It was on Tuesday this week that an Airbus A350 passenger plane from Japan Airlines collided with another plane when landing at Haneda Airport in Tokyo. Five people on board the other plane were killed when the two crashed on the runway.
The accident is not the first, and probably won’t be the last. Here are some of the deadliest plane crashes in history:
The tragedy on Tenerife
On 27 March 1977, two Boeing 747s from the companies Pan Am and KLM crashed on the runway at Los Rodeos airport on the island of Tenerife. The airport was covered in thick fog as the captain of the KLM flight accelerated his jumbo jet down the runway. Further down was the Pan Am plane. Due to the fog, the KLM crew did not see the plane until it was too late. The ensuing collision claimed 593 lives. 61 people survived what is still the deadliest plane crash in history.
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A lot went wrong that fateful day. As a result of an explosion at Las Palmas airport and threats of more bombs, air traffic was diverted to Tenerife airport, which was not really designed to handle so much traffic.
In addition, there were a number of misunderstandings in the communication between the air traffic controller and the crews of the two planes, which ended with the KLM plane attempting to take off at the same time as the Pan Am plane was on the runway.
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The remains of the KLM plane in Tenerife. All on board this aircraft perished. Photo: AP / NTB
Deadliest single accident
During a flight between the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Osaka on 12 August 1985, a Boeing 747 went down. The crew ran into problems twelve minutes after take-off, but kept the plane in the air for just over half an hour before the disaster was a fact. 520 died in the accident. Four survived with major injuries. According to the Accident Investigation Board, which investigated the incident, the accident was probably due to damage to the plane’s fuselage, which led to problems in controlling the plane. The accident is the deadliest aircraft accident involving only one aircraft.
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Collision over India
On 12 November 1996, 349 people died when two planes crashed in mid-air over India. The two planes were Boeing 747 and Ilyushin Il-76 from Saudi Arabian Airlines and Kazakhstan Airlines, respectively. The two planes were on their way to the Indian cities of Dhahran and Delhi when things went wrong. The Accident Investigation Board, which investigated the accident, points to communication misunderstandings that led to the Kazakhstan Airlines plane being at the wrong altitude.
No one survived the accident.
Watch video: Plane crashes in Hellas
Cargo door opened – 346 died
On March 3, 1974, something went wrong when a Turkish Airlines flight was on its way from Istanbul to London via Paris. Outside the French capital, the crew lost control of the DC-10 after a cargo door opened while the plane was in the air. The unexpected opening led to an explosive decompression that damaged cables used to control the plane’s rudder surfaces. The plane crashed with 346 people on board.
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The design of the cargo doors was blamed for the accident as the design made the doors more vulnerable to the pressure differences between the inside of the aircraft and the air outside at high altitude. Until the Tenerife accident, this was the deadliest plane crash in history.
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The Operafjell accident is the plane crash that has claimed the most lives on Norwegian soil. Here are parts of the plane wreckage on top of Operafjellet in August 1996. Photo: Aleksander Nordahl / NTB archive photo
The worst plane crash on Norwegian soil
Here in Norway too, there have been a number of plane accidents over the years. The worst happened on Svalbard on 29 August 1996. A total of 141 Russians and Ukrainians died when a Russian Tupolev 154M plane crashed into Operafjellet during the approach to Longyearbyen.
The passenger plane was chartered by a Russian mining company. On board were miners and their families returning to work after a holiday.
Faulty navigation has been identified as the cause.
Despite the high death toll, the planes that crashed in connection with the terrorist attack on 11 September 2001 are not included in the article. The reason for this is that they crashed as a result of the will of the terrorists.
Sources: ABC News archive / Accident reports / Wikipedia
2024-01-06 20:46:31
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