Find out everything you need to know about air crashes and accidents, from what causes them to what you can do to survive.
Planes have always crashed. Even Icarus plummeted to his death after an “equipment malfunction.” Before engines could lift heavier-than-air machines off the ground, any attempt at flight was deadly. But for hundreds of years that did not prevent adventurers from strapping wings to their arms and leaping off hilltops and towers in the vain hope of flying.
Since the Wright brothers flew, aircraft design, pilot training, maintenance, and air traffic control have all evolved to current standards. Often this has come at great cost, and through air crashes such as the de Havilland Comets in the 1950s and the Douglas DC-10s in the 1970s. But as aircraft got safer, terrorism learned to exploit new weaknesses.
