What possibilites can cause a plane to crash?

Answer 1

Planes crash for many reasons, in fact, when a major airline plane crashes, the investigation is very thorough and the investigating authority and manufacturer of the aircraft most often notify the airlines that use that type of plane what the cause was and what can be done to prevent that failure in the future.

Just a sample list of causes of major air crashes are:

• Running out of fuel. Believe it or not, this has happened for a variety of reasons such as miscommunication with the control tower resulting in delay in permission to land; terrorist hijackers believing that the pilot was lying about the fuel level; fuel leaking from one tank and the flight crew misinterpreting the indicators and shutting down the wrong fuel tank, to name a few.
• Weather related issues. Some of those include wind shear; icing; poor visibility, etc.
• Mechanical errors. Those can be from manufacturing defects, maintenance errors, and many miscellaneous, one of a kind failures.
• 'Pilot error'. Although an air crash will often be labeled pilot error, that is not as straightforward designation as it sounds. Airline pilots all over the world are very well trained and have passed rigorous testing. However, like the crew misinterpreting the fuel indicators above, it was determined that there was a real problem in the information that could be known from what the indicators said; in other words, the problem was as much with the indicator function as the crew trying to evaluate the problem. Another area that often gets a 'pilot error' label is when manufacturers that provide the information on their plane that is used to train the pilots for those planes occasionally is omitted, or incorrect and misleading information is supplied.
• Air traffic control errors and signal beacon failures.
• Deliberately shot down or bombed. Quite rare but it happens. When an airline plane is shot down, the party responsible usually does not admit it or claims it was an error.
• Large bird ingestion? That's the named cause for the US Airways Flight 1549 that landed on the Hudson River on 1/15/09.

See the link below for reports issued by the National Transportation Safety Board for Aviation Accident Reports.