Hello.

I was wondering what aviation accidents/incidents changed aviation to what it is now? Tenerife, AA191, DL191, Valujet 592, Swissair 111 etc. are some of the big ones, but are there any accidents that contributed to today's safety in the field that are not as widely acknowledged for that? I think that Pan Am 759 was a big contributor. UA173 set the basis for CRM training. The 2002 Germany collision enforced the idea of TCAS and the fact that pilots should trust it. AA96 and TK981 set the example of the dangers of depressurization and the need to fix even minor problems. What else is there?

Comet crash in January 1954, metal fatigue.

TWA & UAL over the Grand Canyon. BIG changes after that with a much improved ATC system. A long time ago, but perhaps the single most significant accident that resulted in changes to the ATC system.

Every accident does as procedures are reviewed, reassessed and revised as required.

British Airtours 28M, which found that seats located at the overwing exits must be spaced farther apart to aid in an emergency evacuation.

BravoOne wrote:

TWA & UAL over the Grand Canyon. BIG changes after that with a much improved ATC system. A long time ago, but perhaps the single most significant accident that resulted in changes to the ATC system.

+1. This was the first one that came to my mind.

Also, the 1986 mid-air collision between the AM DC-9 and Piper Archer over Cerritos. IIRC, that lead to a push for TCAS.

MH370 may (or may not) change the industry dramatically if it's ever found with new radar and tracking technology.

BravoOne wrote:

TWA & UAL over the Grand Canyon. BIG changes after that with a much improved ATC system. A long time ago, but perhaps the single most significant accident that resulted in changes to the ATC system.

Yeah, but it took yet another collision involving these same airlines, over New York City in 1960, to really get things moving.

Such a broad question. So many accidents resulted in procedure changes. Figure this. Since 1960( the approx. start of commercial jet flying) United has put more than 20 jets in the dirt with loss of life. Pan Am alone has a rough average of a 707 crash every 2 months. Don't get started on European carriers during the early jet age...Almost every crash contributes to aviation safety on a direct way it's hard to catalog. It's hard to rate significant. If a jet caused 20 deaths but the lesson learned saved someone's butt flying 400pax, it's a significant event.

The accidents which resulted in GPWS and Windshear alerts seem to top the list in my book. Others things to midigate CRM issues come in 3rd. Earlier accidents helped ALPA push for standard instrument layouts in aircraft as well as standardized runway lighting plus crew rest issues. It is an ever changing lea Ning Enviroment and need to stay ahead of the game. We still get our butts handed to us with events which we thought were solved like the Air France A330 over the ocean and the American Eagle ATR in icing in 1996 plus the Contential express in buffalo. The avanica 747 pilot mimicking the GPWS warning by saying "shut up gringo" when it was saying whoop whoop pull up still electrifies me. The list goes on and on and it's not a B is better than A or US vs foreign carrier thing. It's Human factors.

Flying as a pilot for the airlines is easy, fun and relaxing but you can not be complacent and you always have your guard up as aviation can be very unforgiving.

Good thread.

The UA DC-8 crash in Denver taught valueable lessons about lack of CRM. The NW 720B crash into the Everglades in the early sixties certainly effected how jets were operated and brought about a lot of research into " jet-upset". The BA 707 crash near Mt. Fuji in the mid-sixties taught valuable lessons about clear air turbulence. The DL DC-8 training accident at MSY put the focus on questionable FAA training procedures. I can think of many other examples. The important thing is that the industry has learned from every single accident. Sadly, sometimes needless lives were lost going down the learning curves. Air travel today is way safer then it was when I was young!

The four crashes on 9/11 although not technically accidents had the most profound effect on aviation/safety in all my years of being in the flying game.

This may not have resulted in the biggest changes, but being from the Washington, D.C. area I will never forget the day when the Air Florida 737-200 (?) crashed into the 16th Street bridge.

FlyHossD wrote:

BravoOne wrote:

TWA & UAL over the Grand Canyon. BIG changes after that with a much improved ATC system. A long time ago, but perhaps the single most significant accident that resulted in changes to the ATC system.

+1. This was the first one that came to my mind.

Also, the 1986 mid-air collision between the AM DC-9 and Piper Archer over Cerritos. IIRC, that lead to a push for TCAS.

Although that one provided greater momentum for further development of the TCAS, I believe it was PSA 182 that really started the trend towards finding something more effective than the "see and avoid" SOP. PSA 182 (I believe) really drove home the point TCAS was a necessity.

May 6, 1937...the Hindenburg disaster. The commercial passenger airship industry ceased to exist in a matter of seconds.

Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 without question was a huge kick in the behind for the commercial aviation industry as it was not only the first crash of a widebody aircraft carrying fare paying passengers. It reinforced the need for a ground proximity warning system and it also led to changes in other aircraft seat mounting and securing systems as the L-1011 had a seating design that was specifically cited by the NTSB as contributing to the high number of survivors in what was deemed an unsurvivable crash.

What about the crash of the AF A320 during a demo flight in 1988? First commercial fly-by-wire flight.

VARIG Flight 820 that crashed near Paris resulted in more strict safety procedures regarding cigarettes and lavatories, like "installation of placards prohibiting smoking in the lavatory and disposal of cigarettes in the lavatory waste receptacles; establishment of a procedure to announce to airplane occupants that smoking is prohibited in the lavatories; installation of ashtrays at certain locations; and repetitive inspections to ensure that lavatory waste receptacle doors operate correctly". Shame we still had to wait years for cigarettes to be completely banned from aircrafts.

Not exactly an accident, but the shootdown of KAL007 made GPS available to the airline industry so that pilots will always know where they are. GPS prior to KAL007 was for military use only I think!

AA 191. A big lesson in performing scheduled maintenance by the book and not via shortcuts.

CairnterriAIR wrote:

AA 191. A big lesson in performing scheduled maintenance by the book and not via shortcuts.

I think the same can be said for AS261, if I recall shotty maintenance intervals were a main cause in the jackscrew failing. Correct me if I'm wrong as I'm not 100% certain.

AQ243, before that fatigue wasn't a consideration in aircraft maintenance.

TWA flight 553, a DC9 midair collision with a Beechcraft Baron 55 over Ohio. This accident is what started the 250kts below 10,000ft in all areas. Apparently the TWA jet was in a descent at very high speeds and never had a chance to see and avoid the Beechcraft.
It also states that this accident is what created Class B airspace.
I find it interesting how each accident seems to have its own significance in one way or another.
Not to pick on TWA, but didn't flight 800 start the fuel tank inerting systems that are now found in aircraft fuel tanks?

trnswrld wrote:

Not to pick on TWA, but didn't flight 800 start the fuel tank inerting systems that are now found in aircraft fuel tanks?

Speaking of TWA 800 I believe the first TWA 800 accident in Rome in 1964 led to the changes in the way emergency slides are operated, from being manually operated to the automatic deployment we have now.

cheeken wrote:

Not exactly an accident, but the shootdown of KAL007 made GPS available to the airline industry so that pilots will always know where they are. GPS prior to KAL007 was for military use only I think!

LOOK at KAL 902. The 707'was shot up(fuselage straffed) and a missle took off 9ft of the left wing then the pilot put the 707 down on a frozen lake in Russia. Everyone jumps on KAL 007. That was the second KAL shoot down. Gross nav error!

Concorde crash in Paris put a nail in the coffin of supersonic commercial flights.

American Airlines flight 965 from Miami to Cali, Colombia in December of 1995.

"An enhanced ground proximity warning system was introduced in 1996, which could have prevented the accident.

Since 2002, all planes with more than six passengers are required to have an advanced terrain awareness warning system. No aircraft fitted with a TAWS/EGPWS suffered a controlled flight into terrain accident until July 28, 2010, when Airblue Flight 202 crashed into the Margalla Hills, Pakistan."

Aeromexico 498, collision with a Piper near LA in 1986.

Required all light aircraft have a Mode-C transponder that can report altitude and all jets in US airspace to be equipped with TCAS.

WOW! Finally a thread that is interesting, relative, about aviation and without bitterness, bickering or name-calling. Thanks for the great thread.

ImperialEagle wrote:

The UA DC-8 crash in Denver taught valueable lessons about lack of CRM. The NW 720B crash into the Everglades in the early sixties certainly effected how jets were operated and brought about a lot of research into " jet-upset". The BA 707 crash near Mt. Fuji in the mid-sixties taught valuable lessons about clear air turbulence. The DL DC-8 training accident at MSY put the focus on questionable FAA training procedures. I can think of many other examples. The important thing is that the industry has learned from every single accident. Sadly, sometimes needless lives were lost going down the learning curves. Air travel today is way safer then it was when I was young!

There was a UA DC-8 crash in Portland, OR on 12/28/78. Is that the one you're talking about?

afterburner wrote:

Concorde crash in Paris put a nail in the coffin of supersonic commercial flights.

No it didn't. BA never wanted to stop (were forced to) and both carriers returned to service 16mo later.

The 9/11 fallout and deaths at Cantor Fitzgerald did far more to harm SST pax flights than AF4590.

cheeken wrote:

Not exactly an accident, but the shootdown of KAL007 made GPS available to the airline industry so that pilots will always know where they are. GPS prior to KAL007 was for military use only I think!

GPS had the "civil" artificially derated mode from the get go. But the technical environment is "conservative".
Takes time for uptake.

Earlier Loran and Omega were available.
Finally and imho KAL007 probably was a planned provocation. nothing gained from better navigation.

LAX772LR wrote:

afterburner wrote:

Concorde crash in Paris put a nail in the coffin of supersonic commercial flights.

No it didn't. BA never wanted to stop (were forced to) and both carriers returned to service 16mo later.

The 9/11 fallout and deaths at Cantor Fitzgerald did far more to harm SST pax flights than AF4590.

Actually the Paris crash did play a role in the demise of Concordes operations, among multiple other reasons, the public very quickly lost faith in the Concorde after the crash, combined with lower yielding passenger traffic Post 9/11 and rising fuel prices, along with the fact that Concorde was aging and costing more and more in maintenance, Airbus stopped making parts for it, the ticket went from luxury travel to being just fast travel, as their were far better first class products available from other carriers that the Concorde just couldn't compete with, although the Paris crash wasn't the sole demise of the Concorde, it did for sure play a very large role in the aircrafts end of service. More a final nail in the coffin kind of thing. As for changes in the industry, major changes were solely for the Concorde needing reinforcements, but larger awareness for airports regarding FOD on the runways.

G-CIVP wrote:

Every accident does as procedures are reviewed, reassessed and revised as required.

Not so.

Very good thread! Pertinent, intelligent, relevant; with something enriching to be learnt in each post.
Thank You.

Seabear wrote:

May 6, 1937...the Hindenburg disaster. The commercial passenger airship industry ceased to exist in a matter of seconds.

They couldn't even spell TCAS back then much less envision it's development. TCAS was many, many years later.

gunnerman wrote:

Comet crash in January 1954, metal fatigue.

Amazing that OP missed out what has to be THE most significant crash as far as aircraft design and manufacture is concerned!

Also amazing that no-one has mentioned the other big three incidents influencing design and manufacture:

- Dan Air 707, 14/May/1977, Zambia - loss of horizontal stabiliser... led to damage tolerant design (knowing how and how fast cracks will grow) (relatively unknown crash probably since it's not a "sexy" airline or location and "only" six people died - but hugely influential for engineering!)

- Aloha 737, 28/Apr/1988 - much more spectacular incident (the "737 cabriolet") which led to recognition of the Widespread Fatigue Damage phenomenon

- JAL 747, 12/Aug/1985 - rear pressure bulkhead failure following incorrect repair; led to much more maintenance oversight and the requirement of fatigue and damage tolerance justification for every repair conducted since

SomebodyInTLS wrote:

gunnerman wrote:

Comet crash in January 1954, metal fatigue.

Amazing that OP missed out what has to be THE most significant crash as far as aircraft design and manufacture is concerned!

Also amazing that no-one has mentioned the other big three incidents influencing design and manufacture:

Amazing that you are with us to rectify all of this.

XLA2008 wrote:

LAX772LR wrote:

afterburner wrote:

Concorde crash in Paris put a nail in the coffin of supersonic commercial flights.

No it didn't. BA never wanted to stop (were forced to) and both carriers returned to service 16mo later.

The 9/11 fallout and deaths at Cantor Fitzgerald did far more to harm SST pax flights than AF4590.

Actually the Paris crash did play a role in the demise of Concordes operations, among multiple other reasons, the public very quickly lost faith in the Concorde after the crash, combined with lower yielding passenger traffic Post 9/11 and rising fuel prices, along with the fact that Concorde was aging and costing more and more in maintenance, Airbus stopped making parts for it, the ticket went from luxury travel to being just fast travel, as their were far better first class products available from other carriers that the Concorde just couldn't compete with, although the Paris crash wasn't the sole demise of the Concorde, it did for sure play a very large role in the aircrafts end of service. More a final nail in the coffin kind of thing. As for changes in the industry, major changes were solely for the Concorde needing reinforcements, but larger awareness for airports regarding FOD on the runways.

Yes, Concorde was getting too old and costly, and reached retirement age that's the plain fact. In terms of better 1st class products Concorde was on their on league, no first class service could compete with the speed and prestige of those old ladies. Richard Branson even bragged about buying BA's fleet, he knew he wouldn't be able to keep them but he was getting a slice of that prestige cake just for saying so.

The DH Comet crashes led to the first systematic and scientific examinations, as well as the first root cause analysis. No investigations, before or after, have had the same profound effect. To this day the AAIB is still considered the top shelf investigator, followed very closely by the NTSB.

oldannyboy wrote:

SomebodyInTLS wrote:

gunnerman wrote:

Comet crash in January 1954, metal fatigue.

Amazing that OP missed out what has to be THE most significant crash as far as aircraft design and manufacture is concerned!

Also amazing that no-one has mentioned the other big three incidents influencing design and manufacture:

Amazing that you are with us to rectify all of this.

Well, I was just a little surprised that in a thread such as this the top contenders (from an engineer's point of view) were missing!

SomebodyInTLS wrote:

Well, I was just a little surprised that in a thread such as this the top contenders (from an engineer's point of view) were missing!

Well at least for a structures engineer !
- from : a colleague in the systems department

BravoOne wrote:

G-CIVP wrote:
Every accident does as procedures are reviewed, reassessed and revised as required.
Not so.

Perhaps that could be corrected to : following almost every accident involving aircraft built or operated under democratic authorities, design solutions, certification requirements, manufacturing & assembly procedures, pilot procedures & training, ATC procedures & training and/or maintenance procedures & training will be reviewed, reassessed and revised as required. And same for investigation procedures, search & rescue and all other parts of the complete airline industry system.

But the idea is correct in that most accidents happening in the "Western" world, where most flying took place until recently, resulted in some kind of update somewhere in the air transport system. Which is something we can be proud of as few other industries have such a record (see "Normal Accidents" for a study of the matter)

WIederling wrote:

GPS had the "civil" artificially derated mode from the get go. But the technical environment is "conservative".
Takes time for uptake.

The basic Coarse Acquisition (C/A) code has indeed always been present in the military GPS system, but originally only as a first "gross acquisition" of position before proceeding to a second more complex code ("Y") for fine tuning of the position calculation. Hence its name

C/A was made available for public use (with selective availability) following the Korean Airlines incident. But civilian use only took off after shut down of selective availability in 2000. And that actually changed the whole world more than the air transport industry in particular (which already had nav systems with adequate performances).

Stitch wrote:

The FBW system worked correctly in that accident, as I recall. I believe the real cause was Pilot Error in picking the wrong runway (the one he thought he was on did not have a forest at the end) and flying too low and too slow.

The accident was due to a show-off overconfident crew (especially captain) bringing an aircraft full of people down to 30ft, at stall speed, with an unstable trajectory, altitude and attitude, over an unknown airfield without preparation, reconnaissance or coordination. At that point the aircraft was doomed.
FBW had nothing to do with getting the aircraft into such a low energy state, and was not significantly changed as a result of the accident, although the "low energy" warning in Airbus cockpit warning systems may be an indirect outcome.
Most of the procedures framing air show display flights in France were however subsequently updated and much more strictly enforced.

FBW was only introduced by naysayers at the time, by trying to focus on how the airplane might have perhaps been able to maybe fly clear if only the super-duper pilot (the same who'd got himself in a bind in the first place) had not been handicapped by the darn software. With no convincing arguments to support the idea...so they had to imagine a few, like the "FBW went into the irreversible Autoland Mode" for example.
Lack of rigour in investigation procedures and evidence traceability opened a wide door for these conspiracy theories, so these procedures were also much more strictly enforced in subsequent accidents under French authority like Concorde and AF447 (although the Mont St Odile Crash à couple years later in the same area was also plagued by similar issues. It did trigger a move to mandatory GPWS, which was further reinforced by the Cali crash and the appearance of E-GPWS)

PPVLC wrote:

XLA2008 wrote:

LAX772LR wrote:

No it didn't. BA never wanted to stop (were forced to) and both carriers returned to service 16mo later.

The 9/11 fallout and deaths at Cantor Fitzgerald did far more to harm SST pax flights than AF4590.

Actually the Paris crash did play a role in the demise of Concordes operations, among multiple other reasons, the public very quickly lost faith in the Concorde after the crash, combined with lower yielding passenger traffic Post 9/11 and rising fuel prices, along with the fact that Concorde was aging and costing more and more in maintenance, Airbus stopped making parts for it, the ticket went from luxury travel to being just fast travel, as their were far better first class products available from other carriers that the Concorde just couldn't compete with, although the Paris crash wasn't the sole demise of the Concorde, it did for sure play a very large role in the aircrafts end of service. More a final nail in the coffin kind of thing. As for changes in the industry, major changes were solely for the Concorde needing reinforcements, but larger awareness for airports regarding FOD on the runways.

Yes, Concorde was getting too old and costly, and reached retirement age that's the plain fact. In terms of better 1st class products Concorde was on their on league, no first class service could compete with the speed and prestige of those old ladies. Richard Branson even bragged about buying BA's fleet, he knew he wouldn't be able to keep them but he was getting a slice of that prestige cake just for saying so.

You might have to toss the Lockheed Electra in that group as well. The structural problem caused by the whirl mode of the engines/props was new unplowed territory in those days.

PPVLC wrote:

Yes, Concorde was getting too old and costly, and reached retirement age that's the plain fact.

Actually, it isn't. Costly, yes.

"Old"... no. Not in the sense that would apply to aircraft. Several of the aircraft, (G-BOAF, G-BOAE, F-BVFF if it had been retrofitted, etc) had were relatively light on design hours and cycles, and could've easily operated another decade or more, were they tasked to.

A few others:
BEA548 (Trident at Staines) - Need to have CVRs in all commercial aircraft

Air Ontario 1363 (Dryden) - Led to serious changes in de-icing and winter operation requirements

Air India 182 - Many security measures like Bag to Passenger matching, color x-ray, better bag tracking, better identification requirements to purchase international tickets...

The explosion that brought down Pan Am 103 in December 1988 made people more aware of the danger of a bag travelling without the passenger.

Great Southwest Airport in Fort Worth. 30 May 1972. FYI, airport is no longer there, but was due south of the current DFW. A DC9 came in following a DC10 touch and go training flight. While the pilots were cautioned to watch for turbulence, the DC9 hit the trailing vortex from the heavy and crashed. This changed the way aircraft are cautioned to maintain adequate separation from heavy aircraft.

gunnerman wrote:

The explosion that brought down Pan Am 103 in December 1988 made people more aware of the danger of a bag travelling without the passenger.

The lesson from AI182 hadn't been learnt at this stage, and certainly in the UK it profound effect on aviation security and really started off where we are now in that respect.

One I haven't seen so far, is the Germanwings flight a couple of years ago. There had been deliberate acts from the flight crew in the past, but this one really brought the issue to the public eye, and made the carriers change their ways of operating - all be it some of them have gone back on it now. It does never the less remain a potential issue, someone with the ideology that blowing themselves up in a music arena is a good idea, could just as easily next week be the sitting down with a 777 in their hands. The "deliberate acts" category, is one that must be worrying a few people. That is another discussion for another thread.

The American DC10 at ORD in 79 -
Obviously lead to the grounding of an aircraft, and the operational changes that took place as a result.
Aloha Airlines 737
Learning lessons about planes on high hours/corrosion and fatigue. Some parallels to some extent with JL123, but that was fundamentally down to poor repairs, Aloha was more a build up of wear and tear.
MH17
War zones or conflict areas are not generally over flown as much now as they were pre-MH17 (thinking of Syria, Iraq etc)
Turkish Airlines DC10 nr Paris 74
This was the first real big one, since the introduction of the widebodied aircraft, and the industry/news/public were use to hearing of 40, 50, 60 people losing their lives, now it was measured in the hundreds

As G-CIVP mentioned earlier, there are consequences from pretty much every accident, and they don't need to be of the scale of the JL747, AA DC10, TK DC10, AF SSC incidents to necessarily be the catalyst for change. Probably if we go back into the 1920s and 30s there are equally big steps made (just that most of us are not so familiar with them or around at the time), and several posts have mentioned the UA/TWA collision over the Grand Canyon as a major game changer. At some point someone must have decided not have windows that passengers could just open from the inside for example!! (a bit tongue in cheek)

I think it's worth adding there is more attention to these things these days too, so the media latch onto, and perhaps makes the industry change due to pressure......no one stopped flying over the Persian Gulf after IR655 did they? But they sure stopped over the area where MH17 was shot down though.

A very interesting topic and one that will keep a great many of us thinking for a while.

Air Canada 797 at CVG.

I lost a friend in that tragedy, but every time I hear the announcement for the emergency lights (which is up to 150+ times a year) I am grateful that the loss of his life was not in vain.

TheFlyingDisk wrote:

trnswrld wrote:

Not to pick on TWA, but didn't flight 800 start the fuel tank inerting systems that are now found in aircraft fuel tanks?

Speaking of TWA 800 I believe the first TWA 800 accident in Rome in 1964 led to the changes in the way emergency slides are operated, from being manually operated to the automatic deployment we have now.

Correct. There are pictures in the database of 707's/DC-8's in the early 60's with no slide packs on the doors. They were stored in overhead compartments near the doors. The idea was that in case of an evacuation the flight attendants would open the doors, remove the slide pack from the overhead compartment, hook the girt bar to the floor, then inflate the slide. It is definitely not practical inside a burning airplane with panicked passengers.

Many of the passengers in the same accident who died could have survived. They were seated closer to doors further back in the airplane. It is a natural tendency for people to go forward when exiting an airplane. Because of this, the safety briefings now say the closest exit may be behind you.



Back in the 70's there were a couple crashes, TWA near IAD and Eastern near CLT. In both accidents, there was unnecessary conversation in the cockpit. These accidents resulted in the sterile cockpit rule.


There were passengers who could have survived the Ethiopian hijacking crash but drowned because the life vests were inflated, keeping them from getting out. Now during the safety briefings they say not to inflate the life vest until you exit the airplane.