These are the episodes which prompted aviation organisations to declare disaster zones on route or in airspace
An aeroplane containing 80 people was forced to make an emergency landing in the Andes as a recent test flight of the Airbus plane failed to gain height due to a malfunction of its engines. The crash caused the Argentinian government to cancel further tests of the new A321neo.
In India, there was a large crash at Mangalore last week, killing the 50 people on board. The crash was thought to have been caused by the pilot pushing on too hard when he tried to gain altitude. An investigation has since been launched, but it will take years before conclusions can be drawn.
The Bristow unit of British Airways landed at Stansted in October 2015. In a dramatic operation, the jet came to a halt following a 10-minute descent after it hit a bird on its return to land. An engine fire had broken out and the captain decided to make an emergency landing. It emerged at the time that investigators had been unable to do a check in the cockpit because the crew had been distracted by the sound of a bird in the engine.
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In November 2013, the fire-prone Bombardier Dash 8 came down near Auckland, forcing the pilot to use his controls to fight the plane’s fire rather than fly it home. All 94 people on board, including four children, died.
In August 2003, Italian pilots reported hitting a flock of birds as they took off from Donatello airport, killing four, including two children. An investigation found the pilots had engaged autopilot rather than addressing the problem before restarting the engines.
In 2015, a report by the UK’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch concluded that a propeller breakdown, which led to the crash of a British Airways Airbus A330 near Aberdeen in December 2003, was due to an aerodynamic issue not amenable to solutions on the aircraft itself. The 29 people on board were later rescued.