Boeing 747-200

Air France flight 091 was involved in runway excursion accident at Rio de Janeiro-Galeão International Airport, Brazil. The aircraft, a Boeing 747-200, took off from Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport, France at 21:30 UTC on a flight to Santiago, Chile with en route stops at Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, Argentina. The flight to Rio de Janeiro took about eleven hours and was uneventful. At 08:34 UTC the aircraft touched down on runway 14, 400 meters from the threshold. After reversers were set, the aircraft deviated from the runway heading and at 2,000 meters from the threshold it veered off the right side of the runway. The aircraft ran over the grass for 765 meters, until passing over a drainage ditch and the load apron concrete step, where the landing gears folded aft with the left wing gear completely separating. On the load apron concrete the aircraft spun around for 275 meters until stopping, after the left outboard wing section struck an illumination stand. For a few seconds engines 2, 3 and 4 kept running at maximum reverse thrust, while engine number one run operated at full forward thrust. After the engines were shut down, the passengers evacuated using three of the aircraft's left hand side escape slides. The fire that started on the area near engines number 2 and 3 was extinguished by the airport fire fighters. It appeared that the n°1 engine throttle cable had broken, making it impossible for the flight crew to control engine power. The engine had accelerated to an unusually high level of (forward) thrust (above takeoff power).

JA8119 was a Japan Air Lines Boeing 747SR, a short range variant of the Boeing 747 Series 100. The was aircraft specifically configured for domestic flights with a high density seating arrangement. On June 2, 1978 the aircraft operated on a flight to Osaka (ITM). It floated after touchdown and on the second touchdown the tail struck the runway. The aircraft sustained substantial damage to the rear underside of the fuselage. The rear pressure bulkhead was cracked as well. The aircraft was repaired by Boeing. Engineers replaced the lower part of the rear fuselage and a portion of the lower half of the bulkhead. Seven years later, on August 12, 1985, JA8119 had completed four domestic flights when it landed at Tokyo-Haneda (HND) at 17:17. The next flight was to be flight 123 to Osaka (ITM). The aircraft took off from Tokyo-Haneda at 18:12. Twelve minutes later, while climbing through 23900 feet at a speed of 300 knots, an unusual vibration occurred. An impact force raised the nose of the aircraft and control problems were experienced. A decompression had occurred and the crew got indications of problems with the R5 door. In fact, the rear pressure bulkhead had ruptured, causing serious damage to the rear of the plane. A portion of its vertical fin, measuring 5 m together with the section of the tail cone containing the auxiliary power unit (APU) were ripped off the plane. Due to the damage, the hydraulic pressure dropped and ailerons, elevators and yaw damper became inoperative. Controlling the plane was very difficult as the airplane experienced dutch rolls and phugoid oscillations (unusual movement in which altitude and speed change significantly in a 20-100 seconds cycle without change of angle of attack). The aircraft started to descend to 6600 feet while the crew tried to control the aircraft by using engine thrust. Upon reaching 6600 feet the airspeed had dropped to 108 knots. The aircraft then climbed with a 39 degree pitch-up to a maximum of approx. 13400 feet and started to descend again. At 18:56 JAL123 finally brushed against a tree covered ridge, continued and struck the Osutaka Ridge, bursting into flames. A stewardess, one female passenger and two little girl survived while 520 other occupants were killed.

On the morning of 23rd June, 1985 Air India's Boeing 747 aircraft VT-EFO (Kanishka) was on a scheduled passenger flight (AI182) from Montreal and was proceeding to London enroute to Delhi and Bombay. It was being monitored at Shannon on the radar scope. At about 0714 GMT it suddenly disappeared from the radar scope and the aircraft, which had been flying at an altitude of approximately 31,000 feet, plunged into the Atlantic Ocean off the southwest coast of Ireland at position latitude 51° 3.6' N and longitude 12° 49' W. This was one of the worst air disasters wherein all the 307 passengers plus 22 crew members perished. The fact that emergency had arisen was first by Shannon Upper Area Control (UAC) after the aircraft had disappeared from the radar scope. The control gave a number of calls to the aircraft but there was obviously no response. Thereafter various messages were transmitted and that is how the rest of the world came to know of the accident. Shannon Control at 0730 hours advised the Marine Rescue Coordination Center (MRCC) about the situation which appeared to have arisen. MRCC, in turn, explained the situation to Valencia Coast Station and requested for a Pan Broadcast. Thereafter ships started converging on the scene of the accident and they commenced search and rescue operations.

Following an uneventful flight from Paris-Roissy-CDG Airport, the crew was cleared to descent to Madrid-Barajas Airport runway 33. Once the altitude of 9,000 feet reached on descent, the crew was cleared to continue. At 0103LT, he was cleared to land on runway 33 and should complete a turn to the right. Following several errors on approach, the crew initiated a right turn prior to pass over the VOR, causing the aircraft to descent below the MDA. At an altitude of 2,247 feet and at a speed of 142 knots, the right main gear struck the top of a hill. Upon impact, the right main gear and the engine n°4 were torn off. Three seconds later, while in a 4,9° nose-up attitude, at a speed of 135 knots, the aircraft struck the top of a second hill. Then, six seconds later, the right wing struck the ground. The aircraft overturned and crashed upside down, bursting into flames. The wreckage was found 12 km from the runway threshold in an olive plantation. Eleven passengers (among them four members of the same family, father, mother and both children) were injured while 181 other occupants were killed, among them the Peruvian writer Manuel Scorza.

On 31 August 1983, a Korean Air Lines (KAL) Boeing 747, designated KE 007, departed John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York, United States, on a one-stop scheduled flight for Kimpo International Airport, Seoul, Republic of Korea. The en-route stop occurred at Anchorage International Airport, Alaska, United States. At Anchorage, the aircraft was refuelled and serviced for the remainder of the flight to Seoul and, in accordance with company practice, the flight and cabin crews were changed. The flight departed at the planned time of departure which, in keeping with Korean Air Lines' procedure, was calculated for each KE 007 flight. The departure from Anchorage was flexible to ensure arrival in Seoul at the scheduled arrival time of 21:00 hours* (06:00 hours local time). The actual departure time of 13:00 hours on 31 August would have resulted in an on-time arrival of KE 007 in Seoul, had the flight been completed in accordance with its flight plan. On departing Anchorage, the flight had 269 persons on board consisting of 240 passengers, 3 flight crew members, 20 cabin attendants, and 6 crew members of KAL being repositioned to Seoul. Soon after departure from Anchorage, KE 007 deviated to the right (north) of its direct track to Bethel. This deviation resulted in a progressively greater lateral displacement to the right of its planned route which, ultimately, resulted in its penetration of adjacent high seas airspace in flight information regions (FIR_s) operated by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), as well as of sovereign USSR airspace overlying Kamchatka Peninsula and Sakhalin Island and their surrounding territorial waters. No evidence was found during the investigation to indicate that the flight crew of KE 007 was, at any time, aware of the flight's deviation from its planned route in spite of the fact that it continued for over five hours. According to representatives of the United States, military radar installations in Alaska were not aware in real time that the aircraft was proceeding west with an increasing northerly deviation from the recognized airways system. The military radar installations of the Japanese Defence Agency were aware that an aircraft was tracking in USSR airspace over Sakhalin Island. According to representatives of Japan, they were not a\vare that it was a civil aircraft off its intended track. Approximately between 16:40 and 17:08 hours military aircraft operated by the USSR attempted to intercept KE 007 over Kamchatka Peninsula. The interception attempts were unsuccessful. From about 18:00 hours when KE 007 was approaching Sakhalin Island, USSR, the flight was intercepted by USSR military aircraft. At 18:26:02 hours the aircraft was hit by at least one of t\\'o air-to-air missiles fired by the pilot of one of the USSR interceptor aircraft who had been directed, by his ground command and control units, to shoot down an aircraft which they assumed to be a United States RC-135. As a result of the attack, KE 007 collided with the sea and sank off the southwest coast of Sakhalin Island. There were no survivors. The flight recorders, fragmentary pieces of the aircraft and a small number of items of personal property were salvaged by divers from the USSR during a two month period following the accident. In addition, some flotsam from the aircraft was dispersed by tidal currents and recovered later. The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and the digital flight data recorder (DFDR) tapes were recovered by the USSR in 1983 and were handed over to ICAO in January 1993 by the representatives of the Russian Federation. They also made available recordings and transcripts of the communications between the pilots of the intercepting fighter aircraft and their ground controllers as well as the communications between the command centres. The representatives of the United States made available certified copies and transcripts of the Anchorage ATC tapes, and the representatives of Japan made available the Tokyo ATC tape. In the course of the investigation, all practical steps were taken to confirm the authenticity of the communications tapes. A comprehensive assessment of the physical characteristics of the CVR and the DFDR tapes and the information recorded thereon was made to ensure that they contained authentic records. The material on the communications tapes and the CVR and DFDR tapes showed no evidence of contradiction with known information and correlated well with other sources of data. There was no evidence to suggest that the crew of flight KE 007 was aware that their aircraft was flying to the north of its planned route or that they knew of the presence of the intercepting fighter aircraft. The DFDR record established that flight KE 007 maintained a constant magnetic heading from soon after departure from Anchorage until the attack by the fighter aircraft. The maintenance of the constant magnetic heading was so accurate it could only have resulted from the autopilot controlling the aircraft. The CVR and the DFDR records also established that the aircraft did not sustain an extensive avionics or navigation systems failure or malfunction prior to the attack by the USSR fighter aircraft. The evidence obtained supported the first hypothesis of those listed in the 1983 ICAO report, Le. that the crew inadvertently flew virtually the entire flight on a constant magnetic heading. The maintenance of a constant magnetic heading and the resulting track deviation was due to the KE 007 crew's failure to note that the autopilot had either been left in heading mode or had been switched to INS when the aircraft was beyond the range (7.5 NM) for the INS to capture the desired track.
Concerning the interception and associated identification, signalling and communications the investigation found the following:

1) Interceptions of KE 007 were attempted by USSR military aircraft over Kamchatka Peninsula and made in the vicinity of Sakhalin Island.

2) The USSR command centre personnel assumed that KE 007 was a United States RC-135 aircraft. KE 007's climb from FL 330 to FL350 during the time of the interception over Sakhalin Island was interpreted as being an evasive action, thus further contributing to the USSR presumption that it was an RC-135 aircraft.

3) No attempt was made by the USSR to contact the crew of KE 007 by radio on the distress frequency 121.5 MHz or on any other VHF or HF frequency. However, the interceptor pilot was instructed by his ground control to attempt to attract the attention of the crew of the intruding aircraft by firing his aircraft's cannon and flashing its navigation lights. It was not possible to assess the distance of the interceptor aircraft from the intruder nor their relative positions when the interceptor's lights were flashed and the cannon fired.

4) The USSR command centre personnel on Sakhalin Island were concerned with the position of the intruder aircraft in relation to USSR sovereign airspace as well as its identity. The time factor became paramount as the intruder aircraft was .about to coast out from Sakhalin Island. Therefore, exhaustive efforts to identify the intruder aircraft were not made, although apparently some doubt remained regarding its identity. .5) It was not possible to determine the position of KE 007 at the time of the missile attack in relation to USSR sovereign airspace.

Following an uneventful flight from Los Angeles via Anchorage, the crew started the approach to Seoul-Gimpo Airport in the early morning, just after sunset. On final to runway 14, with a limited visibility of 1,000 meters due to patches of fog, the crew failed to realize his altitude was insufficient when the airplane landed 90 meters short of runway threshold. Then the aircraft struck a concrete wall, causing all main gears to be torn off or to pushed back in their respective wheel well, except the nose gear which remained intact. The airplane slid on its belly for about 1,200 metres before coming to rest in flames on the left side of the runway. 14 occupants escaped uninjured while 198 others were injured. Unfortunately, eight passengers and six crew members, among them both pilots, were killed. The aircraft was destroyed by a fire that probably ignited in a cargo compartment.

After takeoff from Bombay-Santa Cruz Airport runway 27, while climbing by night at an altitude of 2,400 feet, the captain contacted ATC and wished a Happy New Year. He was cleared to climb to 8,000 feet and initiated a turn to the right according to departure procedures. Once the turn was finished and the aircraft was leveling, the captain realized his Attitude Director Indicator (ADI) was still showing a right-bank indication. The copilot confirmed his ADI was correct and the flight engineer noticed the difference between the captain's ADI and the third ADI system. Despite these two confirmation, the captain started a turn to the left as he thought the aircraft was still in a right-bank attitude. The airplane entered a left turn to an angle of 40° then until an excessive angle of 108° when control was lost. From an altitude of 2,000 feet, the airplane entered a dive and crashed into the Arabian Sea. The airplane disintegrated on impact and all 213 occupants were killed. Most of the debris were found in shallow water about 3 km offshore. Control was lost as the pilot-in-command was flying over the sea by night without any visual references with the ground.

The KLM Boeing 747, registration PH-BUF, took off from Schipol Airport (Amsterdam) at 0900 hours on 27 March 1977, en route to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. This flight was part of the Charter Series KL4805/4806 Amsterdam-Las Palmas (Canary Islands) - Amsterdam operated by KLM on behalf of the Holland International Travel Group (H.I.N.T.), Rijswijk-Z.H. The Boeing 747 registration N736PA, flight number 1736, left Los Angeles International Airport, California, United States, on 26 March 1977, local date, at 0129Z hours, arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport at 0617Z hours. After the aeroplane was refuelled and a crew change effected, it took off for Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain) at 0742Z. While the aeroplanes were en route to Las Palmas, a bomb exploded in the airport passenger terminal. On account of this incident and of a warning regarding a possible second bomb, the airport was closed. Therefore, KLM 4805 was diverted to Los Rodeos (Tenerife) Airport, arriving at 1338Z on 27 March 1977. For the same reason, PAA1736 proceeded to the same airport, which was its alternate, landing at 1415. At first the KLM passengers were not allowed to leave the aeroplane, but after about twenty minutes they were all transported to the terminal building by bus. On alighting from the bus, they received cards identifying them as passengers in transit on Flight KL 4805. Later, all the passengers boarded KLM 4805 expect the H.I.N.T. Company guide, who remained in Tenerife. When Las Palmas Airport was opened to traffic once more, the PAA 1736 crew prepared to proceed to Las Palmas, which was the flight's planned destination. When they attempted to taxi on the taxiway leading to runway 12, where they had been parked with four other aeroplanes on account of the congestion caused by the number of flights diverted to Tenerife, they discovered that it was blocked by KLM Boeing 747, Flight 4805, which was located between PAA 1736 and the entrance to the active runway. The first officer and the flight engineer left the aeroplane and measured the clearance left by the KLM aircraft, reaching the conclusion that it was insufficient to allow PAA 1736 to pass by, obliging them to writ until the former had started to taxi. The passengers of PAA 1736 did not leave the aeroplane during the whole time that it remained in the airport. KLM 4805 called the tower at 1656 requesting permission to taxi. It was authorized to do so and at 1658 requested to backtrack on runway 12 for take-off on runway 30. The tower controller first cleared the KLM flight to taxi to the holding position for runway 30 by taxiing down the main runway and leaving it by the (third) taxiway to its left. KLM 4805 acknowledged receipt of this message from the tower, stating that it was at that moment taxiing on the runway, which it would leave by the first taxiway in order to proceed to the approach end of runway 30. The tower controller immediately issued an amended clearance, instructing it to continue to taxi to the end of the runway, where it should proceed to backtrack. The KLM flight confirmed that it had received the message, that it would backtrack, and that it was taxiing down tile main runway. The tower signalled its approval, whereupon KLM 4805 immediately asked the tower again if what they had asked it to do was to turn left on taxiway one. The tower replied in the negative and repeated that it should continue on to the end of the runway and there backtrack. Finally, at 1659, KLM 4805 replied, "O.K., sir." At 1702, the PAA aeroplane called the tower to request confirmation that it should taxi down the runway. The tower controller confirmed this, also adding that they should leave the runway by the third taxiway to their left. At 1703:00, in reply to the tower controller's query to KLM 4805 as to how many runway exits they had passed, the latter confirmed that at that moment they were passing by taxiway C4. The tower controller told KLM 4805, "O.K., at the end of the runway make one eighty and report ready for ATC clearance ." In response to a query from KLM 4805, the tower controller advised both aeroplanes - KLM 4805 and PAA 1736 - that the runway centre line lights were out of service. The controller also reiterated to PAA 1736 that they were to leave the main runway via the third taxiway to their left and that they should report leaving the runway. At the times indicated, the following conversations took place between the tower and the KLM 4805 and PAA 1736 aeroplanes. Times taken from KLM CVR.
1705:44.6 KLM 4805: The KLM four eight zero five is now ready for take-off and we are waiting for our ATC clearance. (1705:50.77).
1705:53.41 Tower: KLM eight seven zero five you are cleared to the Papa Beacon, climb to and maintain flight level nine zero, right turn after take-off, proceed with heading four zero until intercepting the three two five radial from Las Palmas VOR. (1706 :08.09).
1706:09.61 KLM 4805: Ah - Roger, sir, we are cleared to the Papa Beacon, flight level nine zero until intercepting the three two five. We are now (at take-off). (1706:17.79).
1706:18.19 Tower : O.K..... Stand by for take-off, I will call you. (1706: 21.79).
Note: A squeal starts at: 1706:19.39 The squeal ends at: 1706:22.06
1706:21.92 PAA 1736: Clipper one seven three six. (1706 : 23.39).
1706:25.47 Tower: Ah - Papa Alpha one seven three six report the runway clear. (1706: 28.89).
1706:29.59 PAA 1736: O.K., will report when we're clear. (1706:30.69).
1706:31.69 Tower: Thank you.
Subsequently, KLM 4805, which had released its brakes to start take-off run 20 seconds before this communication took place, collided with the PAA aeroplane. The control tower received no further communications from PAA 1736, nor from KLM 4805. There were no eyewitnesses to the collision. All 248 occupants on board the KLM 747 were killed. Among the 396 people on board the Pan Am 747, 335 were killed (among them nine crew members) and 61 others were injured.