Air crashes

An aviation "accident" is defined by the Convention on International Civil Aviation Annex 13 as an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft, which takes place between the time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of flight until all such persons have disembarked, where a person is fatally or seriously injured, the aircraft sustains damage or structural failure or the aircraft is missing or is completely inaccessible. If the aircraft is destroyed or severely damaged so that it must be written off, it is further defined as a hull loss accident. Annex 13 further defines an aviation "incident" as an occurrence, other than an accident, associated with the operation of an aircraft which affects or could affect the safety of operation.

The first fatal aviation accident was the crash of a Rozière balloon near Wimereux, France, on June 15, 1785, killing its inventor Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier as well as the other occupant, Pierre Romain. The first involving a powered aircraft was the crash of a Wright Model A aircraft at Fort Myer, Virginia, in the United States on September 17, 1908, injuring its co-inventor and pilot, Orville Wright, and killing the passenger, Signal Corps Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge.

The deadliest aviation-related disaster of any kind, considering fatalities on both the aircraft and the ground, was the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City on 11 September 2001. On that morning 4 aircraft traveling from East Coast airports to California were hijacked and used in four separate suicide attacks against major American landmarks by 19 Islamic terrorists affiliated with Al Qaeda, with the intentional crashing of American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 into the North and South Towers respectively of the World Trade Center, (destroying both buildings in less than two hours). The World Trade Center crashes killed 2,753, the vast majority of fatalities being occupants of the World Trade Center towers or emergency personnel responding to the disaster. In addition, 184 were killed by American Airlines Flight 77 which crashed into the Pentagon, (causing severe damage and partial destruction to the building's west side). 40 passengers were also killed when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a Pennsylvania field after passengers fought back against the hijackers. This brought the total number of casualties of the September 11 attacks to 2,977 (excluding the 19 terrorist hijackers).

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Wikipedia