Jessica Whitney Dubroff was a seven-year-old American trainee pilot who died while attempting to become the youngest person to fly a light aircraft across the United States. On day two of her quest, the Cessna 177B Cardinal single-engine aircraft, piloted by her flight instructor, Joe Reid, crashed during a rainstorm immediately after takeoff from Cheyenne Regional Airport in Cheyenne, Wyoming, killing Dubroff, her 57-year-old father Lloyd Dubroff, and Reid.
Centennial Airport is a public use airport owned by the Arapahoe County Public Airport Authority in the Denver-Aurora metropolitan area, 15 nautical miles southeast of downtown Denver, Colorado, United States. Located in Dove Valley, a census designated place in Arapahoe County, the airport's runways extend into Douglas County.
The Bell 206 is a family of two-bladed, single- and twin-engined helicopters, manufactured by Bell Helicopter at its Mirabel, Quebec, plant. Originally developed as the Bell YOH-4 for the United States Army's Light Observation Helicopter program, it was not selected by the Army. Bell redesigned the airframe and successfully marketed the aircraft commercially as the five-place Bell 206A JetRanger. The new design was eventually selected by the Army as the OH-58 Kiowa.
Taos Regional Airport is a public use airport eight nautical miles (15 km) northwest of the central business district of Taos, in Taos County, New Mexico, United States. It is owned by the Town of Taos. FAA's National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2009–2013 classifies it as a general aviation airport.
Piedmont Airlines Flight 22 was a Piedmont Airlines Boeing 727-22 that collided with a twin-engine Cessna 310 on July 19, 1967, over Hendersonville, North Carolina, United States. Both aircraft were destroyed and all passengers and crew were killed, including John T. McNaughton, an advisor to U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. The aircraft were both operating under instrument flight rules and were in radio contact with the Asheville control tower, though on different frequencies. The accident investigation was the first of a major scale conducted by the newly created National Transportation Safety Board. A review of the investigation conducted 39 years after the accident upheld the original findings that had placed primary responsibility on the Cessna pilot.
Hughes Airwest Flight 706 was a regularly scheduled flight operated by American domestic airline Hughes Airwest from Los Angeles, California to Seattle, Washington, with several intermediate stops. On Sunday, June 6, 1971, the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 serving as Flight 706 departed Los Angeles just after 6 p.m. en route to Seattle as a McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II of the United States Marine Corps was approaching Marine Corps Air Station El Toro near Irvine at the end of a flight from Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada. The two aircraft collided in midair over the San Gabriel Mountains near Duarte, killing all 49 aboard the DC-9 and the F-4 pilot; the F-4 radar intercept officer ejected and survived.
ALM Antillean Airlines Flight 980 was a flight scheduled to fly from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City to Princess Juliana International Airport in St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles, on 2 May 1970. After several unsuccessful landing attempts, the aircraft's fuel was exhausted, and it made a forced water landing in the Caribbean Sea 48 km off St. Croix, with 23 fatalities and 40 survivors.
The 2006 Mercy Air helicopter accident occurred on December 10, 2006, about 17:55 Pacific Standard Time, when a Bell 412SP helicopter, call sign "Mercy Air 2" impacted mountainous terrain near Hesperia, California and the Cajon Pass. The commercial helicopter pilot and two medical crew members were killed, and the helicopter was destroyed by impact forces and a postcrash fire.
Texas International Airlines Flight 655, registration N94230, was a Convair 600 turboprop aircraft en route from El Dorado to Texarkana, Arkansas, crashing into Black Fork Mountain, Arkansas, on the night of September 27, 1973. The eight passengers and three crewmembers on board were killed.
On August 8, 2009, at 11:53 a.m. (15:53 UTC), nine people died when a tour helicopter and a small private airplane collided over the Hudson River near Frank Sinatra Park in Hoboken, New Jersey, United States. The aircraft were in an area known as the "Hudson River VFR Corridor", which extends from the surface of the river to altitudes of 800 to 1,500 ft at various locations along the Hudson River in the immediate area of New York City. Within this corridor, aircraft operate under visual flight rules (VFR), under which the responsibility to see and avoid other air traffic rests with the individual pilots rather than with the air traffic controller (ATC).
In the early morning of Monday, August 27, 1990, American musician Stevie Ray Vaughan was killed in a helicopter crash near East Troy, Wisconsin, at age 35. He was one of the most influential blues guitarists of the 1980s, described by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as "the second coming of the blues".
UPS Airlines Flight 1354 (5X1354/UPS1354) was a scheduled cargo flight from Louisville, Kentucky, to Birmingham, Alabama. On August 14, 2013, the Airbus A300 flying the route crashed and burst into flames short of the runway on approach to Birmingham–Shuttlesworth International Airport. Both pilots were pronounced dead at the scene of the crash. They were the only people aboard the aircraft. It was the second fatal air crash for UPS Airlines.
The 1971 Colorado Aviation Aero Commander 680 crash claimed the life of decorated American World War II veteran Audie Murphy and five other people on May 28, 1971. The aircraft's passengers were on a business trip from Atlanta, Georgia, to Martinsville, Virginia, aboard an Aero Commander 680 Super twin-engined aircraft owned and operated by Colorado Aviation Co, Inc. The aircraft crashed into the side of Brush Mountain, 14 nautical miles northwest of Roanoke, Virginia, during conditions of poor visibility.
On August 1, 1977, a Bell 206 news helicopter piloted by American pilot Francis Gary Powers ran out of fuel and crashed into a field near Encino, Los Angeles, California, killing Powers and the aircraft's only passenger, cameraman George Spears.
On 4 August 2018, a de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver aircraft operated by K2 Aviation crashed in poor weather at Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska, United States. All five people on board survived the crash, but died before rescuers were able to arrive at the scene. The five people consisted of the pilot and four Polish tourists.
Continued VFR into IMC is when an aircraft operating under visual flight rules intentionally or unintentionally enters into instrument meteorological conditions. Flying an aircraft without visual reference to the ground can lead to a phenomenon known as spatial disorientation, which can cause the pilot to misperceive the angle, altitude, and speed at which the aircraft is traveling. This is considered a very serious safety hazard in general aviation. According to AOPA’s Nall Report, approximately 4% of general aviation accidents are weather related, yet these accidents account for more than 25% of all fatalities.
Ozark Air Lines Flight 965 was a scheduled commercial flight from Chicago, Illinois, to Lambert Field in St. Louis, Missouri, with a scheduled intermediate stopover at Greater Peoria Regional Airport in Peoria, Illinois. On March 27, 1968, the Douglas DC-9-15 jetliner operating the flight, carrying 44 passengers and five crew, collided in mid-air with a single-engined Cessna 150F while both aircraft were on approach to the same runway at Lambert Field. The DC-9 landed safely with no injuries to any of its 49 occupants, while both pilots in the two-person Cessna died in the collision and subsequent ground impact.
