Guides
Plain-English guides to how air accidents are investigated, what causes them, and what changed afterwards. Each guide lists its sources, chiefly official accident reports and regulators’ summaries.
24 guides
How investigations work
Who investigates an accident, what the recorders hold, how a final report is built and how to read one.
How Plane Crash Investigations Work, From Wreckage to Report
A major air accident investigation usually takes between one and two years, and sometimes much longer, because investigators have to prove what happened rather than guess. This guide follows an investigation from the first hours at the site to the final report and its safety recommendations.
Who Investigates Plane Crashes? NTSB, BEA, AAIB, TSB, ATSB
A plane crash is investigated by an independent safety body in the country where it happened, such as the NTSB in the United States, the BEA in France or the AAIB in the United Kingdom. The countries that registered, built and operated the aircraft take part, and this guide explains who does what and where to find each body’s reports.
Black Boxes Explained: How Flight Recorders Survive a Crash
A black box survives a crash because its memory sits inside an armoured, insulated case built to withstand an impact of 3,400 g, a fire of 1,100 °C for 30 minutes and deep water. This guide explains the two recorders, why they are orange, how long they record and what they have told investigators.
How to Read an Air Accident Final Report and Probable Cause
An air accident final report follows a standard order: the facts, the analysis, the conclusions, including the probable cause, and the safety recommendations. This guide shows where to find reports, how to read each section and what to watch out for, using the NTSB’s report on American Airlines Flight 587 as the example.
The Swiss Cheese Model: Why Air Accidents Need Many Failures
The Swiss cheese model, developed by psychologist James Reason, explains why an air accident almost never has a single cause: several layers of defence each have to fail, and their weak points have to line up. Two real accidents, the Gimli Glider and Helios Airways Flight 522, show how it works.
Is Flying Safe? Air Crash Statistics Explained in Plain English
Yes: commercial flying is one of the safest ways to travel, with one fatal accident for every 5.6 million flights worldwide over 2021 to 2025, according to IATA. This guide explains the latest figures, how they compare with driving and why a bad year can still happen.
Causes and phenomena
The physical and human causes behind accidents, each explained through the cases that taught it.
Plane Crashes Caused by Maintenance Errors, and the Lessons
Some of the best-known air accidents began in a hangar, not a cockpit: a seal left off, a part that did not match, a crack nobody found. This guide walks through six cases on this site, what the investigators found, and how maintenance work has changed since.
Why Planes Run Out of Fuel: How Fuel Exhaustion Happens
Airliners rarely run out of fuel, and when they do it is almost never one mistake: a wrong conversion factor, an undetected leak or a crew unable to act has to get past several checks. This guide explains how it happens, using the official findings on the Gimli Glider, Air Transat Flight 236 and Helios Airways Flight 522, and what changed afterwards.
Wind Shear and Microbursts: How Delta 191 Changed Aviation
A microburst is a column of air falling out of a thunderstorm and spreading out at the ground, and an aircraft that flies through one close to the runway can lose its airspeed and height faster than any crew can recover. Delta Air Lines Flight 191 at Dallas/Fort Worth in 1985 led to the airport radar, cockpit alerts and escape training that followed; the FAA says the last wind shear accident in the US was in 1994.
Explosive vs Rapid Decompression: What Happens to a Cabin
An explosive decompression happens faster than your lungs can let air out, in under half a second; a rapid one is slower than that; a slow one can be so gradual nobody notices. The FAA warns that the slow kind is the most dangerous, and two accidents on this site, Aloha Airlines Flight 243 and Helios Airways Flight 522, show why.
In-Flight Fire Accidents: Swissair 111, TWA 800 and What Changed
A fire on board leaves a crew very little time, and the most dangerous fires start where nobody can see them: above a cockpit ceiling, in a cargo hold or inside a fuel tank. The investigations into Swissair 111, Swissair 551 and TWA 800 changed what airliners are built from, how fuel tanks are protected and how crews are told to respond to smoke.
Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT): Why Good Planes Crash
Controlled flight into terrain, or CFIT, is the name investigators give to a crash in which nothing was wrong with the aircraft: a qualified crew flew it into the ground, water or an obstacle without realising they were in danger. Ground proximity warnings from 1974 and terrain awareness systems from 2002 to 2005 were the industry’s answer, and the FAA reports the CFIT accident rate has fallen since.
Runway Incursions: How Tenerife and Near Misses Shaped Rules
A runway incursion is any aircraft, vehicle or person wrongly on a runway, and the worst ones end with two aircraft on the same strip of concrete at the same time. Tenerife in 1977 remains the deadliest accident in aviation history, and later collisions at Detroit, Los Angeles and Milan led to the radio rules, surface radar and automatic warning lights in use today.
Bird Strikes Explained: How Often They Happen and the Defences
Aircraft in the US reported more than 24,000 wildlife strikes in 2025, but only a few per cent of those strikes cause damage, and very few have ever brought an airliner down. When one does, it is usually large birds in a flock hitting more than one engine, as on US Airways Flight 1549, which the crew ditched on the Hudson River in 2009 with all 155 people on board surviving.
Aircraft
Airliners whose accident records shaped how aircraft are designed, certified and maintained.
Boeing 747 Crashes: What Each Accident Found and What Changed
The Boeing 747 flew for more than half a century, and a handful of its accidents changed how every airliner is built, flown and protected. This guide covers the 747 events on this site and other landmark cases, with what each investigation found and the safety rules that followed.
Lockheed L-1011 TriStar Crashes and Its Safety Record Explained
The Lockheed L-1011 TriStar was built in small numbers and had few fatal accidents, but several of its incidents became landmark cases for crews and investigators. This guide covers the TriStar events on this site, its record against the rival DC-10, and why the type disappeared.
DC-10 Crashes and the Fixes: Cargo Door, Flight 191, Sioux City
In its first decade the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 suffered a cargo door failure that was ignored until it killed 346 people, then a maintenance shortcut that brought down American Airlines Flight 191 and grounded the type. This guide covers those accidents, the crew who brought United 232 to Sioux City, and what the DC-10’s record looks like after the fixes.
Deadliest Plane Crashes by Decade, From the 1950s to Today
Each decade of jet-age flying has had an accident that stands above the rest for the number of lives lost, and most of them changed the way airliners are flown or controlled. This guide lists them decade by decade, with the official figures, the findings, and the lessons that followed.
What changed
The rules, systems and training that followed the worst accidents.
What Changed After Tenerife: CRM and Clearer Radio Calls
The 1977 runway collision at Tenerife killed 583 people and turned on a few words of radio and a cockpit where no one stopped the captain. This guide explains the two big changes that followed, standard radio phrasing and crew resource management, and where they have since saved lives.
What Changed After Pan Am 103: How Airport Security Evolved
Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed by a bomb hidden in a suitcase over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December 1988, killing 270 people. This guide explains what the investigators found about the aircraft’s break-up and how airport and airline security changed in the years that followed.
Aloha 243 and the Aging Aircraft Rules That Followed It
In 1988 a 19-year-old Aloha Airlines Boeing 737 lost a large section of its upper fuselage at 24,000 feet because many small fatigue cracks had joined up. This guide explains why the inspections missed them and how the United States changed the rules for older airliners afterwards.
TCAS and Terrain Warnings: Cockpit Alarms Born From Crashes
Two cockpit alarms do most of the work of keeping airliners apart from each other and from the ground: TCAS, which tells pilots to climb or descend away from another aircraft, and the ground proximity and terrain warning systems that call out ‘terrain, pull up’. Both were made mandatory after crashes, and the 2002 Überlingen collision showed that they only work if crews follow them.
Reference
The words you hear in crash documentaries, and where to watch them.
Aviation Glossary A–Z: Terms You Hear in Crash Documentaries
This glossary explains, in plain English, the aviation terms you hear in air crash documentaries and read in accident reports. Each entry says what the word means, where you hear it on this site and where to read more.
Where to Watch Air Crash Documentaries: Channels We Trust
The best air crash documentaries on YouTube come from three kinds of channel: official series such as Mayday: Air Disaster, working pilots who explain accidents, and careful independent explainers. This guide describes the channels whose videos we feature, what each does well, and how to find the right video for an accident.