Flights Gone Wrong explains real air accidents through the videos that cover them and the official reports that investigated them. Every fact we publish comes from one of two places: the final report of the official investigation, or a video on this site that we can point you to. When those two disagree, the report wins.
Who writes and edits this site
Articles on this site are published by the site’s editorial team under a small set of house bylines, each with its own angle: crew decisions, engineering, history, or what changed afterwards. The bylines are pen names, not individual experts, and their profiles describe what each one writes about and how, not a career. You can meet them on our About page.
We are not an investigating body and we have no inside access to any investigation. We read the same public reports you can read, and we link to them so you can check our work.
Articles are researched and drafted with software help, for example a first summary of a video’s transcript or a first outline of an event’s timeline. Before publication, every fact is checked against the sources and official reports the article cites, and those sources are listed at the end of each article. When readers report an error, we correct it promptly.
Where our facts come from
We use sources in this order.
- The official final report. In almost every country, accidents are investigated by an independent body, such as the NTSB in the United States, the BEA in France, the AAIB in the United Kingdom, the TSB in Canada or the ATSB in Australia. Their final reports are the record we follow for times, numbers, names and causes. Our guide Who Investigates Plane Crashes? explains who these bodies are and where to find their reports.
- Official supporting material. Safety recommendations, interim statements, public dockets and the investigators’ own animations.
- The video transcript. Documentaries and pilot analyses often add useful context, such as what the crew said, or how a system works. We use them for that, and we say which video a detail comes from when it matters.
We do not use forums, social media posts or unnamed sources for facts. Encyclopaedia pages and accident databases can help us find a report, but we do not cite them as the source of a fact.
We link to a report only when we have checked the exact official address. If we cannot find a stable official copy online, we name the report and leave the link out rather than guess.
Times on event pages are local times. When a report gives only an approximate time, we say “approximately”.
Text that has not been reviewed yet
Everything we publish is checked against its sources before publication. If any text on the site is still an unreviewed software draft, for example on a video added very recently, it says so next to it, with a note such as “not yet reviewed”. We would rather show that note than let a draft pass as checked work. If you spot an error in one, please tell us (see Corrections below).
How we handle death tolls and conflicting figures
Numbers are where accounts disagree most. Documentaries round numbers, count crew differently, or repeat early news reports that were later corrected.
Our rules:
- We use the official report’s figure. If a video says something different, we follow the report and note the difference in our editing records.
- We say who is counted. Where people on the ground were killed, we give both numbers, for example “all 259 people on board and 11 residents of Lockerbie”.
- We give survivors as well as deaths where there were survivors.
- We do not round a figure the report gives exactly.
- Where there is no official figure, we say so, and name the source we used instead.
Cause not established: how we keep theories separate
Not every investigation reaches a firm conclusion. Sometimes an investigator finds a most likely cause but cannot prove it. In others, the aircraft or its recorders were never found.
When the official investigation did not establish a cause, our event page says “Cause not established”. We do not fill the gap with our own theory. If credible hypotheses exist, for example ones the investigators examined in their report, we describe them in a separate, clearly marked section and say who put them forward.
When a report gives a probable cause in careful words, such as “most likely”, we keep those words. We do not turn “most likely” into “definitely”. Our guide How to Read an Air Accident Final Report explains how investigators phrase their findings.
The international rules for accident investigation, ICAO Annex 13, say an investigation exists to prevent future accidents, not to apportion blame or liability. We follow the same spirit. We report what the investigators found, including human error where they found it, but we do not add blame of our own.
Respectful coverage
These are real accidents. People died in most of them, and their families can read what we write.
- Calm language. We do not use words such as “shocking” or “horrifying”, or build pages around suspense. Headlines describe what happened and what the video explains.
- No wreckage, no remains, no people in distress. Our event pictures show the aircraft before the accident, or the same type in the same airline’s colours, with the photographer and licence credited on our Photo credits page.
- Victims’ names appear only where the official report or the video names them and the name matters to the story.
- Deliberate acts, such as bombings, are described in the words the investigators and courts used, without speculation about motives or people not charged.
Corrections and removal requests
If you find an error, please tell us through our contact page. Tell us the page, what is wrong and, if you can, the source that shows the correct fact.
- We reply as promptly as we can.
- If we were wrong, we fix the page and add a dated correction note at the bottom saying what changed.
- If we disagree, we explain why, with the source we relied on.
Families of people involved in an accident, and creators whose videos appear here, can also ask us to change or remove material. We take these requests seriously and handle them first. Creators who want a video removed, or added, can read How We Choose Air Crash Videos for how that works.
Credit and removal
Every video on this site plays in YouTube’s own player and links back to the original on YouTube. We credit each video to the channel that made it (“Video by the channel on YouTube”, linked to the channel), and we do not host, copy or re-upload any video. The text on our pages is our own written summary and account of what the video covers; it is not a substitute for watching it.
If you made a video shown here and want it credited differently or taken down, tell us on the Contact page with the address of the video page and we will deal with it first, before any other request.
Changes to this policy
We date every change to this policy.
- 31 October 2026: first version.
- 1 November 2026: added our house bylines and how drafts are prepared with software help.
Sources
- ICAO, Annex 13 investigation provisions, summarised on Uniting Aviation, ICAO’s news site (30 August 2021).
- Transportation Safety Board of Canada, About the TSB.
- Air Accidents Investigation Branch (UK), About us.
- NTSB, The Investigative Process.
- Report search pages used for every event: NTSB CAROL, BEA safety investigations, AAIB reports, TSB Canada aviation reports.