuda crashes near Medan on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, killing 234 people.
1998
Feb 16: A China Airlines Airbus A300-600 crashes near Taipei international airport after hitting nearby houses: 202 people are killed.
Sept 2: Swissair Flight 111 plunges into the Atlantic Ocean after take-off from New York on a flight to Geneva, killing all 229 people aboard.
1999
October 31: An Egyptair Boeing 767 plunges into the Atlantic off the US coast with 217 people on board. No survivors.
2000
January 31: A Kenya Airways Airbus A310 plunges into the Ocean after take-off from Ivory Coast’s economic capital Abidjan, killing 169 people.
April 19: An Air Philippines 737-200 crashes on the island of Samal in the south of the Philippines, killing 131 people.
July 9: 113 people die in the crash of a Coral DC-4 cargo plane after take-off from Villavicencio southeast of the Colombian capital Bogota.
July 25: A New York-bound supersonic Concorde owned by Air France crashes onto a hotel after take-off from Paris, killing 113 people.
Aug 23: A Gulf Air Airbus A-320 plunges into the Gulf of Bahrain shortly before landing, killing 143 people.
2001
July 3: A VladivostokAvia TU-154 plane crashes near the Siberian city of Irkutsk, killing 145 people.
Sept 11: Two hijacked American Airlines Boeing 767s are crashed into the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Centre as a United Airlines plane ploughs into the Pentagon in Washington. The total toll, including the crash of a Washington-bound hijacked airliner in a field in Pennsylvania, stands at 3 038.
October 8: An SAS MD 87 carrying 104 passengers and six crew smashes into a luggage depot after hitting a German small plane with four people on board at Milan’s Linate airport, killing 118 people.
Nov 12: An American Airlines A-300 Airbus crashes into the Queens borough of New York City shortly after take-off from New York’s John F Kennedy airport, killing 265 people, including five on the ground.
2002
Feb 12: A Tupolev-154 on an Iranian domestic flight crashes in the southwest of the country, killing 119.
April 15: An Air China Boeing 767 crashes in a residential area near Gimhae, South Korea, killing 129 people.
May 7: An MD-82 belonging to airline China Northern goes down in the sea off northeast China, killing 112 people.
May 25: A Boeing 747-200 belonging to Taiwan’s China Airlines breaks up in mid-air during a flight to Hong Kong, killing 225 people.
2003
Feb 19: A military plane crashes into a mountainside in Iran’s southeastern Sirch mountains, killing 276 people.
March 6: An Air Algerie plane crashes at Tamanrasset airport in the south of the country, killing 102 people.
May 8: About 200 passengers are killed, according to airport officials, after the rear door of an Ilyushin-76 plane belonging to the Ukrainian defence ministry bursts open in mid-flight over the Democratic Republic of Congo.
July 8: A Sudanese airliner bound for Khartoum crashes with the loss of all but one of the 116 passengers and crew aboard.
Dec 25: A plane owned by Guinean-based airline UTA crashes into the sea off the west African state of Benin, killing 139 people, many of them Lebanese.
2004
Jan 3: All 135 passengers, most of them French, and six crew die when their Egyptian charter plane falls into the Red Sea.
Related Posts:
-
Worst sweater
Worst rock band fan
Worst portrait
Worst teacher
Worst smile
Worst place to sleep
Worst wedding photo
Worst party animals
Worst
-
# 10. Tanker Truck vs Bridge – $358 Million
On August 26, 2004, a car collided
-
The thought of going to prison is enough to scare the living daylights out of
-
Some people really love Star Wars. So, to show their love, they will go to
-
An airline has decorated one of its planes as an idiot's guide to aviation --
July 14th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
The Chicago crash was in 1979 not 1973. I remember seeing the smoke from 50 miles away. It was awful…
July 18th, 2008 at 6:14 am
Something weird in the second picture. PK – RIM was the code for Mandala plane.Crashed in Medan, Sumatra Island, Indonesia.
It just one of many Plane Crashes in Indonesia History. The reason why it became ‘special’ headline was because one of the passenger was the Governor of North Sumatra. Also died in the accident, the former governor.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:15 am
The vast majority of the people killed (murdered) on 9/11 is the result of the obvious controlled demolition of the twin towers. Jet fuel (kerosene) cannot melt engineered steel, period.
November 20th, 2008 at 2:12 am
Another conspiracy nut. “Jet fuel cannot melt engineered steel” is another way to say “I don’t know what I’m talking about!” You don’t need to ‘melt’ steel in order to cause a domino effect of collapsing floors weighing several tons each. My goodness, pick up some common sense. 9/11 is a tragedy, please don’t mock it by spreading such falsehoods.
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:10 pm
The crash in Tenerife was produced, first because a bomb alert was activated in Gran Canaria’s airport (in those days there was an independentist terrorist group in the islands), so many flights were sent to Tenerife (march is still high season in the islands, when Europe is still cold -around 12 million tourists visit canary islands every year-). Second, the airport is located in an awful place, that day, as usual many times in the year, there was an intense fog that did not let see 5 meters ahead. And third, at that time technology was too primitive to alert the tower something was going badly. They did not notice anything until the flames were seen…
May 21st, 2009 at 10:12 am
To Lamanchaman:
Get a grip yourself, try researching a little. Even if you believe two planes took down the Twin Towers how did WTC7 come down? And where is the plane that supposedly hit the Pentagon.
Common sense indeed.
July 20th, 2009 at 5:53 am
Although the effort is obvious, the facts are somewhat skewed and ill-researched.
The AA flight from Chicago was not compromised by a “design flaw”. It was improper maintenance practices that resulted in the failure of the mounting pillar – AA was using a forklift to lift and support the engine during routine maintenance and this put an undue amount of stress on the bolts that anchored the pillar to the wing. This stress caused a catastrophic failure which resulted in the pillar detaching from the underlying framing.
It’s important to get the facts correct. There is a modicum of “journalistic integrity” that’s expected – even from a biased, unprofessional “blog”. When you make up, or otherwise misrepresent facts (or simply fail to do proper research) you undermine your message, undermine you “posting” and ultimately drive people to find more accurate, factual articles…
Lastly; we’re WAY past any “conspiracy theory” debate on the 9/11 tragedy. ANYONE who posts about “controlled demolition” or the lack of airplane evidence at the Pentagon site is clearly, absolutely and unequivocally mis-informed, “under”-informed or in denial; experts from around the world – CREDIBLE experts – have dissected, investigated and recorded their expert opinions on the specifics of the crashes and subsequent damages to structures. Anyone who touts that there was any “conspiracy” is subject to one, or more, of the following misgivings (and is posting just to hear their own voice, flying in the face of the facts); 1) Unfamiliar with construction, 2) In complete denial of the facts of physics, 3) Refusing to read anything that is contrary to their way of thinking, to wit; read the Popular Mechanics excellent review of the various “theories” of the collapse of the WTC and surrounding buildings AND the damage and the “lack” of aircraft evidence at the Pentagon site. Unfortunately the “theorists” choose to only read those half-baked “articles” that support their “belief” and ignore anything written by anyone else regardless of their expertise, and lastly, 4) …this is the big one…these people have chosen to believe, and give validity to, the biggest Conspiracy in the History or Mankind – they believe that the Government is inept, yet they choose to believe that the very same Government can purport the biggest cover-up in known history; that of the THOUSANDS of people that would have had to have been involved at some level, not ONE has spoken up; that the “inept” Government could have kept a lid on all of what would be countless memos, phone calls, discussions and signals required to perpetrate such a travesty, that not ONE single person (for example, any of the dozens of people that would have been needed to set the “charges” in the buildings, do so without detection, and then actually push the button ((and where were they stationed, by the way???)) not ONE of them would have accepted a multi-million dollar offer from Time or Newsweek or People or Good Morning America or any number of other outlets just to tell their story…that there would be no “dying utterance” from some grief-stricken co-conspirator on their death bed…that not ONE of the people involved hasn’t confided in a loved one or a priest or a therapist…and NO ONE has written a book – a $10 million dollar book at a minimum – about their involvement in the most dastardly, the most evil and conspiratorial episode in modern times. Basically these people want it both ways; they want to promote the Government as corrupt and inept yet maintain that they have enough “juice” to keep everyone quiet – Democrats, Republicans, Independents, the “Joe Six Packs” of the world. You CAN’T have it both ways…
They aren’t “idiots’ per se, just…”lost” and seeking an attachment to something bigger than themselves. And it’s both laughable and sad at the same time…
“…sigh…” I still have hope for the Human Spirit and for our resolve as Americans. But sometimes…
August 11th, 2009 at 5:04 am
Reality, you have no idea what you’re talking about either. WTC7 was destroyed because of two large pieces of debris that destroyed the building’s structural integrity top-to-bottom. People need to stop saying that “it was all set up by the government to look like it was an attack by the terrorists.”
My aunt was in the building to the left of the plane crash in the pentagon, i don’t appreciate you making up shit like that for kicks, there is footage of the crash on video.
October 27th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Reality Strikes Back, hate to break it to you, but the government confiscated all tapes showing the “plane” crashing into the pentagon 5 minutes after impact. and to this day not a single on has been released (either the security camera from the Sheraton, or the gas station), but the government did release 4 frames from one of the videos, no plane can be seen.
November 1st, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Regarding 9/11, NONE of the planes “left their respective New York airports”! None of the flights originated in the state of NY. And the PA crash, it didn’t “crash land”, it simply crashed. Landing wasn’t attempted, as the pilots were dead.
January 19th, 2010 at 11:22 am
The author says: “… Unfortunately, it was too late for the 273 people that had to learn the hard way.”
A callous and empty-hearted reference to the deaths of men, women, and children.
Why are sociopaths always attracted to tragedy?
June 26th, 2010 at 4:21 am
I bookmarked this web address a while ago because of the new content and I have never been let down. Continue the good work.