On August 12, 1985, the largest number of deaths in a single commercial airplane crash occurred when a Japan Air Lines Boeing 747 crashed into Mt. Ogura in Japan, killing 520 passengers and crew members.
Timeline:
December 14, 1920 – Believed to be one of the first known commercial passenger airplane crashes, a British Handley Page HP-16 en route to Paris from London crashes just after takeoff killing four of the eight people onboard.
March 3, 1974 – 346 people are killed when a Turkish Airlines DC-10 crashes in France, as a result of the cargo door not being fully latched.
March 27, 1977 – A KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Boeing 747 crashes into a Pan American World Airways Boeing 747 at the Los Rodeos Airport at Tenerife in the Canary Islands, killing a total of 583 (335 fatalities on the Pan American airplane and all 234 passengers plus 14 crew members on the KLM plane). The accident occurs when the KLM airplane begins its takeoff while the Pan American airplane is still on the runway.
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February 12, 2009 – Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashes into a house in Clarence Center, New York, killing all 49 people on board the plane and one person in the house.
June 1, 2009 – Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris carrying 228 passengers and crew is lost over the Atlantic. The first bodies are recovered on June 6, approximately 600 miles off the northern coast of Brazil.
May 1, 2011 – The data recorder from Flight 447 is recovered 12,800 ft (3,900 meters) underwater, by the BEA, the French air accident investigation agency.
July 5, 2012 – France’s Bureau of Investigation and Analysis concludes that a series of errors by pilots and a failure to react effectively to technical problems led to the crash that killed the 228 passengers and crew aboard Air France Flight 447.
