On the 15th of May 2017, a Learjet on final approach to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey abruptly rolled inverted and nosedived into the ground, sending a fireball ripping through an industrial office park and killing both pilots, the only people on board. The jet was normally used to transport…

On the 23rd of November 1996, three men stormed the cockpit of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 767, beat the First Officer, and demanded that the Captain fly the plane — and everyone in it — to the far-off land of Australia. Unable to convince the hijackers that the wide body…

On the 3rd of May 1968, a Lockheed L-188 Electra on its way from Houston to Dallas encountered a line of powerful thunderstorms high above the plains of Texas. But as air traffic controllers busily rerouted aircraft around the east end of the squall line, the crew of the Electra…

On the 31st of August 1986, a quiet holiday weekend in the Los Angeles suburb of Cerritos was shattered by a distant bang, the roar of engines, and a mighty explosion. In the skies overhead, two planes had come together in the busy airspace near Los Angeles International Airport: a…

On the 10th of August 2014, an Iranian airliner lost height and crashed shortly after takeoff from Tehran, killing 40 people and bringing the safety of an aircraft type into question. The plane involved was a little known HESA IrAn-140, an Iranian license-built version of the Ukrainian Antonov An-140 regional…

On the 15th of November 1987, a Continental Airlines DC-9 lost control seconds after takeoff from Denver, Colorado, sending the plane sliding upside down off the runway amid blinding snow. After a delicate operation to free dozens of people trapped under the upturned wreckage, the toll became clear: of the…

On the 11th of September 1974, an Eastern Airlines DC-9 crashed short of the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina, claiming the lives of 72 people. Only ten survived the heavy impact and ensuing inferno, which consumed the plane so fast that passengers burned where they sat. But why had the…

On the 27th of December 1991, a Scandinavian Airlines MD-81 lost power in both engines just one minute after takeoff from Stockholm, forcing the pilots to make a desperate and unenviable choice: where to land their stricken airliner? With only moments to decide, and the snowbound forests outside Sweden’s capital…

On the 15th of August 2019, Russia awoke to its own “Miracle on the Hudson:” after ingesting birds into both engines, an Ural Airlines Airbus A321 made a dramatic forced landing in a cornfield outside Moscow, sliding to a stop intact amid the tall corn stalks, saving the lives of…