Timeline of worst air tragedies in recent years
The Airbus A320-200 vanished from radar screens on Decenber 28, less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia’s second-biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore. (Source: AP)
Here is a look at some of the world’s deadliest air disasters in recent years:
March 24, 2015| Paris: A passenger jet carrying at 150 people crashed Tuesday in a remote area of the French Alps as it flew from Barcelona to Duesseldorf, authorities said. As search-and-rescue teams raced to the region, France’s president warned that no survivors were expected.
Feb 8, 2015: Indonesia: The AirAsia plane went missing with 162 people aboard after it lost contact with air-traffic control.
Feb 5, 2015 | Taiwan: Flight 235 with 58 people aboard, many of them travelers from China, banked sharply on its side on Wednesday shortly after takeoff from Taipei, clipped a highway bridge and then careened into the Keelung River. Rescuers in rubber rafts pulled 15 people alive from the wreckage during daylight. After dark, they brought in the crane, and the death toll was expected to rise once crews were able to search through submerged portions of the fuselage, which came to rest a few dozen meters (yards) from the shore.
July 25, 2014 | Algeirs: A flight operated by Air Algerie and carrying 116 people from Burkina Faso to Algeria’s capital disappeared from radar, the plane’s owner says. Air navigation services lost track of the Swiftair MD-83 about 50 minutes after takeoff from Ougadougou, the capital of Burkina.
July 23, 2014 | Taiwan: Taiwan’s TransAsia Airways plane ATR-72, carrying 58 passengers and crew, crashed into a residential neighborhood on Penghu in the Taiwan Strait between Taiwan and China on July 23. The plane was on a flight from the city of Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan. The twin-engine turboprop crashed while making a second landing attempt.
The crash of Flight GE222 was Taiwan’s first fatal air accident in 12 years and came after Typhoon Matmo passed across the island, causing heavy rains that continued into July 23.
July 17, 2014 | Ukraine: A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 — Flight MH17 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur — with 298 people aboard crashed in eastern Ukraine near the Russian border on July 17. The Boeing 777 was carrying 298 people, including 28 Australians, when it was shot down by a surface-to-air missile over rebel-held territory in Ukraine. The plane on a scheduled flight to the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, from Amsterdam and it had not made a distress call. 
Ukraine accused the rebels of shooting down the Malaysia Airways plane. The rebels denied it and accused government forces of the same; President Petro Poroshenko denied it as well. The flight manifest of the plane indicated that the MH17 had onboard nationals from Netherlands, Malaysia, Australia, Indonesia, UK, Germany, Belgium, Philippines, Canada, New Zealand and Hong Kong. The 15-member Malaysian crew included two ethnic Indians – flight steward Sanjid Singh Sandu and Ms. Rajendran.
March 08, 2014 | Malaysia: Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, carrying 239 people, including five Indians, an Indo-Canadian and 154 Chinese nationals – had mysteriously vanished on March 8 en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. The Beijing-bound Boeing 777-200 plane disappeared from commercial radar soon after taking off on March 8 over waters between Malaysia and Vietnam.
The sudden disappearance of the plane had sparked the most expensive search and rescue operation in the aviation history. More than four months after the plane went missing, no trace of it has been found, leading to continued speculation over its fate. An international investigation team led by Malaysia concluded that it flew south after it was last spotted on Malaysian military radar about 90 minutes after takeoff and ended up in the southern Indian Ocean off Australia.
February 16, 2014 | Nepal: All 18 people aboard a small passenger plane that crashed into a snow covered mountain bad weather in Nepal were killed. The plane carrying 15 passengers and crew of three was en route from Pokhara to Jamia. The crash highlighted the poor safety record of Nepal, where more than a dozen airlines fly to nearly 50 airports, many in remote hills and mountains shrouded in cloud and cut off from roads.
February 11, 2014 | Algeria: A military transport plane carrying members of the Algerian armed forces and their relatives crashed into a mountain, killing 77 people, the worst air disaster in the North African country in a decade. State television showed footage of the wreckage of the plane near the village of Ouled Gacem in eastern Algeria, smoke rising from the site and emergency crews scouring the forested area for survivors and bodies.
Reuters Photo
November 17, 2013 | Russia: Tatarstan Airlines Boeing 737 went into a nearly vertical dive and crashed onto the runway on landing in Kazan, Russia, killing all 50 people on board. The Boeing 737 belonging to Tatarstan Airlines was making its second attempt at a landing in Kazan, 720 kilometers (520 miles) east of MoscowThe jet hit the runway and burst into flames. All 44 passengers and crew of 6 were killed.
November 13, 2013 | Namibia: A Mozambique Airlines plane en route to Angola crashed in a game park in northeast Namibia, killing all 33 people on board. Flight TM 470 left Maputo for the Angolan capital Luanda with 27 passengers and six crew when it lost contact with air traffic controllers.
October 16, 2013 | Laos: A Lao Airlines plane flying in stormy weather crashed into the Mekong river in southern Laos, killing all 44. The virtually new ATR-72 turboprop plane flying from the capital Vientiane crashed just eight kilometers (five miles) short of its destination Pakse and sank into the river. The weather was poor at the time of the accident.
AP Photo
June 03, 2012 | Lagos: A Dana passenger plane crashed into a densely populated part of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub, killing all 147 people on board. The McDonnell Douglas MD-83, operated by privately owned domestic carrier Dana Air, was coming into land on a flight from the capital Abuja when it hit the building, not far from Lagos’s Murtala Muhammed Airport and burst into flames.
May 14, 2012 | Nepal: A Dornier plane owned by a private company crashed in northwest Nepal, killing 15 people including 13 Indians. The aircraft was carrying 18 passengers and a crew of three on a flight from the resort town of Pokhara to Jomsom when it crashed while landing at the mountain airstrip.
April 20, 2012 | Pakistan: A Pakistani airliner on an Airblue domestic flight from Karachi with 127 people on board crashed in bad weather as it came in to land in Islamabad, leaving no sign of survivors. The Boeing 737, operated by local airline Bhoja Air, was flying to the capital from Pakistan’s biggest city and business hub Karachi. It crashed into wheat fields more than 5 miles from the airport.
Reuters Photo
July 26, 2011 | Morocco: At least 78 people were killed hen a Moroccan military transport plane crashed into a mountain in the south of the country during bad weather. There were three injured survivors so far from the crash, which happened when a Hercules C-130 aircraft was trying to land in Guelmim, having flown north from the disputed Western Sahara territory.
July 08, 2011 | Congo: An airliner ploughed into dense forest as it tried to land during a rainstorm in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday, killing 127 people on board. There were 51 survivors.
November 05, 2010 | Cuba: A state airliner filled with Cubans and travelers from Europe and Latin America crashed and burst into flames in a mountainous area, killing all 68 people on board. AeroCaribbean Flight 883 was en route from the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba went down near the village of Guasimal in Santi Spiritus province, carrying 61 passengers and a crew of seven.
July 28, 2010 | Pakistan: In the worst aviation accident in the country, a Pakistani passenger plane crashed in heavy rain near Islamabad, killing all 152 people on board. The Airbus 321, belonging to a private airline crashed into a heavily wooded and hard-to-access hillside while flying from the southern port city of Karachi.
AP Photo
May 22, 2010 | India: In the country’s worst air disaster in a decade, an Air India Express Boeing 737 plane overshot the airport runway in Mangalore and burst into flames early this morning killing 158 persons but eight others survived. The aircraft, carrying 160 passengers and a crew of six, hit a concrete localiser instrument, a navigation aid, and fell into a ravine 200 to 300 metres deep. The passengers included four infants and 19 other children.
April 10, 2010 | Russia: The plane of Polish President Lech Kaczynski crashed outside the western Russian city of Smolensk, killing all 96 aboard.
(With inputs from Reuters, AP)
Source:: Indian Express
