List Of Deadliest Aircraft Accidents And Incidents

This article lists the deadliest aircraft accidents and incidents involving commercial passenger and cargo flights, military passenger and cargo flights, or general-aviation flights that have been involved in a ground or midair collision.

As of 18 December 2022, 205 accidents or incidents have resulted in least 100 fatalities, 34 at least 200 fatalities, eight at least 300 fatalities, and four at least 500 fatalities.

History

In 1908, five years after the pioneering flight of the Wright brothers on 17 December 1903, Thomas Selfridge became the first fatality of powered flight while flying as a passenger with Orville Wright during a demonstration of the Wright Model A at Fort Myer, Virginia, on 17 September 1908. In 1909, Eugène Lefebvre was the first to be killed while piloting a powered airplane, while the first fatal midair collision occurred on 19 June 1912, near Douai, France, killing the pilot of each aircraft. Since the deaths of these early aviation pioneers, the scale of fatal aircraft accidents has increased in proportion to the size and capacity of airplanes.

The greatest number of fatalities involving one aircraft occurred in 1985, when 520 people died in the crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123. The most fatalities in any aviation accident in history occurred during 1977 in the Tenerife airport disaster, when 583 people were killed when two Boeing 747s collided on a runway. The greatest number of fatalities from a midair collision occurred at the Charkhi Dadri midair collision, to the west of New Delhi, India, on 12 November 1996 when a Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747-100B en route from Delhi to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, collided with Kazakhstan Airlines Ilyushin Il-76 en route from Chimkent, Kazakhstan, to Delhi, killing all 349 people aboard both the airplanes. The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center claimed not only 157 passengers and crew, but an additional 2,606 victims.

In 2012, Boeing released a study of worldwide commercial jet airplane accidents between 1959 and 2011, reporting 1,798 accidents, 603 categorized as fatal, which accounted for 29,025 on-board fatalities and an additional 1,173 ground or noncommercial aircraft collision deaths. The Boeing analysis suggests a decrease of commercial aviation accident fatality rates toward the end of the study period.

Definitions

The US Code of Federal Regulations defines an accident as "an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft, which takes place between the time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of flight and all such persons have disembarked, and in which any person suffers death or serious injury, or in which the aircraft receives substantial damage;" an incident as "an occurrence other than an accident, associated with the operation of an aircraft, which affects or could affect the safety of operations;" and a fatal injury as one which results in death within 30 days of the accident. The definitions of accident, incident, and fatality in the Code of Federal Regulations, and used by the FAA and NTSB, are generally consistent with those found in the ICAO Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation Annex 13.

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