An aviation accident is defined by the Convention on International Civil Aviation Annex 13 as an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft, which takes place from the time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of flight until all such persons have disembarked, and in which (a) a person is fatally or seriously injured, (b) the aircraft sustains significant damage or structural failure, or (c) the aircraft goes missing or becomes completely inaccessible. Annex 13 defines an aviation incident as an occurrence, other than an accident, associated with the operation of an aircraft that affects or could affect the safety of operation.
British European Airways (BEA), formally British European Airways Corporation, was a British airline which existed from 1946 until 1974.
The 1985 Manchester Airport disaster occurred when British Airtours Flight 28M, an international passenger flight, was en-route from Manchester Airport to Corfu International Airport and caught fire on takeoff on 22 August, 1985. The accident resulted in 55 fatalities.
As of July 2020, a total of 60 Boeing 747 aircraft, or just under 4% of the total number of 747s built, first flown commercially in 1970, have been involved in accidents and incidents resulting in a hull loss, meaning that the aircraft was either destroyed or damaged beyond economical repair. Of the 60 Boeing 747 aircraft losses, 32 resulted in no loss of life; in one, a hostage was murdered; and in one, a terrorist died. Some of the aircraft that were declared damaged beyond economical repair were older 747s that sustained relatively minor damage. Had these planes been newer, repairing them might have been economically viable, although with the 747's increasing obsolescence, this is becoming less common. Some 747s have been involved in accidents resulting in the highest death toll of any civil aviation accident, the highest death toll of any single airplane accident, and the highest death toll of a midair collision. As with most airliner accidents, the root of cause(s) in these incidents involved a confluence of multiple factors that rarely could be ascribed to flaws with the 747's design or its flying characteristics.
The Winter Hill air disaster occurred on 27 February 1958, when the Silver City Airways Bristol 170 Freighter G-AICS, operated by Manx Airlines on a charter flight from the Isle of Man to Manchester, England, crashed during heavy snow into Winter Hill, 5 miles (8.0 km) southeast of Chorley. Thirty-five people died and seven were injured; the cause was determined to be navigational errors.
Invicta International Airlines Flight 435 (IM435) was a Vickers Vanguard 952, flying from Bristol Lulsgate to Basel-Mulhouse, which crashed into a forested hillside near Hochwald, Switzerland on 10 April 1973. The aircraft somersaulted and broke up, killing 108 people, with 37 survivors. To date, this is the deadliest accident involving a Vickers Vanguard and the deadliest aviation accident to occur on Swiss soil. Many of the 139 passengers on the charter flight were women, members of the Axbridge Ladies Guild, from the Somerset towns and villages of Axbridge, Cheddar, Winscombe and Congresbury. The accident left 55 children motherless and became known in the British media as the Basle air crash.
Yemenia Flight 626 was an Airbus A310-324 twin-engine jet airliner operated by Yemenia that was flying a scheduled international service, from Sana'a in Yemen to Moroni in Comoros, when it crashed on 30 June 2009 at around 1:50 am local time while on approach to Prince Said Ibrahim International Airport, killing all but one of the 153 passengers and crew on board. The sole survivor, 12-year-old girl Bahia Bakari, was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for thirteen hours. Bakari was discharged from the hospital on 23 July 2009.
Air France has been in operation since 1933. Its aircraft have been involved in a number of major accidents and incidents. The deadliest accident of the airline occurred on June 1, 2009, when Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330-203, flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed into the Atlantic Ocean with 228 fatalities. A selected list of the most noteworthy of these events is given below.
Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 was a scheduled international Afriqiyah Airways passenger flight that crashed on 12 May 2010 at about 06:01 local time on approach to Tripoli International Airport, about 1,200 metres short of the runway. Of the 104 passengers and crew on board, 103 were killed. The sole survivor was a 9-year-old Dutch boy. The crash of Flight 771 was the third hull-loss of an Airbus A330 involving fatalities, occurring eleven months after the crash of Air France Flight 447.
The 1950 Heathrow BEA Vickers Viking crash occurred on 31 October 1950 when a Vickers Viking operated by British European Airways (BEA) crashed at London Airport in heavy fog. The aircraft was on a scheduled flight between Paris and London's Northolt airport and 28 of the 30 passengers and crew on board were killed.
Air Bagan Flight 011 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight of a Fokker 100 twinjet from Yangon to Heho, Myanmar. On 25 December 2012, the aircraft crash-landed short of the runway at Heho Airport in fog, coming to a stop in a paddy field and bursting into flames. One of the 71 people on board and a motorcyclist on the ground were killed and more than 10 people were injured.
British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) was the British state-owned airline created in 1939 by the merger of Imperial Airways and British Airways Ltd. It continued operating overseas services throughout World War II. After the passing of the Civil Aviation Act 1946, European and South American services passed to two further state-owned airlines, British European Airways (BEA) and British South American Airways (BSAA). BOAC absorbed BSAA in 1949, but BEA continued to operate British domestic and European routes for the next quarter century. The Civil Aviation Act 1971 merged BOAC and BEA, effective 31 March 1974, forming today's British Airways.
On Friday, January 3, 1992, a Beechcraft 1900 operating CommutAir Flight 4821 crashed into a wooded hillside near Gabriels, New York while conducting an ILS approach to Runway 23 at the Adirondack Regional Airport. The cause of the accident was determined to be pilot error. There were two people killed in the crash, and two survivors.
