In February of 2000, Emery Worldwide Flight 17 departed Sacramento Mather Airport, its hold filled with freight containers. Shortly after liftoff, the aircraft began a series of violent dives and leftward banks. The pilots fought to regain …

In July of 2014, a TransAsia commuter flight experienced a catastrophic landing amidst severe weather. The aircraft crashed less than a mile from Magong Airport, a well-known destination in the Penghu archipelago, a favored Taiwanese resort…

On August 31, 1988, a Boeing 727 en route from Dallas to Salt Lake City plummeted from the sky mere moments after liftoff, claiming the lives of 14 of the 108 passengers and crew aboard. The National Transportation Safety Board arrived prom…

A commercial airliner carrying 283 passengers was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, its flight path traversing a conflict zone in eastern Ukraine. Suddenly, mid-flight, the aircraft disintegrated and crashed, resulting in the loss of…

The advanced Russian Sukhoi Superjet 100 ascends, intended for a brief, thirty-minute flight path over Indonesia designed to captivate prospective buyers and the press. The journey, however, descends into disaster when the pilots become dis…

High above the Mojave Desert, Virgin Galactic’s commercial spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo, climbed towards the edge of Earth's atmosphere, its trajectory overseen by experienced test pilots. Then, the vehicle fractured, plummeting from the heaven…

At thirty-seven thousand feet, Qantas Flight 72 was en route to Perth, Australia, from Singapore. The highly automated A-330, however, began to emit a cascade of conflicting warnings, and repeatedly plunged towards the Indian Ocean. Only th…

Under the cloak of night, a DC-9 approaches Zurich's Kloten Airport, aligning for a landing. Though the pilots lack visual confirmation of the runway, their instruments register a steady lock on the airport's intended signal. Yet, the data …

Moments before reaching Nagoya Airport in Japan, China Airlines Flight 140 was less than three minutes from landing. Then, the sophisticated A300, operating with high levels of automation, began to accelerate and disregarded the pilots' att…

In the heavy snow of 1987, Denver air traffic controllers battled to maintain departure schedules, but a DC-9 remained delayed on the tarmac. Once cleared for takeoff, the aircraft ascended only twenty feet before abruptly banking and crash…