A helicopter carrying a Saudi prince and seven government officials crashed in Asir province of Saudi Arabia, on November 5th.
The incident happened when Prince Mansour bin Muqrin, the deputy governor of Asir province, was conducting an aerial inspection of local infrastructure projects near Abha.
All eight people aboard were killed in the crash.
A Cessna U206F Stationair owned/operated by Wilderness Aircraft I LLC went missing east of Donnelly, Idaho while en route from McCall Municipal Airport and the Salmon River Basin. Three planes had been making the 12 minute flight but only two made it to the destination. The Idaho Army National Guard helicopter who were searching in an inaccessible area cancelled due to bad weather and mountain snow. The search resumed on Thursday when the wreckage was found on the side of a steep mountain.
The pilot and two passengers were going to the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness.
Hikers to the wreckage discovered that pilot Dan Wilson and passengers Steve Hall and Mike Wolf had not survived the crash. It took rescue workers two hours to hike to the wreckage 7,800 feet up the mountain.
The NTSB will be investigating.
Two Israel Air Force F-16 fighter jets almost crashed into a Ryanair passenger plane near Ovda Airport, Israel, on March 1st.
The passenger plane was en-route from Krakow, Poland, to Ovda airport, Israel, when two fighter planes, engaged in the training exercises, came “dangerously close”. The Ryanair pilots changed the course at the last minute to avert the crash.
The flight FR-2616 was carrying 162 passengers at the time.
The airline confirmed the incident but said that “These military aircraft were at all times over 3 miles away from the Ryanair aircraft, so the reports of a ‘nearly crash’ or ‘evasive manoeuvres’ are all false and invented. All passengers on board the Ryanair aircraft noticed nothing, since our aircraft never diverted from its cleared flight path to Ovda.”
A small plane crashed into a home in Yorba Linda, California, on February 3rd.
The incident happened shortly after the Cessna 414A plane took off from Fullerton Municipal Airport.
Five people were killed in the crash, including the pilot and four occupants of the house. Three others were injured.
What: Eurocopter EC135P2 Helicopter registration OE-BXF
Where: Lake Achensee, Austria
When: March 31, 2011
Who: 4 crew members, 4 fatalities
Why: During a border inspection flight, the helicopter was flying very low, and tipped the surface lightly, the helicopter shot up, then fell. The helicopter had a crew of 3 Tyroleans and one Swiss. The air rescue and mountain guide, Stephen L. (38) was found floating; Pilot Mark P. (41), Mr Herbert F. (53) from the state police, and a Swiss civil servant (43) were not found until evening. They appeared to have been trapped in the cockpit. The pilot had 2,500 flight hours,and the helicopter was new.
Fire and water emergency personnel responded, and (3 rescue helicopters and 43 divers) dive teams are on site using sonar imaging. They are looking for the black box so they can learn the details of the crash.
In 2009 in Syria, two people died in an EC 135 helicopter.
Airblue Airbus A321-200 narrowly escaped accident when one of its tires burst upon landing at Benazir Bhutto International Airport, Islamabad, Pakistan, on March 4th.
The aircraft was coming from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, when one of the tires burst during landing. The plane tilted toward its side and the right hand engine touched the ground.
There were 230 passengers aboard the flight PA-271 at the time; all of them remained safe.
A small plane crashed in Alva, Oklahoma, on November 4th.
The plane, performing a teaching flight, was approaching the Alva Regional Airport when it experienced a mechanical failure and went down.
The instructor David Chael, 61, was killed in the crash. The student Cortney Washburn, 39, was injured and was rushed to a hospital.
