This Day in History: Fifty-eight people were killed in two separate airline crashes on this day in 1970. A Faucett Airlines DC-4 disappeared in Peru while en route from Trujillo to Juanjui. Earlier, a DC-3, described as the only aircraft owned by Polynesian Airlines, crashed on takeoff from Apia Faleolo airport, killing all 27 passengers and three crew in its attempt to fly to Pago Pago.
The first fatal aviation accident was the crash of a Rozière balloon near Wimereux, France, on June 15, 1785, killing the balloon's inventor, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, and the other occupant, Pierre Romain. The first involving a powered aircraft was the crash of a Wright Model A aircraft at Fort Myer, Virginia, in the United States on September 17, 1908, injuring its co-inventor and pilot, Orville Wright, and killing the passenger, Signal Corps Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge.
The first aircraft accident in which 200 or more people died occurred on March 3, 1974, when 346 died in the crash of Turkish Airlines Flight 981. As of April 2020, there have been 33 aviation incidents in which 200 or more people died.
The top 10 countries with the highest number of fatal civil airliner accidents from 1945 to 2021 are the United States, Russia, Canada, Brazil, Colombia, UK, France, Indonesia, Mexico, and India. The UK is noted to have the highest number of air crashes in Europe, with a total of 110 air crashes within the time period, and Indonesia is the highest in Asia at 104, followed by India at 95.
The largest loss of life on board a single-aircraft is the 520 fatalities in the 1985 Japan Airlines Flight 123 accident, the largest loss of life in multiple aircraft in a single accident is the 583 fatalities in the two Boeing 747's that collided in the 1977 Tenerife airport disaster, while the largest loss of life overall in a collective incident is the 2,996 fatalities in the coordinated terrorist destruction of airplanes and occupied buildings in the 2001 September 11 attacks.
No comments:
Post a Comment