UTA Flight 141 was a scheduled international passenger flight operated by Guinean regional airline Union des Transports Africains de Guinée, flying from Conakry to Dubai with stopovers in Benin, Libya and Lebanon. On 25 December 2003, the Boeing 727-223 operating the flight struck a building and crashed into the Bight of Benin while rolling for take off from Cotonou, killing 141 people. The crash of Flight 141 was the deadliest crash in Benin's aviation history.
László Ede Almásy de Zsadány et Törökszentmiklós was a Hungarian aristocrat, motorist, desert explorer, aviator, Scout-leader and sportsman who served as the basis for the protagonist in both Michael Ondaatje's novel The English Patient (1992) and the movie adaptation of the same name (1996).
Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was a scheduled flight from New York JFK to Miami. Shortly before midnight on December 29, 1972, the Lockheed L-1011-1 TriStar crashed into the Florida Everglades, causing 101 fatalities. All three cockpit crew members, two of the 10 flight attendants, and 96 of the 163 passengers were killed; there were 75 survivors.
Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, also known as Miracle Flight 571, was a chartered flight from Montevideo, Uruguay, bound for Santiago, Chile, that crashed in the Andes mountains on 13 October 1972. The accident and subsequent survival became known as the Andes flight disaster and the Miracle of the Andes.
Northwest Airlines Flight 255, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, crashed shortly after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport on August 16, 1987, about 8:46 pm EDT, resulting in the deaths of all six crew members and 148 of its 149 passengers, along with two people on the ground. The sole survivor was a 4-year-old girl who sustained serious injuries. It was the second-deadliest aviation accident at the time in the United States. It is also the deadliest aviation accident to have a sole survivor.
The C-82 Packet is a twin-engine, twin-boom cargo aircraft designed and built by Fairchild Aircraft. It was used briefly by the United States Army Air Forces and the successor United States Air Force following World War II.
Elleston Trevor was a British novelist and playwright who wrote under several pseudonyms. Born Trevor Dudley-Smith, he eventually changed his name to Elleston Trevor. Trevor worked in many genres, but is principally remembered for his 1964 adventure story The Flight of the Phoenix, written as Elleston Trevor, and for a series of Cold War thrillers featuring the British secret agent Quiller, written under the pseudonym Adam Hall.
Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 was a regularly scheduled flight from Tripoli to Cairo via Benghazi that was shot down in 1973 by Israeli fighter jets after flying off course into prohibited airspace.
Flight of the Phoenix is a 2004 American survival drama film directed by John Moore and written by Scott Frank and Edward Burns. The film is a remake of the 1965 film of the same name, both based on the 1964 novel The Flight of the Phoenix, by Elleston Trevor, about a group of people who survive an aircraft crash in the Gobi Desert and must build a new aircraft out of the old one to escape. It stars Dennis Quaid, Giovanni Ribisi, Tyrese Gibson, Miranda Otto and Hugh Laurie.
Lady Be Good is a B-24D Liberator bomber that disappeared without a trace on its first combat mission during World War II. The plane, which was from 376th Bomb Group of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), was believed to have been lost—with its nine-man crew—in the Mediterranean Sea while returning to its base in Libya following a bombing raid on Naples on April 4, 1943. However, the wreck was accidentally discovered 710 km (440 mi) inland in the Libyan Desert by an oil exploration team from British Petroleum on November 9, 1958.
The Flight of the Phoenix is a 1965 American survival drama film produced and directed by Robert Aldrich, based on the 1964 novel of the same name by English author Elleston Trevor. The story follows a small group of men struggling to survive their aircraft's emergency landing in the Sahara. It stars an ensemble cast, with James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Peter Finch, Hardy Krüger, Ernest Borgnine, Ian Bannen, Ronald Fraser, Christian Marquand, Dan Duryea and George Kennedy.
The Tallmantz Phoenix P-1 was an FAA-certified one-off aircraft built for the 1965 film production The Flight of the Phoenix and used in the picture's initial aerial sequences. Its pilot Paul Mantz was killed in an accident during a touch-and-go maneuver to simulate a takeoff, after which the plane was replaced by a crudely modified North American O-47A.
Sole Survivor is a CBS Friday Night Movie directed by Paul Stanley and starring Richard Basehart, William Shatner, and Vince Edwards. The film, written by screenwriter Guerdon Trueblood, was first aired on television in 1970.
American Airlines Flight 6780, the first fatal crash of a Convair 240, occurred on January 22, 1952.
The 1949 Manchester BEA Douglas DC-3 accident occurred when a twin-engined British European Airways Douglas DC-3 crashed on Saddleworth Moor in the Pennines near Oldham, Lancashire, after a flight from Belfast. The accident killed 24 of the passengers and crew on board. The aircraft had first flown in 1944, and was captained by F. W. Pinkerton, a former RAF serviceman who, as a sergeant, had been posted missing during World War II. The airline was government-owned.
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 Cyrenaican desert campaign was a military campaign conducted by the Libyan military in the form of hit-and-run attacks against rebel-held towns and oil facilities in the eastern Libyan Desert that began in April 2011, during the Libyan Civil War. The campaign failed in denying anti-Gaddafi forces control of southern Cyrenaica.
Pan Am Flight 121 was a scheduled Pan American World Airways flight from Karachi to Istanbul. On the evening of June 18, 1947, the Lockheed L-049 Constellation serving the flight, known as the Clipper Eclipse, suffered an engine failure. This led to the overheating of the remaining engines until one caught fire, which spread to the aircraft. The heat from burning magnesium parts caused the engine to fall from the aircraft, leaving it unable to maintain altitude. Early in the morning of June 19, 1947 the plane crashed in the Syrian desert 4 miles from the town of Mayadin. Fifteen people were killed, including 7 crew and 8 passengers. The three surviving crew members were third officer Gene Roddenberry, the chief purser, and one flight attendant. After rescuing passengers from the burning wreckage, Roddenberry took control as the ranking flight officer and organized scout parties to find aid. By midday, the Syrian Army took the survivors to the hospital at Deir ez-Zor. The majority returned to the United States quickly while Roddenberry remained in Syria for two weeks to answer questions about the crash from the local government.
The 2000 Marsa Brega Short 360 crash occurred on 13 January 2000 when a Swiss-registered Short 360 leased by Avisto ditched into the sea near Marsa Brega in Libya. The aircraft was chartered by Sirte Oil Company to transport oil workers to the city. It was carrying 41 people. Most of the passengers were foreigners. As both engines failed in mid-flight, the crew chose to ditch the aircraft. A total of 21 people died in the crash.
