This is a list of notable heads of state and heads of government who have died from aviation accidents, usually while in office.
| Name | Title | Date | Place | Country | Type | Aircraft model |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dag Hammarskjöld [4] |  Secretary-General of the United Nations | 18 September 1961 | Ndola |  Rhodesia and Nyasaland | Airplane accident (disputed) | Douglas DC-6 |
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.
The Linate Airport disaster occurred in Italy at Linate Airport in Milan on the morning of Monday, 8 October 2001. Scandinavian Airlines System Flight 686, a McDonnell Douglas MD-87 airliner carrying 110 people bound for Copenhagen, Denmark, collided on take-off with a Cessna Citation CJ2 business jet carrying four people bound for Paris, France. All 114 people on both aircraft were killed, as well as four people on the ground.
Transportes Aéreos del Continente Americano, S.A., operating as Avianca El Salvador, is an airline owned by Kingsland Holdings and based in San Salvador, El Salvador. It is one of the seven national branded airlines in the Avianca Group of Latin American airlines, and it serves as the flag carrier of El Salvador.
On the evening of February 1, 1991, USAir Flight 1493, a Boeing 737-300, collided with SkyWest Airlines Flight 5569, a Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner turboprop aircraft, upon landing at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). As Flight 1493 was on final approach the local controller was distracted, though air traffic was not heavy at LAX, by a series of abnormalities, including a misplaced flight progress strip and an aircraft that had inadvertently switched off the tower frequency. The SkyWest flight was told to taxi into takeoff position, while the USAir flight was landing on the same runway.
Whiteman Airport is a general aviation airport in the northeastern San Fernando Valley community of Pacoima, in the city of Los Angeles, California, United States.
Mexicana de Aviación Flight 940, operated by Mexicana de Aviación, was a scheduled international flight from Mexico City to Los Angeles with stopovers in Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlán on March 31, 1986, utilizing a Boeing 727-200 registered as XA-MEM, when the plane crashed into El Carbón, a mountain in the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range northwest of Mexico City, killing everyone on board. With 167 deaths, the crash of Flight 940 is the deadliest aviation disaster ever to occur on Mexican soil, and the deadliest involving a Boeing 727.
Spanair Flight 5022 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Barcelona–El Prat Airport to Gran Canaria Airport, Spain, via Madrid–Barajas Airport that crashed just after take-off from runway 36L at Madrid Airport at 14:24 CEST (12:24 UTC) on 20 August 2008. The aircraft was a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, registration EC-HFP. Of the 172 passengers and crew on board, 154 died and 18 survived.
On the night of September 19, 2008, a Learjet 60 business jet operating for Global Exec Aviation, crashed during take-off from Columbia Metropolitan Airport in South Carolina.
Ethiopian Airlines, the national airline of Ethiopia, has a good safety record. As of March 2019, the Aviation Safety Network records 64 accidents/incidents for Ethiopian Airlines that total 459 fatalities since 1965, plus six accidents for Ethiopian Air Lines, the airline's former name. Since July 1948, the company wrote off 36 aircraft, including three Boeing 707s, three Boeing 737s, one Boeing 767, two Douglas DC-3s, two Douglas DC-6, one de Havilland Canada DHC-5 Buffalo, two de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otters, 21 subtypes of the Douglas C-47, one Lockheed L-749 Constellation and one Lockheed L-100 Hercules.
Cubana de Aviación Flight 9046 was a chartered Ilyushin Il-62M airliner operated by Cubana, which crashed on 3 September 1989, shortly after takeoff from José Martí International Airport.
Suicide by pilot is an aviation event in which a pilot deliberately crashes or attempts to crash an aircraft as a suicide act, with or without the intention of causing harm to passengers on board or people on the ground. If others are killed, it may be considered a type of murder–suicide. It is suspected to have been a possible cause in several commercial flight crashes and has been confirmed as the cause in other instances. Determining the motives of pilots can be challenging for crash investigators, as pilots may intentionally disable recording devices or engage in other actions to impede future investigations. Consequently, definitively proving pilot suicide can be difficult.
