What are some famous plane crashes

Posted by Anonymouseeeeeeeeees@reddit | aviation | View on Reddit | 26 comments

What are some well known crashes, both in the aviation community and the general public? Like ones that got massive coverage. Obviously 9/11, and the Boeing 737 MAX nose down incidents. Keep in mind I'm young (-20) so I'm curious about well known ones, especially from the past/ before I was born.

I asked my mom the question and she said the Alaska airline one, where a plane nose dove into the ocean.

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SRM_Thornfoot@reddit

The US seldom concerns itself much with foreign airline crashes, but the Tenerife crash was a doozy.

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Anonymouseeeeeeeeees@reddit (OP)

100%. I watched a documentary about it and I was shocked that I hadn't heard about it before. Not many people I've talked to know about it

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HokieAero@reddit

Not surprising. Schools don't seem to teach much about history anymore: Civil wars, revolutions, world wars, ancient history, technological and industrial revolutions ... the 20th century is ignored.

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HokieAero@reddit

Can you clarify what you mean by social impact? Do you mean a big loss of life? Or maybe tragic circumstances? Or where the pilots saved the aircraft? Or where one or two passengers survived? Or unsolved mysteries?

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Anonymouseeeeeeeeees@reddit (OP)

Any of these. Any that had impacts on general public for what ever reason. Malaysia airs that went missing is an example, 9/11 that involved hijacks. The crash no longer has to be relevant to the public, but at least when it happened, people knew it happened.

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rybnickifull@reddit

You kids and your terror of search engines! List of accidents and incidents involving commercial aircraft - Wikipedia

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Anonymouseeeeeeeeees@reddit (OP)

I've actually started reading the wiki page of all crashes. I'm not curious about crashes in the sense of what literally happened. ATM I'm reading through the 50's. I'm more curious about their social impact. Like how did people react. What did people think about it?

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NoMoreFox@reddit

If I'm picking up what you mean, you're more interested in the human story behind these incidents? Aside from the obvious example of 9/11, Air France 4590 and the Lockerbie bombings had far-reaching impacts among the public, which ended up spelling out the decline and fall of a unique kind of flight (regarding the former) and a giant in the airline industry (regarding the latter).

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Anonymouseeeeeeeeees@reddit (OP)

Yes, that's exactly what I'm interested in. I want to know the social and human impact. Like a lot of people know about Lockerbie and 9/11

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NoMoreFox@reddit

Absolutely! The human side of these cases is extremely fascinating. Another famous case, albeit not a fixed-wing crash: the social and political context around the Hindenburg disaster is really interesting, too, especially as U.S. - German relations at the time had not yet taken a turn for the worse. This also, of course, was one of the factors that led to the airship losing its throne as king of the sky.

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zuniac5@reddit

r/AdmiralCloudberg should help you answer this. Plenty of detailed information on the major crashes of the past 50+ years in her posts.

One thing you might not know as someone who's young is that prior to the 24-hour news cycle in the late 90s-early 00s, every major plane crash was breaking national news - to the point where the major news networks would break into whatever was on TV at the time to broadcast the often-limited details. Plane crashes were much more frequent back in those days, so it seemed like this would happen every few weeks. You can do searches on Youtube like "plane crash CBS Special Report" etc. to see how these were treated as the news was breaking.

Some major ones that come to mind are PSA 182, Air Florida 90, JAL 123, Northwest 255, Pan Am 103, the Iran Air/Vincennes shootdown, United 232, USAir 427, ValuJet 592, TWA 800, and Alaska 261.

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Anonymouseeeeeeeeees@reddit (OP)

Oh, I didn't know that! I've only known instant, 24 hr news. That's actually super helpful, thx!

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zuniac5@reddit

YW! Good luck finding what you're looking for, it's easy to go down the proverbial rabbit hole when looking up plane crashes.

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themorah@reddit

The Mt Erebus disaster was a huge deal here in New Zealand. A DC-10 on a sightseeing trip to Antarctica flew straight into the side of Mt Erebus killing 257 people. There was a cover up by Air New Zealand, in which crucial evidence about the cause of the crash mysteriously disappeared. There was a huge public outcry, and a Royal Commission of Inquiry was held into the crash, during which a judge described the response by Air New Zealand as "an orchestrated litany of lies".

The crash remains to this day New Zealands most deadly air disaster, and one of the most deadly events in New Zealand history.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Erebus_disaster

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NoMoreFox@reddit

Eastern Airlines 401; Alaska Airlines 261; Tenerife Airport Disaster; Lockerbie bombing; 1956 Grand Canyon mid-air collision; Aeromexico 498; Germanwings 9525.

All of these had, as far as I can tell, pretty significant impacts in terms of revealing or highlighting significant issues in how airlines do business, or how flight crews cooperate during emergencies. This is by no means a comprehensive list.

Also, FedEx 705. Although this wasn't a crash and didn't have as significant of an impact in the industry, it's a wild story with brave heroes, a dastardly villain, and one hell of a plane.

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AmbitiousDad@reddit

I presented a command upgrade course for our company for many years. I always used United 232, Tenerife, and Flying Tiger 66 as examples that were presented and discussed regarding CRM, hazards, and the error chain. It was very interesting in the discussions as a lot of pilots did not know all the details and the backgrounds of the accidents. For example, United 232 suffered the catastrophic engine failure immediately after crossing an enroute VOR, resulting in the aircraft losing all hydraulics in a slight turn, as opposed to straight and level flight. That caused a whole different set of issues trying to steer the aircraft. The fact anyone lived through that is a result of some of the best CRM ever witnessed. In Tenerife, the whole accident would have been avoided if there had been a few extra feet of clearance for Pan Am to squeeze by onto the runway to taxi by the KLM 747. Or if KLM did not decide to take extra fuel during the delay, which may have allowed them to rotate over top of Pan Am instead of smashing into it. All links in the chain.

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