Worlds Worst Air Disaster?

Question

Many books written post 9/11 are listing that day as the world's worst air disaster, as opposed to the Teneriffe Disaster (one book on my shelf goes as far as to give the top four (in terms of death toll) air disasters over to 9/11, one for each aircraft involved). Do you agree that 9/11 should replace Teneriffe as the worlds worst air disaster, or should that title remain where it is?

Answer 1

9/11 is not an air disaster in my opinion; it's a terrorist action.

Tenerife was most definitely an air disaster as it involved one aircraft crashing into another on the runway.

In other words; I think you should compare 9/11 to other terrorist actions and not to other air disasters.

Answer 2

The term "disaster" adds an asterisk to the 9/11 attacks.  Those were acts of violence, deliberately planned and executed.  The accident at Tenerife was a terrible chain of human errors, completely unplanned.  The pilot of the plane taking off did everything he could to get his plane off the ground, over the one crossing the runway, but there just wasn't enough room, not enough lift to get his plane clear.

Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland: act of violence.

KAL Flight 007, shot down by Russian fighter: disaster (maybe)

TWA Flight 800, exploding after takeoff from NYC: disaster

Air Florida Flight 90, crashed into Potomac after takeoff: disaster

In terms of how many people were killed, nothing tops the 9/11 attacks - the only way to kill more people with a plane is to drop a nuke from one.  But when something like that is done deliberately, it's nothing to make the event kill way more people than might have died if just random chance were involved.  So in my book, Tenerife still stands as the worst air disaster.

Answer 3

I've seen the Teneriffe disaster on tv 3 times, that's really an unfortunate incident. I do think Teneriffe should still be the worst air disaster, for 9/11 despite having highest number of death toll is more appropriate to call it one of the worst terrorist attack instead.

Answer 4

I'll go with Fly Guy on this and for his reasoning........as a parallel example, in maritime history Titanic and Empress of Canada are  two of largest and best known "maritime" disasters, with ( off the top of my head) 1500-2000 dead; The Wilhelm Gustloff liner when sunk took about 5,000 down with her, but that was a result of enemy action in WW2

Answer 5

All the worst air disasters are actually terrorist actions, ranging from Muslims on "holy wars" to Irish "freedom fighters".

the 9/11 disaster is listed as the most devestating because it killed more people than any air disaster in history.

Despite that My guess would be the air battles in WW2 would have killed more.

Answer 6

Tenerife happened on the ground, so it is, in my book, an "airline disaster" rather than an "air" disaster.

9-11 wasn't a disaster; it was an act of war, though no one's allowed to say that (because then the insurance companies would be off the hook).

I'd say the "worst air disaster" is the one you're in at the time.

Answer 7

Teneriffe is indeed the biggest air disaster.  It differs from September 11 in a number of notable ways:

1.  It was not pre-meditated and

2.  The act that killed most of the people in the WTC was the collapse of the buildings due to structural failure caused by heat from burning fuel.

3.  None of the aircraft lost on that day equalled anywhere close to the total souls on board (583) the two planes at Teneriffe.  The combination of casualties directly from the aircraft was far less, even if you include those killed in the buildings (WTC,Pentagon) in the initial impacts.

It is a technical and emotive issue.  Americans may be more inclined to consider it the worst air disaster, and I don't wish to cause offence by playing down that incident, or the loss in any other air disaster.

Answer 8

9/11 doesn't deserve to be listed as an air disaster

that's just giving credit to the terrorists

I would pick the Teneriffe Disaster. It was, in many aspects the worst aviation disaster ever.

9/11 was more of a national and international security disaster. Aviation was just the tool. You shoot a guy with a gun, the gun is not at fault. The person wielding it was. Or for the anti-gun people, the constitution was at fault. Same thing with 9/11.

Don't give the terrorists the satisfaction.

in more technical terms, aviation crashes are caused by malfunctioning equipment related to aviation, "malfunctioning" people related to aviation, weather, airports, aviation technology.

9/11 did not involve any of that. So, not an air disaster. It involved security and terrorists. or "malfunctioning" security and extremists views. It's not at all related to aviation and should not be in the air disaster category even though the death toll was high.

to Rob saying everything is a disaster, you're a disaster yourself. We are not ignoring the other crashes. You have to admit that losing over 500 people in a single crash is much more tragic than losing a lone pilot in a Cessna.

Every crash, either no deaths or all killed might be disasters,  but it's not all bad. In aviation just as in everything else, including 9/11, we learned and development strategies, and techniques to counter the problem. Without those disasters, we would have at least a dozen airliners crashing a year instead of our present day rate of 0-3 a year.

Answer 9

I hate that the media always has to label things like this.  They're all disasters.  It doesn't matter if only 1 person dies or hundreds/thousands.  Anytime people die in a plane, whether it is on the ground, in the air, while a qualified crewmember is behind the wheel or not, it's a tragedy.  To only focus on 9/11/2001 and 3/27/1977 does injustice to all the other airline disasters that have occured, and the people that died in them.  

Answer 10

What are your criteria for "worst"?

Greatest toll? best explosion? political motivation? Does a terrorist act qualify as a "disaster"? If so why dont bombings count if theyre from planes? If so I call Hiroshima and nagasaki as 1 & 2.

Or is it the worst because it occurred in the US?

WORST air disaster is just another example of the need for a "best" of everything. Its not enough for people to be killed in horrible ways but we have to grade them too.

Fudge that.

Theyre ALL the worst. My scorcard reads only 2 values. 0 and 1. If it scores a 1 its a disaster. No more grading needed.

P.S

If you MUST engage in this vulgar grading system then consider the fact that 11/9 was NOT an accident.

Answer 11

what is teneriffe