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Perhaps the world didn't really know much about it but the plane explosion (because of a bomb apparently) that happened over 100 Mile House in British Columbia on the 8th of July 1965, certainly had a big impact on MY world. I was due to take that very same flight from Whitehorse a few days after that - and I was just a teenager when that happened .. scarred me for many years .. I knew (as did most of my friends and family up north) people who died on that flight.
Other than that, I think Tenerife probably ranked right up there and more people heard about it than the flight I just mentioned.
To this day I remember the plane that crashed into the Potomac on January 13, 1982 because it was my sister's birthday and the survivors were surrounded by ice cold water. Several people were killed on the bridge that the plane hit before plunging into the Potomac. Some of them were so numb from the cold they couldn't even hold on to life preservers that were thrown to them. A brave man named Lenny Skutnick jumped in to save them. One of the passengers Arland Williams assisted the survivors only to drown himself. They renamed that bridge after him. The thought of going down in that freezing cold water was shocking to me as I've lived in Florida for many years.
My folks live in DC and I think about the crash every time I cross that bridge, especially in the winter!
I can't speak for the world, but the 1979 AA 191 crash in Chicago freaked me out. We took a family trip later that year, and had to fly from Chicago to LAX, and I was SO afraid to get on that plane in Chicago. I think the DC-10s were still grounded, but I was in high school at the time, and I figured "a plane is a plane is a plane", and any of them could just fall out of the sky.
Years later, the pictures in TIME magazine of Pan Am 103 brought tears to my eyes, made me puking sick, and made me afraid to fly yet again.
My folks live in DC and I think about the crash every time I cross that bridge, especially in the winter!
I lived in Maryland in the early 1990s, and for the few years I lived there, someone would make little cardboard signs of the flight crew's last words, and post them, "Burma-Shave" style, on the approach to the bridge. I always figured it was someone who lost a loved one.
I haven't been back there in years, so I don't know if they still do that.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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It is not such a bad idea to look at history
1978, UA 173 'landing / crash' on a busy city street...(ran out of fuel due to holding pattern / landing gear issue) had quite an impact on my coworkers who were at the site, and the 'de-ranked' Pilot was a neighbor
recent Lamia Airlines flight 2933 (Brazil soccer team) similar story,
consider your risks... NO FUEL is a pretty big (and avoidable) problem, and why 'holding patterns' are not used very frequently, as they were 40 yrs ago.
Lamia made other bad choices (not to 'waste the time' to stop for scheduled refuel).
I'd say Tenerife because of the sheer magnitude - almost 600 dead - and the fact that it all should have been so avoidable if people had paid proper attention to their jobs and communicated more responsibly; but the Concorde is a close second because it was such a spectacular visual event.
The delta heavy crash due to wind shear as they came in to land in unstable summer stormy weather. I believe this was one of the first flights where wind shear was determined to be the likely cause. Can't recall plane but think it night have been a large non Boeing plane. I believe it was partially videoed as it crashed near a major freeway.
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