Individual differences |
Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology |
An aviation accident is roughly defined in the Convention on International Civil Aviation Annex 13 as an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft which takes place between
Individual differences |
Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology |
An aviation accident is roughly defined in the Convention on International Civil Aviation Annex 13 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, in which a person is fatally or seriously injured, the aircraft sustains damage or structural failure and/or the aircraft is missing or is completely inaccessible.
An aviation incident is also defined there as an occurrence other than an accident, associated with the operation of an aircraft, which affects or could affect the safety of operations.
An accident in which the damage to the plane is such that it must be written off, or in which the plane is destroyed is often referred to as a hull loss accident.
Since the birth of flight, aircraft have crashed, often with serious consequences. This is because of the unforgiving nature of flight, where a relatively insubstantial medium, air, supports a significant mass through dynamically active technological means. Should this support fail, there is limited opportunity for a positive outcome. Because of this, aircraft design is concerned with minimizing the chance of failure, and pilots are trained with safety a primary consideration. Despite this, accidents still occur, though statistically flying is the safest form of transportation. In fact, the relative rarity of incidents, coupled with the often dramatic outcome, is one reason why they still make headline news. Nevertheless, while the odds of actually getting caught in a plane crash are nowadays distinctly low compared to other means of transportation, the chances of dying in such a disaster are notably higher.
Many early attempts at flight ended in failure when a design raised to a height for a launch would fail to generate enough lift and crash to the ground. Some of the earliest aviation pioneers lost their lives testing aircraft they built.
Otto Lilienthal died after a failure of one of his gliders. On his roughly 2,500th flight (August 9, 1896), he stalled in a gust of wind, causing him to fall from a height of roughly 56 ft (17 m), fracturing his spine. He died the next day, with his last words being reported as Opfer müssen gebracht werden! ("Sacrifices must be made!")
Percy Pilcher was another promising aviation pioneer; he died testing The Hawk (September 20, 1899). Just as with Lilienthal, promising designs and ideas for motorized planes were scrapped after his death. Some other early attempts experienced rough landings, such as Richard Pearse who is generally accepted to have crash landed (survived) a motorized aircraft in some bushes, unable to gain altitude after launching it from some height.
The Wright Flyer nearly crashed on the day of its historic flight, sustaining some damage when landing. Three days before, on a previous flight attempt, Wilbur Wright overcontrolled the aircraft in pitch and crashed it on takeoff, causing minor damage in the first known case of pilot-induced oscillation.
US Army Lt. Thomas Selfridge became the first person killed in a powered fixed-wing aircraft on September 17, 1908 when his aircraft, piloted by Orville Wright, crashed after propeller separation failure during military tests at Fort Myer in Virginia. Selfridge died of a fractured skull. Wright suffered broken ribs, pelvis and a leg.
Plane crashes with large numbers of casualties set in with the early passenger flights of the 1920s. The yearly death toll of plane crashes exceeded 100 for the first time in 1928, and 1,000 for the first time in 1943. Since 1945, the number of deaths has fallen below 1,000 only twice, in 2004 and 2007.
Approximately 80 percent of all aviation accidents occur shortly before, after, or during takeoff or landing, and are often described as resulting from 'human error'; mid-flight disasters are rare but not entirely unheard of. Among other things, the latter have been caused by bombs, as in the 1988 Lockerbie incident, mid-air collisions such as in the 2002 Überlingen crash and structural failure, as in the 1954 Comet disasters and 1988 Aloha Airlines incident.
An accident survey  of 1,843 aircraft accidents from 1950 through 2006 determined the causes to be as follows:
- 53%: Pilot error
- 21%: Mechanical failure
- 11%: Weather
- 8%: Other human error (air traffic controller error, improper loading of aircraft, improper maintenance, fuel contamination, language miscommunication etc.)
- 6%: Sabotage (bombs, hijackings, shoot-downs)
- 1%: Other cause
The survey excluded military, private, and charter aircraft.
A study by Boeing  determined the primary cause of Airline hull loss accidents (worldwide commercial jet fleet), from 1996 through 2005, to be:
- 55%: Flight crew error
- 17%: Airplane
- 13%: Weather
- 7%: Misc./Other
- 5%: Air traffic control
- 3%: Maintenance
That study included 183 accidents, with known causes for 134 of them. The remaining 49 were unknown, or awaiting final reports.
Previous Boeing studies showed higher rates for Flight Crew Error:
- 70%: 1988 - 1997
- 67%: 1990 - 1999
- 66%: 1992 - 2001
- 62%: 1994 - 2003
- 56%: 1995 - 2004
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