However, the fate of the aircraft's 115 passengers and six crew was sealed, with all 121 occupants losing their lives when Helios Airways flight 522 crashed into mountainous terrain near Grammatiko, Greece, at 12:04.
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The ”ghost plane” crash that killed four people — and triggered a sonic boom from F-16 fighter jets flying to DC to intercept it — left a “crater” indicating a near-nosedive into the ground, pulverizing the aircraft.
There have been an average of 1,200 almost empty ghost flights a month since the start of 2020, when numbers jumped at the start of the Covid pandemic. Most of these – about 80% – were to or from foreign destinations.
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.