Missing plane and air disasters: How bad was 2014?

Missing plane and air disasters: How bad was 2014?

After the disappearance of flight QZ8501 on December 28,2014 was the fourth high profiled commercial air disaster in 2014. But looking at the past in relations to crashes, 2014 had the least airplane crashes in the last 80 years, with the flight QZ8501 disappearance the 2014 number of crashes adds up to 111 as shown in F1. As the CNN article “How bad was 2014?” tells. But if you look at it in terms of casualties, the numbers are a bit worse then in the past few years. The total number of casualties is 1,320 shown in the chart below in F2, this is most death in airplane crashes since 2005, according to BAAA. We can say that 2014 was a bad year for Asia. Before 2014 Malaysian Airlines had a prefect safety record, but after 2014 these numbers changed. Out of the four major air crashes three were based from Asia. The MH370, MH17 and QZ8501.

Showing the deaths in air crashes in year 2014

Showing the air crashes in year 201 

Malaysian Airlines MH370

We thought it was going to be a year with no crashes but it all started on March 8^th, 2014 when a Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 carrying 227 passengers goes missing. The flight departed from Kuala Lumpur and was due for Beijing but two hours into the flight it disappears from radar. The aircraft that was involved in the disappearance was a Boeing 777-200 all of these information coming form a news article “Malaysia Airlines Flight Vanishes, Three Americans on Board”. Now nearly after a year has passed the search for the plane is still on going since they cannot find any evidence of the plane or where did it crash. 

Aircraft Boeing 77-200 that was involved in both of the
Malaysian Airlines crashes.

Now it raises a question if we are ever going to find any of the remains of the plane and how long is this flight going to stay as a mystery or is it going to remain a mystery for a long time.

Malaysian Airlines MH17

Wreckage of MH17 in Eastern Ukraine. 

But the disappearance of the flight MH370 wasn’t the end of the horror for Malaysia Airlines because on July 27^th, 2014 another plane from there fleet crashed in eastern Ukraine. At the time when the plane crashed the are that it went down was under heavy fighting between Pro-Russian Militants and Ukrainians. The interesting part of this story is that the plane that was involved was the same model that was involved in the disappearance of MH370, which was Boeing 777-200. The first theories that they had for the crash as said in the article “MH17 hit by burst of 'high-energy objects' from outside” was that the plane was shot down by one of the sides that were fighting at that time. The theory that mentioned in the “CNN” article was that the plane broke apart in mid air which could’ve have been a possibility. Now a question that was raised right away was who shot the plane down?

Air Asia QZ8501

Airbus A320-200 that was involved in the crash in December. 

For some people the New Years Eve was a nice night but for some was a horror and a sad night. On December 27^th, 2014 when another plane when down but now the plane belonged to Air Asia. The flight QZ8501 that was travelling from Surabaya to Singapore went missing. On board were 162 passengers and most of the passengers were from Indonesia as said in the statement of the Air Asia board not long after the disappearance. The aircraft that was involved in this crash was a Airbus A320-200. The crash is still being investigated but what we know is  that shortly after the plane took off the crew asked for permission to climb from 32,00 feet to 38,000 feet because of the weather conditions, this was denied by the air traffic control since there was already traffic on that height. But shortly after at 7:55 am the plane was confirmed missing. The next day a lot of theories started to come up Was this a terrorist attack? Is this similar case to MH370? What was the cause? Who was flying the plane? But certainly this disappearance wasn’t similar to the MH370 because few days after they found some wreckage of the plane and a few weeks later they found both black boxes, which made it easier for the investigators to see what has happened.  

Looking back at the year 2014 the year was not bad in terms of looking at the amount of air crashes that happened. But this depends on from what side are you looking the casualties or the amount of crashes. For sure there were more crashed that were devastating for the world to hear like the MH17 and also a mystery that is still on going for flight MH370.