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Intentional or not, there have been, at most, three passenger jets hit by anti-aircraft missiles in the last thirty years. Keep in mind that even if this happe
by astrodust 12y ago
Intentional or not, there have been, at most, three passenger jets hit by anti-aircraft missiles in the last thirty years.
Keep in mind that even if this happened once a year, flying would still be far, far safer than driving.
- dragonwriter 12y ago> Intentional or not, there have been, at most, three passenger jets hit by anti-aircraft missiles in the last thirty years. At most 3 is incorrect. Not counting MH17, there are at least four civilian passenger aircraft that were definitively shot down by missiles, and more that were suspected to be (or were definitively shot down, but where I can't find definitive information on the "by missiles" part) in the last 30 years: LN 602 (March 23, 2007): attributed to the Tamil Tigers using Manpad missiles Siberia Airlines 1812 (October 4, 2001): admitted shot down by Ukrainian military Two Transair Georgia flights (September 21-22, 1993): shot down by missiles fired by rebels Iran Air 655 (July 3, 1988): shot down by the USS Vincennes Air Malawi 7Q-YMB (November 6, 1987): shot down by Mozambique (can't find anything one way or the other about whether this was "by anti-aircraft missiles" rather than, say, guns, so maybe not technically within scope.)
- tigerente 12y agoAlso: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerolinee_Itavia_Flight_870 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerolinee_Itavia_Flight_870, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Rhodesia_Flight_RH825 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Rhodesia_Flight_RH825, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Rhodesia_Flight_RH827 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Rhodesia_Flight_RH827, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_902 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_902, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_Arab_Airlines_Flight_114 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_Arab_Airlines_Flight_114, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_3, T&G Aviation DC-7 and more shot down by fighter aircraft. There are far more than a dozen incidents in the past decades.
- dragonwriter 12y agoThose (and KAL 007) are all outside of the thirty year window, but within a 40-year window. But, yes, there are lots of past incidents.
- astrodust 12y agoThat's a good list. I was only thinking of the Tamil, Iran and Malawi incidents.
- nashequilibrium 12y agoI will take a car crash over a plane crash any day!
- astrodust 12y agoVehicle fatalities in the United States are at a new low, but are still 33,000 people per year. If 30,000 people a year died in plane crashes the planes would literally have to be falling out of the sky on fire every single day.
- nashequilibrium 12y agohow many cars on the road vs planes in the sky?
- mylons 12y agoI realize this is a different mode of transportation, but what about German U-Boats (and I'm sure other nations) sinking passenger ships in the start of WW2? Attacks on civilian vessels shouldn't be tolerated.