The World's Deadliest Trivia Quiz

Answer: A terrorist attack at their destination airport.

On the morning of that day, a bomb planted by pro-independence Canary Island separatists detonated at the Las Palmas Airport, wounding several. Threats of further attacks led to all inbound flights, including Pan Am 1736 and KLM 4805, to divert to Los Rodeos Airport on the island of Tenerife. Scarcely equipped to handle the volume of traffic, a sequence of events involving refuelling delays, worsening weather, pressure on the KLM Captain to avoid violating his maximum duty hours and poor ATC communications led to the KLM aircraft taking off without permission and striking the still taxiing Pan Am. 583 people were killed with only 61 survivors, all of whom were onboard the Pan Am 747.

Answer: 4

Of the 524 passengers and crew, only 4 survived the ordeal. It is believed that more passengers survived the impact, but the rescue operation was botched and it is probable that badly wounded survivors died during the night.

Answer: Saudi Arabian Airlines and Kazakhstan Airlines

Known as the Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision, it is the worst mid-air collision (Tenerife happened on the ground) in history, and the worst crash in Indian aviation history. Saudia 763, a Boeing 747 bound for Dhahran with 312 on board, and Kazakhstan 1907, an IL-76 en-route to Delhi, with 37 on board, for a total 349 dead.

The primary cause of the crash was the failure of the IL-76 crew to follow instructions, due to poor English, with the secondary cause being insufficient radar coverage of the airspace.

Answer: A flaw in the design of the DC-10

It was discovered that the DC-10's cargo door had a flaw that made it possible for it to be closed without being properly secured. As a result, the door blew during the climb out of Paris, and the resulting damage destroyed the flight controls. Flight 981 crashed into the Ermenonville forest at 800 kms/hr.

A sad note to the disaster is that it was entirely preventable. Two years earlier, an American Airlines DC-10 made an emergency landing at Detroit after a cargo door blew, damaging the flight controls. All 67 on board survived. Although recommendations were made to prevent a repeat, they were ignored until the Paris crash. It took 346 deaths to fix a problem that should have been solved without loss of life. As a result lasting damage was done to the reputation of McDonnell Douglas and the US Federal Aviation Administration.

Answer: Sikh terrorists and Air India

Air India Flight 182, a Boeing 747 with 329 people on board, is destroyed in mid-air off the Irish coast en-route from Montreal to London. The bombing is traced to a Sikh extremist group, in retaliation to an Indian Army offensive against a Sikh temple at Amritsar. Only one man was convicted in regards to the attack, and he has since been paroled.

Answer: The Flight Engineer was dyslexic

The resulting investigation shed light on poor decisions and communication in regards to the flight crew. Most bizarre of all was the possibility that the Flight Engineer, American Bradley Curtis, may have been dyslexic. This would have made it difficult for him to carry out the required emergency procedures and checklists.

Answer: Malaysia

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, is shot down by a surface-to-air missile over Ukraine, almost certainly a Russian system fired by pro-Russian separatists. This tragic disaster took place only a few months after Flight 370, a Boeing 777 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, disappears with 237 on board. To this day the cause of the latter is still unknown, and only a partial bit of wreckage has been recovered.

Side note: All the other countries had notable plane crashes in 2014. Algeria lost an MD-83 with 116 killed, Indonesia an A320 with 162 killed, and Taiwan an ATR-72 with 48 killed.

Answer: United States

Iran Air Flight 655, en-route from Bander Abbas, Iran to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, was shot down by the US Navy cruiser USS Vincennes. Although the crash is generally accepted to be a mistake, rather than deliberate action, there remains controversy over how negligent the crew of the Vincennes was.

In a bitter irony, Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was shot down over Tehran by an Iranian AA battery in January 2020 in circumstances similar to the Iran Air shootdown. All 176 onboard were killed.

Answer: It was a military transport carrying exclusively military personnel.

An Iranian Air Force IL-76 carrying members of Iran's famous Revolutionary Guard Corps crashes with all 275 souls lost. According to official sources it crashed as a result of pilot error in poor weather, although lack of detailed information has led to conspiracies about possible other causes such as mid-air collision or terrorism.

Answer: Chicago O'Hare

American Airlines Flight 191, a DC-10 carrying 269 passengers and crew, was on its take-off roll at Chicago O'Hare when the left engine separated. Not a big deal in and of itself, disaster was inevitable when damage to the wing led to a control imbalance, and the pilots inadvertently stalled the plane following the (normally) correct engine-out procedure due to incomplete information thanks to a power failure.

The cause of the engine separation was shoddy maintenance by American Airlines, however criticism was also levelled at Douglas for a lack of redundancy in the aircraft's systems.