Aviation safety archive
Explore the causes of aviation accidents and the lessons for safety. Each account traces the events, the investigation findings and the resulting changes to crew training, aircraft design and flight procedures.
Explore the archiveWe distinguish between fatal accidents, serious incidents, hijackings and emergency landings. Our editorial categories do not replace official classifications.
Flight analysis · NTSB DCA09MA026
From the bird strike to touchdown on the water. Select a moment to see how much altitude and time the crew of US Airways Flight 1549 had left.
Based on NTSB DCA09MA026. Key-point times and altitudes come from the investigation. The map uses actual OpenStreetMap geographic data. The flight line is an approximate reconstruction from Figure 1 of the report, not a GPS track; position and altitude between key moments are interpolated.
A shared event database
The filters bring together different outcomes while preserving each event’s official classification.
Found: 100 · Showing: 76–100
After one engine lost thrust, the crew failed to maintain bank control, and the Boeing 747 entered a steep spiral descent. Control was regained after losing more than nine kilometres of altitude.
During a night landing, the Tu-154 collided with airport vehicles left on the runway. People aboard and ground workers died.
A group of armed young people attempted to hijack the Tu-134 to Turkey. The crew returned to Tbilisi, where the aircraft was stormed after a prolonged standoff.
A fuel-mass calculation error left the Boeing 767 without operating engines. The crew glided to the former Gimli air base and landed.
Wear and a jackscrew defect caused the stabiliser to move unintentionally to its limit. The Yak-42 entered a dive and broke up.
All four engines stopped in succession within a volcanic ash cloud. After descending, the crew restarted them and landed in Jakarta.
After waiting in snowfall, the aircraft took off with contaminated wings and incorrect thrust indications, struck a bridge and fell into the Potomac.
A passenger An-24 collided with a military Tu-16. Larisa Savitskaya survived the fall of a fuselage section from high altitude.
After a cargo-compartment fire, the aircraft returned and landed safely but stopped far from rescuers. Evacuation did not begin before smoke spread.
Two passenger Tu-134s reached the same flight level and collided in cloud. The chain included errors in controller calculations, communication and altitude monitoring.
During takeoff, the left engine separated with its pylon, damaging the wing and systems. Asymmetric high-lift-device configuration caused a stall.
The Boeing 727 lost visual contact with a training Cessna but continued converging. After colliding, both aircraft fell into a residential area.
The aircraft moved between airports for several days under hijacker control. At Mogadishu, Germany’s GSG 9 freed the hostages.
Two Boeing 747s collided on an occupied runway in dense fog. Radio phraseology, a congested airfield and incomplete situational awareness combined in one chain.
After the hijacking, the aircraft reached Entebbe. A military hostage-rescue operation ended the episode, which became an important chapter in aviation security’s development.
A cargo door opened in flight, causing explosive decompression and damage to flight-control lines. The DC-10 became virtually uncontrollable.
On a night approach, the crew received unreliable attitude and heading indications. The Tu-104 entered a bank and struck the ground.
While the crew investigated a nose-gear indicator light, the aircraft descended unnoticed and struck marshland.
The Il-62 descended below a safe altitude during a night approach to Sheremetyevo and struck the ground. No unambiguous immediate cause could be established.
The Trident lost speed and stalled shortly after departing Heathrow. The investigation linked the sequence to high-lift-device configuration, airspeed and the captain’s condition.
An armed father and son demanded a diversion to Turkey. Flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko was fatally injured, and several crew members were wounded.
Coordinated hijackings of several international flights led to hostages being held in Jordan. After people were evacuated, three aircraft were publicly destroyed.
The Boeing 707 broke up in flight after encountering an exceptionally strong mountain wave downwind of Fuji. Surface weather did not reflect the loads at altitude.
Two airliners collided while approaching New York airports; wreckage fell on Staten Island and Brooklyn. The investigation examined navigation, speed and air traffic separation.
Two passenger airliners collided over Arizona outside controlled airspace. The accident exposed the limits of contemporary surveillance and separation systems.
How to read an investigation
An investigation report does not look for a hero or someone to blame. It reconstructs the chain of factors to help prevent the same combination from recurring.
Recorder data, communications, weather, physical evidence and operational records.
What happened to the aircraft and which decisions were made, second by second.
Technology, people, the environment and the organisation are considered together, rather than reduced to a single convenient cause.
Recommendations become training, design changes, procedures and new requirements.
Editorial standards
Fatality and survivor figures are checked against investigation materials. Where an official report is not publicly available, we say so explicitly. Eyewitness accounts are not presented as the investigation commission’s conclusions.
The terms “fatal accident”, “accident”, “serious incident” and “act of unlawful interference” are not interchangeable. We therefore display both the editorial category and the official classification.