aviation-accidents-and-incidents

"This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!"

"When Americans take off in airplanes, they should expect to land at their destination. [...] We will not accept excuses."

"We must have only the highest standards for those who work in our aviation system. I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary. And then when I left office and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before. I put safety first, Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody's ever seen because this was the lowest level. Their policy was horrible, and their politics was even worse."

"We will take appropriate action if necessary. [...] There will be a review of what happened here tonight."

"For sure, we want fast confirmations. [...] The Democrats, as you know, are doing everything they can to delay. They’ve taken too long. We’re struggling to get very good people that everybody knows are going to be confirmed. We’re struggling to get them out faster."

"[A] heartbreak beyond measure."

"It is our responsibility to find the direct and proximate causes of the accident, and to make recommendations on how to avoid such accidents in the future. Unfortunately we have found, as the proximate cause, very serious and extensive "flaws" in management. Not just a crack but a general disintegration. Our report lists them with our evidence for our view. This raises serious problems for our nation as to how to continue on with the space program. …It is our duty to supply … information as completely, accurately, and impartially as possible. We have laid out the facts and done it well. The large number of negative observations are a result of the appalling condition the NASA shuttle program has gotten into. It is unfortunate, but true, and we would do a disservice if we tried to be less than frank about it. The President needs to know if he is to make wise decisions. …At this rate [due to bureaucratic interference] we will never get down close enough to business to find out what happened. [T]omorrow at 6:15 we go by special airplane (two planes) to Kennedy Space Center to be "briefed." No doubt we shall wander about being shown everything—gee whiz—but no time to get into technical detail with anybody. Well it won’t work. If I am not satisfied by Friday I will stay over …. I am determined to do the job of finding out what happened ….My guess is that I will be allowed to do this overwhelmed with data and details, with the hope that so buried with all attention on technical details I can be occupied, so they have time to soften up dangerous witnesses etc. But it won’t work because (1) I do technical information exchange and understanding much faster than they imagine, and (2) I already smell certain rats that I will not forget because I just love the smell of rats for it is the spoor of exciting adventure."

"Wind shear may have caused the tragedy."

"Wind shear may have caused the tragedy (cannot open ref)"

"Owing to the severity of the crash, 62 of the 183 bodies were never positively identified. The victims included 166 Polish citizens and 17 Americans."

"The crew faced fire and loss of thrust in the two left-side engines, cabin decompression and, they soon realised, loss of pitch control. For the remainder of the flight they controlled pitch with the aircraft’s trim system. The flight engineer opened the valves to jettison some of the 70 tonnes of fuel the aircraft was carrying for its trans-Atlantic flight, but was disturbed to see that although the solenoid read as open, the fuel level did not fall. At nearly maximum take-off weight but with only two engines operating, the aircraft was in a gradual, but unstoppable, descent."

"Among the crew’s terse, unemotional remarks was a brief speculation that something, possibly connected with the military area, had hit the horizontal stabiliser and engines. By this time the fire alarm had ceased and the crew presumed the fire had gone out. The engineer reported only one of the aircraft’s four generators was operational. In response, the captain switched off the radar to save power."

"The Polish report into the crash found the shaft bearing in the engine had been installed with half the required number of roller bearings—13 instead of 26. Its failure caused the inner part of the disc to melt and the outer part to spin freely, destroying itself and becoming a rotary projectile. LOT never bought another Soviet aircraft and took delivery of its first Boeing 767 in 1990. Meanwhile, it fitted its Ilyushin 62M fleet with vibration gauges and warning lights."

"The crash, described as Poland's worst commercial airline disaster, left several close-knit Polish communities in the New York area - in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn and in parts of Connecticut and New Jersey - in a state of shock and mourning."

"The cause of the crash was attributed to failure to adequately brief and execute a non-precision approach, and the Federal Aviation Administration's intentional inhibition of the minimum safe altitude warning system at Guam, the report showed."

"Witnesses said the aircraft lost altitude rapidly, briefly skimmed treetops, then plowed a 500-yard furrow through the forest, breaking apart as it went. Its wings were sheared off, then it disintegrated in a huge explosion followed by a series of smaller explosions that touched off several brush fires."

"A woman who also witnessed the crash said she saw a body hanging from a tree after the explosion but rescue workers found little trace of human remains, apparently because of the force of the blast."

"The television news later showed scenes filmed by a helicopter-borne Polish crew. Amid smoldering tree trunks and mangled metal, charred bodies could be seen, and bits of fabric hung from branches like shrouds, apparently blown there by the force of the explosion."

"The Holy Father was very upset by the news of the accident. He was visibly upset and retired (to his private rooms) to say special prayers for the victims."

"Burned and scratched, some of the more fortunate survivors told of being hurled from the plane still attached to their seats, and of turning back in their escape from the burning jet to pull fellow passengers to safety."

"After the accident, Korean Air announced that it planned to spend more than $100 million over the next two years on safety initiatives, including changes in pilot training and maintenance operations."

"The wait for remains has been excruciating for the families of the victims, most of them South Korean. A scuffle broke out Thursday at a hotel used as a center for the families when mourners hungry for information saw a Korean Air representative hold a news conference for reporters instead of briefing the families."

"Witnesses said the plane plowed through the jungle trailing smoke and flames, before it came to rest. The first rescuers had to make a maddeningly slow journey to the wreckage, trudging in with flashlights after hacking their way through razor-sharp grass that came up to their shoulders. They were followed by a bulldozer that slowly leveled a path over the rocky ground, the witnesses said."

"Transcripts of cockpit voice recordings recovered from the wreckage show confusion in the cockpit, with crew members questioning one another repeatedly about the state of the instrument landing system and failing to follow procedures that would have kept them all aware of how close they were getting to the ground."

"Within hours, story began circulating in Washington that the Soviets have been involved."

"What civilian? [It] has flown over Kamchatka! It [came] from the ocean without identification. I am giving the order to attack if it crosses the State border."

"The target is destroyed."

"Roger, Korean Air 007...ah, we are experiencing..."

"Stand by. Stand by. Stand by. Stand by. Set."

"Five days after the Soviets shot down KAL 007, I went on nationwide television to urge that all of us in the civilized world make sure such an atrocity never happens again. And I pledged to you that night, we would cooperate with other countries to improve the safety of civil aviation, asking them to join us in not accepting the Soviet airline Aeroflot as a normal member of the international civil air community -- not, that is, until the Soviets satisfy the cries of humanity for justice."

"There were no circumstances that can justify the unprecedented attack on an unarmed commercial aircraft."

"I don't know anything - just that my mother is dead."

"Help me get my daughter back - I want my daughter back! Please, please help me!"

"I am heartbroken and have had nightmares because my best friend is dead. My Daddy and Mummy told me that some Russian men killed her and many, many other people, too. I asked Daddy why the Russians are so cruel. Yuen Wai-Sum was eight and was my best friend. Now we can never play together again. Why? You are the leader of the Russians, can you tell me why Russians have to kill her? I want to name offerings to Wai-Sum, to give her some fresh flowers and to pay respect to her spirit. May I? You are the leader. If you say yes, then it must be okay."

"Question I asked myself when I heard of his death is “Why Loc, of all people?” It seemed so unfair. Why not some multiple murderer on death row or some drunken bum? Worst of all, why did he die the way he did? I could understand and handle the death of a friend from diseases, but for him to be shot down on an airliner hurts me to the bottom of my soul."

"We have been struggling for years to know what happened to our loved ones. Now we face the agonizing recognition that their death was neither painless nor instant."

"The plane was over Soviet territory for about two hours, so it can hardly be assumed that this was an unplanned action. We should make it clear in our statements that this was a gross violation of international conventions. It is no use keeping quiet now, we must go on the offensive."

"There have been many books written about KAL 007 in the West, but the only living eyewitnesses to this tragedy are in the Soviet Union. The world is interested in the facts of what happened. But for me, what is most important is that ordinary Soviet citizens are opening their lips after so many years of silence. By talking, we become normal people."

"I am far from thinking that the blame for this tragedy lies entirely on us. The passengers on board KAL 007 had become the hostages of two great powers colliding with each other. They were condemned to die."

"I was just next to him, on the same altitude, 150 meters to 200 meters away. I saw two rows of windows and knew that this was a Boeing. I knew this was a civilian plane. But for me this meant nothing. It is easy to turn a civilian type of plane into one for military use."

"I would have landed him on our airfield, and I wanted it very much. Do you think I wanted to kill him? I would rather have shared a bottle with him."

"Until we know what final explanation [the Soviets] give and we have made a judgment on that explanation, it is premature to say what we are going to do about it."

"We have found new material on KAL 007. I know that sixty percent of the passengers were American. I am prepared to give you all the materials we have found. Perhaps one possibility is if some family members could come over and meet with me and discuss this. They could bring the materials back to you, including the black box."

"The sophisticated provocation masterminded by the US special services with the use of a South Korean plane is an example of extreme adventurism in politics."

"The recollections bring back some unpleasant feelings. Those events left scars and added some gray hairs to my head. I will always be convinced that I gave the right order. Sometimes, in strategic operations, we had to sacrifice battalions to save the army."

"Cold War international tensions rose to a peak in 1983, with the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Western Europe exciting Soviet concern and anger, and the Soviets fearing attack under the cover of Able Archer, a NATO military exercise held from 2 to 11 November. Reagan going aloft in his command plane during the exercise worried the Soviets. Moreover, the unrepentant Soviet shooting down on 1 September 1983, over Soviet airspace, of Korean Airlines flight 007, suspected of espionage, increased tension. Two hundred and sixty-nine people, including an American congressman, were on the plane."

"The destruction of the airliner and its immediate aftermath reaffirmed the Soviet Union's and the United States' essential distrust of each other and ended any hope of an immediate solution to the expanding nuclear arms race. Late November 1983 saw the failure of the European peace campaign as the West German parliament voted to accept 108 medium-range Pershing II missiles for deployment and the Reagan administration immediately began shipping missile components. The Soviets, as expected, broke off the strategic arms reduction negotiations in Geneva, accusing Washington of "wrecking" the talks and describing the Germans as "nuclear maniacs.""

"Those who ran the American government did not want to learn that the Soviets had been honestly confused and panic-stricken about the enemy intruder."

"There’s always this question: Have we missed something? That’s the sort of thing that will occasionally keep me awake at night. We were ready for most things, but MH370 has been unpredictable all the way through."

"Goodnight Malaysian Three Seven Zero"