What makes planes crash

Nevertheless, plane crashes do happen occasionally, both in private aircraft and commercial airliners. And of course, the flying public wants to know why. Careful analysis of a number of plane crashes has identified five main reasons, although many accidents are caused by a combination of factors. Let us take a look at each of these in turn….

This might seem surprising at first glance. After all, pilots are skilled, highly trained individuals, and their performance is constantly being assessed. Even in the fairly recent past, this was the way air crashes caused by human error were viewed. It was considered that pilots simply should not be making mistakes, and something was very wrong if they were. Pilot error, it was thought, just should not happen. But careful research of air crashes showed that this was not the correct way to think about it.

Pilots are simply ordinary human beings, and they have an extraordinary amount of work to do and information which they need to process, when flying a complicated machine like a modern airliner. There are numerous opportunities for things to go wrong, from failing to program the flight management computer correctly, to miscalculating the fuel uplift, to give but a couple of examples. This was far more than just a change in terminology but became a complete change of perception.

And efforts were made to standardize instruments and procedures, and to improve checks and balances, in order to make mistakes less likely to occur. For example, a fairly recent example of a crash attributed to mistakes by the flight crew occurred when an airplane struck a seawall at San Francisco International Airport in , causing the deaths of three passengers and numerous injuries to passengers and crew members.

It was found that the pilots had been experiencing severe fatigue, which most likely degraded their performance during the approach. Efforts are now constantly being made to ensure that pilots do not become too fatigued, and are not overloaded by work pressures or complicated systems so that these accidents are less likely to happen.

Modern planes are far safer than aircraft were in the past, and are becoming more so as time goes on. But planes are massive feats of complex engineering, and are made up of hundreds of separate systems and parts. Contact us at or submit our online form to get started with a free consultation. A ranking in The U. It is considered the most reliable, unbiased source of legal referrals anywhere.

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Essentially, when weather and visibility are good, aircraft are permitted to operate under visual flight rules VFR. When weather and visibility are bad, aircraft are required to operate under instrument flight rules IFR. When an airplane comes in for a landing, it follows what is called a glide path. The standard glide path is 3 degrees up from the runway touchdown zone, and makes for a smooth transition from regular flight to landing. It is called a glide path because in the early days of aviation most airplanes would glide in for a landing using little or no power.

It consists of bars of red and white lights that tell the pilot whether the aircraft is on, above, or below the glide path. If all lights are red the aircraft is below the glide path, a combination of red and white indicates on the glide path, and all white tells the pilot that the aircraft is above the glide path. Fortunately, controllers don't make many miscues. A FAA study found that U. Only 41 of those miscues were deemed "high risk" mistakes, but the FAA concluded that seven of them might have resulted in catastrophic accidents [source: Halsey ].

Maintenance mistakes also can cause crashes. In , the crash of Japan Airlines Flight that killed people was linked to a faulty repair performed years before. That had allowed fatigue cracks to spread and weakened the bulkhead, which eventually resulted in a catastrophic failure [source: FAA ].

HowStuffWorks picks related titles based on books we think you'll like. Should you choose to buy one, we'll receive a portion of the sale. Many years ago, I was on an airliner that was descending to land at Los Angeles International Airport, when it suddenly soared back high into the air.

The pilot came on the public-address system to explain that another jet was on the runway where we were supposed to land.

It had been a scary moment, but I was reassured by how the pilot had spotted the problem and used his skills to keep us safe. Sign up for our Newsletter!

Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. Commercial airliners crash for all kinds of reasons, but they crash very rarely and airline travel is statistically very safe.

Asiana Airlines flight , which crashed in while landing at San Francisco International Airport, was blamed on flight crew and pilot error. Just 6 to 10 percent of air crashes are related to weather. Libyan agents planted a bomb on Pan Am Flight on December 21, The plane exploded midair over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing people.

The air traffic control tower at Manchester Airport in the U. Sources Air Accidents Investigation Branch. March 26, January There have been CFIT accidents caused by human errors back on the ground. Aeroperu flight crashed into the sea off Peru in after the instruments stopped working and the computer bombarded the crew with a series of baffling emergency messages.

A maintenance worker had forgotten to remove tape from "static ports" needed to feed data to the instruments. At night over the sea, it was impossible for the crew to know their altitude and a wing hit the water. All 70 people on board died.

There are other crashes that investigators have laid firmly at the door of mechanical or material failure. The deadliest single-plane crash was in when a Boeing , Japan Airlines flight , crashed into a mountain, killing people.

It was caused by mechanical problems - a badly repaired rear pressure bulkhead ruptured leading to total loss of control. But while there are crashes that are manifestly pilot error or manifestly mechanical failure, most experts emphasise that there's usually a range of interconnected and complicated factors that contribute to any crash. The deadliest ever incident happened when two Boeing s collided on the runway in Tenerife. The accident in which people perished occurred in thick fog with limited communication between the control tower and the two planes.

It shows the chain of events that leads to accidents, says Graham Braithwaite, professor of safety and accident investigation at Cranfield University. If there hadn't been a bomb attack at nearby Gran Canaria, planes would not have been diverted there, crowding the runway. The airport was built in a place that was prone to sea fog, he notes. The communication system from the control tower to the planes was poor. Sometimes the best people can make the worst mistakes, Braithwaite suggests.

The air accident most commonly linked to the current Malaysia Airlines situation happened in June It took days for the wreckage to be found and three years for the mystery to be solved. The plane had stalled after pilot error. A transcript of the pilots' conversation shows just how confused they had become.