What are reasons why airplanes crash?

Answer 1

Almost all airplane crashes occur due to a series of events. While possible, it is rare to find an airplane crash attributed to a single reason. For example, a Bashkirian Airlines Tupolev Tu-154M airplane crashed midair into a DHL Boeing 757-23APF cargo airplane over southern Germany on 1 July 2002. The accident investigation revealed several contributing factors to the crash (1):

· Contrary to regulations, there were insufficient air traffic controllers on duty in the Swiss Air Traffic Control (ATC) center (although the crash took place in the German skies, both aircraft were at the time under the control of the Swiss ATC)

· The collision detection and alert system at the Swiss ATC center was not working

· Even though a neighboring ATC center noticed the impending crash, they could not call the Swiss ATC to alert the Swiss ATC center because the Swiss's ATC center's primary and secondary phone lines were not working; and

· The Bashkirian Airlines pilot failed to follow the advisory instructions issued by the aircraft's Traffic Collision and Avoidance System (TCAS).

Had any single one of the above factors not occurred, the collision almost certainly would have been averted. The above example goes to illustrate how several seemingly unrelated events occur together to cause a crash.

A study of nearly 2000 plane crashes idenifies the following causes as contributing factors to airplane crashes (2):

· Pilot Error 53%

· Mechanical Failure 21%

· Weather 11%

· Other Human Error (eg lack of communication, improper maintenance etc) 8%

· Sabotage and Terrorism 6%

· Other Causes 1%

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_collision
2: http://airplanes.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_causes_of_aircraft_accidents