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On Tuesday 25 July 2000 Air France Flight AFR 4590, a Concorde registered F-BTSC, took off from Paris Charles de Gaulle, to undertake a charter flight to New York with nine crew members and one hundred passengers on board. During takeoff from runway 26 right at Roissy Charles de Gaulle Airport, a tyre was damaged. A major fire broke out. The aircraft was unable to gain height or speed and crashed onto a hotel, killing all 109 people on board and 4 on the ground. The crash would become the end of the Concorde era.
On 25 December 2003, Union des Transport A riens de Guin e Flight GIH 141, a Boeing 727-223, on a flight from Conakry (Guinea) to Kufra (Libya), Beirut (Lebanon) and Dubai (United Arab Emirates) stopped over at Cotonou, Republic of Benin. During takeoff the overloaded airplane, was not able to climb properly and struck an airport building on the extended runway centerline, and crashed onto the beach and ended up in the ocean, killing 151 of the 163 people on board. The cause of the accident was the difficulty for the flight crew to rotate with an overloaded airplane with an unknown center of gravity. This in combination with the facts that the operator of the airline lacked any competence regarding organization and regulatory documentation, which made it impossible to correctly load and check the loading of the airplane, and the inadequacy of the supervision exercised by the Guinean civil aviation authorities in the context of safety oversight.
On April 15, 2002, Air China flight 129, a Boeing 767-200ER, operated by Air China, en route from Beijing, China to Busan, Korea, crashed on Mt. Dotdae, near Gimhae Airport, Busan. Of the 166 persons on board, 37 persons survived the crash, while 129 occupants were killed. The Korean Aviation Accident Investigation Board (KAAIB) determined that the probable cause of the crash was pilot error due to poor crew resource management and lost situational awareness during the circling approach of the runway. The Chinese investigation team pointed out that the Korean ATC was not fully licensed and mistakenly directed the airliner to descend to a wrong altitude and that the airport did not inform the crew of the weather conditions at the time. A contributing factor was that the airline made all announcements in Chinese and English, while most passengers were Korean.
On August 24, 2001, Air Transat Flight 236, an Airbus 330, was on its way from Toronto, Canada to Lisbon, Portugal with 306 people on board. Above the Atlantic Ocean, the crew noticed a dangerous fuel imbalance. The crew changed the planned route for a landing at the Lajes Airport in the Azores. At 06:13 the right engine flamed out. At 06:26, the left engine also flamed out. However, after flying 100 miles without fuel the crew managed to land the aircraft at the Lajes Airport at 06:45. After the landing small fires started in the main-gear wheels, they were extinguished by the crash rescue response vehicles. Only 16 passengers and 2 cabin-crew members received injuries. The aircraft suffered damage to the fuselage and to the main landing gear. The investigation uncovered a large crack in the fuel line of the right engine, it was caused by mistakes during an engine change just before the start of the flight.
On July 17, 1996, about 2031 eastern daylight time, Trans World Airlines, Inc. (TWA) flight 800, a Boeing 747, crashed in the Atlantic Ocean near East Moriches, New York. TWA flight 800 was a scheduled international passenger flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), New York, New York, to Charles DeGaulle International Airport, Paris, France. All 230 people on board were killed, and the airplane was destroyed. The weather was good. The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the accident was an explosion of the center wing fuel tank, resulting from ignition of the flammable fuel/air mixture in the tank. Contributing factors to the accident were the design and certification concept that fuel tank explosions could be prevented solely by precluding all ignition sources and the design and certification of the Boeing 747. The safety issues in this report focus on fuel tank flammability.
On 4 October 1992, El Al Israel Airlines Flight 1862, a Boeing 747-200 Freighter, departed from Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, on its way to Tel Aviv, Israel. Seven minutes after take-off the plane lost engine no. 3 and 4 and crashed in an apartment block just outside Amsterdam, killing 43 people. The investigation concluded that the design and certification of the B 747 pylon was inadequate to provide the required level of safety. Furthermore the system to ensure structural integrity by inspection failed.
This amended report explains the accident involving United Airlines flight 585, a Boeing 737-200, on its way from Denver to Colorado Springs, which crashed on March 3, 1991 near Colorado Springs Municipal Airport. Only after the crash of USAir 427 in 1994 and a similar incident with Eastwind 517 in 1996 the NTSB was able to pinpoint the cause of this crash: jammed rudder. The Boeing 737 has a history of rudder system-related anomalies, this finally solved the mystery of sudden jamming of the rudders of this aircraft.
On August 27, 2006, Comair Flight 5191, a Bombardier CL-600-2B19, crashed during takeoff from the wrong runway of Blue Grass Airport, Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49 of the 50 people aboard. From the beginning everything went wrong. First the captain and first officer boarded the wrong airplane, only after starting the auxiliary power unit they found out they were in the wrong aircraft. Taxiing to the takeoff position the captain and first officer were so deeply engaged in a private conversation that they did not realize they took the wrong runway. The air traffic controller did not notice anything.
On 1 January 2007, a Boeing 737-4Q8, operated by Adam Air as flight DHI 574, was on a flight from Surabaya, East Java to Manado, Sulawesi, at FL 350 (35,000 feet) when it suddenly disappeared from radar. There were 102 people on board.. Nine days later wreckage was found floating in the sea near the island of Sulawesi. The black boxes revealed that the pilots were so engrossed in trouble shooting the IRS that they forgot to fly the plane, resulting in the crash that cost the lives of all aboard.
On 31 May 2009, the Airbus A330 flight AF 447 took off from Rio de Janeiro Gale o airport bound for Paris Charles de Gaulle. At around 2 h 02, the Captain left the cockpit for a short nap. At around 2 h 08, at flight level 350, the crew made a course change of 12 degrees to the left, to avoid bad weather. At 2h 10min 05, likely following the obstruction of the Pitot probes by ice crystals, the speed indications were incorrect and some automatic systems disconnected. The aeroplane's flight path was not controlled by the two copilots. They were rejoined 1 minute 30 later by the Captain, while the aeroplane was in a stall situation that lasted until the impact with the sea at 2 h 14 min 28 s, killing all 228 persons on board. It took almost two years to recover the wreck of the aircraft from a depth of 4.000 metres. The accident resulted from a succession of events, such as inconsistency between the measured airspeeds, inappropriate control inputs, and the crew's failure to diagnose the stall situation