Airliner accidents that killed 200 or more people since 1970

Map of 16 locations · Worldwide

A dated record of civil and charter airliner accidents since 1970 in which 200 or more people died, in the order they occurred. Each entry gives what happened and how it was established, drawing on accident investigation findings and contemporary reporting. These are historical events, described as the record describes them. The set follows the commercial accidents in Wikipedia's list of deadliest aircraft accidents, read and transcribed by hand with every deliberate act left out, so it is a curator's reading of that record rather than a database query.

Places in this collection

  • China Airlines Flight 611 — A Boeing 747-200 series airplane experienced an in-flight breakup over the Taiwan Strait. Floating wreckage was sighted in an area 23 nauti…
  • American Airlines Flight 587 — The Airbus A300 climbed away from New York bound for Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic with 260 people on board. It lost its vertical…
  • Swissair Flight 111 — The MD-11, registered HB-IWF, was flying from New York to Geneva when a fire broke out on board, and it came down in the Atlantic while att…
  • Korean Air Flight 801 — The aircraft was on approach to the airport at Agana, Guam, when the radio altitude callouts began a sequential countdown: one hundred, fif…
  • Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision — Two aircraft met in Indian airspace at 14,000 feet over Charkhi Dadri, about 100 kilometres west of Delhi. The wreckage fell across farmlan…
  • TWA Flight 800 — The Boeing 747-131 was on a scheduled IFR flight from New York to Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris. At 13,500 feet an explo…
  • 1996 Air Africa crash in Kinshasa — An Antonov An-32B cargo aircraft flying under the name of Air Africa, operated by Moscow Airways and leased to the private carrier Scibe Ai…
  • China Airlines Flight 140 — The Airbus A300-600R, registration B-1816, pitched upwards on final approach to Nagoya Airport in Japan, entered an aerodynamic stall at lo…
  • Lauda Air Flight 004 — The Boeing 767-300ER was operating from Hong Kong to Vienna with an intermediate stop in Bangkok when the left engine's thrust reverser dep…
  • Arrow Air Flight 1285R — The Douglas DC-8-63 left Cairo at 20:35 GMT on 11 December 1985, carrying military personnel home to Fort Campbell, Kentucky after a six-mo…
  • Japan Air Lines Flight 123 — A Boeing 747 on a domestic service from Tokyo to Osaka suffered an explosive decompression. The crew kept the aircraft under some measure o…
  • Saudia Flight 163 — The Lockheed TriStar took off from Riyadh International Airport in Saudi Arabia and caught fire in flight. No evacuation followed. All thre…
  • Air New Zealand Flight 901 — The sightseeing flight to Antarctica left Auckland Airport at 8:17 a.m. local time on 28 November. Earlier flights on the route had taken a…
  • American Airlines Flight 191 — The DC-10 was bound for Los Angeles when it lost one of its engines moments after taking off from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. A…
  • Tenerife airport disaster — Two heavily loaded Boeing 747s collided on the runway at Los Rodeos Airport in Tenerife, Spain. KLM Flight 4805 from Amsterdam Schiphol was…
  • Turkish Airlines Flight 981 — The McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10 was flying from Istanbul-Atatürk to London-Heathrow with a layover at Paris-Orly. A cargo door of the same t…

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