Mid-air collisions are uncommon, but they often lead to disaster.
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On October 3rd Rene Thomas of France in an Antoinette monoplane collided with Captain Bertram Dickson of the British army in a Farman biplane by ramming him in the rear; both pilots survived but Dickson was so badly injured he never flew again.
Almost all modern large aircraft are fitted with a traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS), which is designed to try to prevent mid-air collisions. The system, based on the signals from aircraft transponders, alerts pilots if a potential collision with another aircraft is imminent.
Sudden decompression, which would occur if a plane door was suddenly thrust open, is another matter. Anyone standing near the exit would be ejected into the sky; the cabin temperature would quickly plummet to frostbite-inducing levels, and the plane itself might even begin to break apart.
When an aircraft experiences turbulence, the plane can drop or change altitude suddenly. This is why pilots always caution passengers to buckle up and stay seated when they are experiencing flight turbulence. The sudden movements put passengers at risk.
Should you be scared of turbulence? The short answer is no, and rest assured that the pilots know how uncomfortable turbulence can make passengers feel. And know that no aircraft has ever crashed because of turbulence. Turbulence has not caused an airplane to crash, Biddle said.
Reflecting this increase in miles flown, preliminary estimates of the total number of accidents involving a U.S. registered civilian aircraft increased from 1,139 in 2020 to 1,225 in 2021. The number of civil aviation deaths increased from 349 in 2020 to 376 in 2021.
British AirwaysSince 1985, BA has never had a fatal accident, the closest call coming in 2008, when First Officer John Coward earned his place in the aviation Hall of Fame by landing a plane without any power. Read the full story here. BA ranks among the world's top 20 safest airlines according to AirlineRatings.
While turbulence can feel scary, airplanes are designed to withstand massive amounts of it. A plane cannot be flipped upside-down, thrown into a tailspin, or otherwise flung from the sky by even the mightiest gust or air pocket, wrote pilot Patrick Smith on his site, AskThePilot.com.
Severe turbulence can cause a plane to drop so suddenly that pilots temporarily lose control. But, again, that's not enough to crash the plane. That's not to say it's never happened. In 1966, human error and turbulence combined to bring a plane down over Mount Fuji.
The spars run all the way through the wings, connecting in a “wing box” on the bottom of the fuselage, ensuring that the wings cannot snap off. The only possible way for an airplane wing to snap off would be “bad maintenance,” Rainer Groh, the writer behind the Aerospace Engineering Blog, told Fear of Flying School.