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Airplane Accidents

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An aviation accident is an incident on board an aircraft causing injury or death to one or more persons. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board definition of an aviation accident is as follows:

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 and all such persons have disembarked, and in which any person suffers death or serious injury, or in which the aircraft receives substantial damage.
An aviation incident is an occurrence other than an accident, associated with the operation of an aircraft, which affects or could affect the safety of operations.

Other countries adopt a similar approach, although there are minor variations, such as to the extent of aviation-related operations on the ground, covered, as well as with respect to the thresholds beyond which an injury is considered serious or the damage is considered substantial. A hull-loss accident is one where the damage to the plane is such that it must be written off, or in which the plane is totally destroyed.

Causes
 
The 1984 Controlled Impact Demonstration of a Boeing 720 aircraft using standard fuel with an additive designed to suppress fire. The experiment showed that the additive didn't work as expected.An accident survey [1] of 2,147 airplane accidents from 1950 through 2004 determined the causes to be as follows:

• 37%: Pilot error
• 33%: Undetermined or missing in the record
• 13%: Mechanical failure
• 7%: Weather
• 5%: Sabotage (bombs, hijackings, shoot-downs)
• 4%: Other human error (air traffic controller error, improper loading of aircraft, improper maintenance, fuel contamination, language miscommunication etc.)
• 1%: Other cause

The survey excluded military, private, and charter aircraft.