Suicide by pilot
Suicide by pilot is an event in which a pilot deliberately crashes or attempts to crash an aircraft as a way to kill themself and sometimes passengers on board or people on the ground. This is sometimes described as a murder-suicide. It is suspected as being a possible cause of the crashes of several commercial flights and is confirmed as the cause in others. Generally, it is difficult for crash investigators to determine the motives of the pilots, since they sometimes act deliberately to turn off recording devices or otherwise hinder future investigations. As a result, pilot suicide can be difficult to prove with certainty.
Investigators do not qualify aircraft incidents as suicide unless there is compelling evidence that the pilot was doing so. This evidence would include suicide notes, previous attempts, threats of suicide, or a history of mental illness. In a study of pilot suicides from 2002-2013, eight cases were identified as definite suicides, with five additional cases of undetermined cause that may have been suicides. Investigators may also work with terrorism experts, checking for links to extremist groups to try to determine whether the suicide was an act of terrorism.
Most cases of suicide by pilot involve general aviation in small aircraft. In most of these, the pilot is the only person on board the aircraft. In about half of the cases, the pilot was using drugs, usually alcohol or anti-depressants, that would ban them from flying. Many of these pilots had mental illness histories that they had hidden from regulators.
During World War II, the Russian aviator Nikolai Gastello was the first Soviet pilot credited with a (later disputed) "fire taran" in a suicide attack by an aircraft on a ground target. In the following years there were more suicide attacks; the best known by military aviators are the attacks from the Empire of Japan, called kamikaze, against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II. These attacks were designed to destroy warships more effectively than was possible with conventional attacks; between October 1944 and 1945, 3,860 kamikaze pilots committed suicide in this manner.
...
Wikipedia