January 13 – After a fire breaks out in the No. 1 engine of an AeroflotTupolev Tu-104A (registration CCCP-42369) on approach to Alma-Ata AirportinAlma-Ata in the Soviet Union's Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, the Tu-104A begins orbiting the airport to burn off fuel. The fire spreads to a fuel tank, causing the fuel tank to explode at an altitude of 300 meters (980 feet). The airliner crashes 3.5 kilometers (2.2 miles) from the airport, killing all 96 people on board. It is the deadliest aviation accident in the history of Kazakhstan at the time.[3]
A hijacker commandeers an All Nippon Airways Boeing 727-281 during a domestic flight in Japan from Tokyo′sHaneda Airport to Sendai. The airliner returns to Tokyo, where the hijacker commits suicide.[13]
March 27 – The Tenerife airport disaster takes place: Attempting to take off in fog from Los Rodeos Airport (now Tenerife North Airport) at Tenerife in the Canary Islands, the KLMBoeing 747-206BRijn, operating as Flight 4805, collides with the Pan American World Airways Boeing 747-121 Clipper Victor, operating as Flight 1736, which is taxiing across the runway. All 248 people aboard the KLM aircraft die, as do 335 of the 396 people aboard the Pan Am plane; all 61 Pan Am survivors are injured. American pin-up model, motion picture actress, and film producer Eve Meyer is among the dead on the Pan Am flight.[1] With a combined total of 583 people killed, the crash remained the worst air disaster in history until September 2001.
March 31 – The captain of a Douglas C-47 military transport plane operated by Swift Air Lines, a commercial airline in the southern Philippines, opens fire in the cabin of the plane with an M16 rifle. The plane carried 34 Philippines soldiers on a charter flight from Zamboanga City, PhilippinestoSanga-Sanga Airport on the island of Tawi-Tawi. The pilot, Ernesto Agdulos, grabbed the rifle left in the cockpit, then opened fire, killing six of the soldiers and a flight stewardess, and wounding nine others.[16] After the pilot was disarmed and detained, the co-pilot landed the plane safely. The pilot initially claimed to have no memory of the incident.[17] He later admitted that robbery was his motive.[18]
After an IberiaBoeing 727 arriving from Madrid, Spain, lands at Rome′sLeonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport, a Libyan man being deported from Spain who wants to return to Spain to see his fiancée threatens the flight crew with a knife and demands that the plane fly him back to Madrid immediately. He allows all the other passengers to disembark. While the airliner is still on the ground at Rome, one of the pilots disables the hijacker by activating a fire extinguisher, and the hijacker is overpowered and arrested.[24]
May 8 – One hour after takeoff, 26-year-old Bruce Trayer holds a razor to a flight attendant′s neck and demands access to the cockpitofNorthwest Orient Airlines Flight 22 – a Boeing 747 with 262 people on board bound from Tokyo′sHaneda AirporttoHonolulu, Hawaii – where he demands to be flown to Moscow. A male flight attendant hits Trayer over the head with the cockpit crash axe, after which Trayer is overpowered. United States Air ForceAir Police officers aboard the plane as passengers restrain Trayer, and the airliner returns to Tokyo, where Japanese authorities arrest him.[25][26]
May 15 – At the Biggin Hill Air Show in Biggin Hill, London, England, a sightseeing helicopter strikes the underside of a de Havilland Tiger Mothbiplane at an altitude of 200 feet (61 meters), shearing off the Tiger Moth'slanding gear. The Tiger Moth lands safely with no injuries to the two people aboard. Aboard the helicopter, five people die and one is injured.
May 16 – Motion picture director Michael Findlay and two other passengers are instantly slashed to death by the rotors of a New York AirwaysSikorsky S-61L helicopter after its landing gear collapses while they are boarding it on the roof of the Pan Am BuildinginNew York City; another passenger boarding the helicopter is seriously injured and soon dies as well.[1] The rotors detach and disintegrate, and a woman walking on the street below is killed by falling debris. The accident prompts the closure of the rooftop heliport.[27]
July 22 – The Egyptian Air Force makes a full-scale attack on a major Libyan Arab Republic Air Force base at El Adem, reportedly killing three Soviet military advisers.[42]
July 23 - After threats of shutting down transatlantic air traffic, the U.S. and British governments reach the Bermuda II accord, giving British airlines additional ports of entry in the United States and removing American airlines' rights to carry passengers beyond London and Hong Kong.
July 23–24 – Further Egyptian Air Force attacks destroy large numbers of Libyan aircraft before a ceasefire ends the war. Egypt admits the loss of two planes during the last two days of the war.[42]
August 23 – Piloted by racing cyclist Bryan Allen, the Gossamer Condor becomes the first human-powered aeroplane to make a fully controlled flight, flying a 1.35-mile (2.17-km) figure-eight course around two pylons 0.8 km (0.50 mi) apart at Shafter, California, to demonstrate sustained, controlled flight. The flight wins its designer, Dr. Paul McCready, the £50,000 Kremer Prize.[47][48]
August 31 – Soviet test pilot Alexander V. Fedotov zoom climbs the Mikoyan-Gurevich Ye-266 – a modified Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25RB (NATO reporting name "Foxbat") – to attain an altitude of 123,524 feet (37,650 meters) briefly, setting a new world altitude record for air-breathing aircraft.[49]
September 8 – A Burma Airways de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter 300 (registration XY-AEH) disappears during a flight to Kengtung, Burma, with the loss of all 25 people on board. Its wreckage is discovered on Burma's Mount Loi Hsam Hsao on September 11.[53]
September 28 – Five Japanese Red Army (JRA) members hijackJapan Airlines Flight 472, a Douglas DC-8 with 151 other people on board, after takeoff from Bombay, India. The hijackers force the plane to land in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where they demand US$6 million and the release of nine imprisoned JRA members in Japan. On October 1, the Japanese government releases six of the prisoners and exchanges them for 118 of the hostages aboard the plane on October 2. On October 3, the plane flies to Kuwait City, Kuwait, and Damascus, Syria, where the hijackers release 11 more hostages. Ultimately, the plane flies to Algeria, where it is impounded and all the remaining hostages are released.
September 30 – A man armed with a pistol and a hand grenade hijacks an Air InterSud Aviation SE-210 Caravelle during a domestic flight in France from Paris′sOrly AirporttoLyons. The airliner returns to Orly Airport. After eight hours of negotiations, police fire tear gas grenades into the plane and storm it. The hijacker throws his hand grenade toward the cockpit and it explodes, killing one passenger. The police then exchange gunfire with the hijacker and arrest him.[56]
Free on bail after an arrest for a September bank robbery, 29-year-old Thomas Michael Hannan draws a gun aboard Frontier Airlines Flight 101, a Boeing 737-200 boarding during the early morning at Grand Rapids, Michigan, for a flight to Lincoln, Nebraska. He orders it to fly to Atlanta, Georgia, and demands the release from jail in Atlanta of his homosexual partner and co-defendant in the bank robbery, George David Stewart, as well as US$3 million, two parachutes, two machine guns, two .45-caliber pistols, and other weapons. The airliner takes off with 30 of its passengers and four crew members aboard. When it stops to refuel in Kansas City, Missouri, authorities tell Hannan it will not be allowed to take off again, but they relent after he releases the 15 women and children aboard as passengers, leaving 11 male passengers, two stewardesses, the pilot, and the copilot aboard as hostages. The plane arrives at Atlanta just after noon. During lengthy negotiations at Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta, Stewart is brought from Fulton County Jail to plead with Hannan to surrender. During the afternoon, Hannan releases the two stewardesses, and he allows the 11 remaining passengers – one of them an old high school friend of his who helped negotiate the release of the hostages – to disembark during the evening. With only the pilot and copilot left aboard with Hannan, Hannan's lawyer in the bank robbery case boards the airliner to talk with him, and during the conversation, Hannan sits down and shoots himself to death.[60][61]
October 31 – The first British all-female airline flight crew makes the inaugural British Air Ferries service from SouthendtoDüsseldorf with Handley Page Dart Herald G-BDFE. The crew comprises Captain Caroline Frost, First Officer Lesley Hardym and stewardesses Liz Howard and Hildegard Donbavand.
The Tenerife airport disaster on 27 March heavily defined 1977 in aviation; it is the deadliest accident in aviation history. Two Boeing 747's collided on the runway at Los Rodeos Airport on the island of Tenerife, Spain in heavy fog; 583 people were killed, far exceeding the death toll of any previous accident and unbeaten since. This included all 248 people aboard KLM Flight 4805, whose pilot committed the main factor in the accident of taking off without a clearance; and 335 of the 396 people on board Pan Am Flight 1736, the other 747 involved in the accident. The crash is arguably the most famous of all time; it changed the history and training of aviation in the years that followed. Elsewhere, 1977 had relatively few accidents in comparison to the years immediately preceding and succeeding it.
^Mondey, David, ed., The Complete Illustrated History of the World's Aircraft, Secaucus, New Jersey: Chartwell Books, Inc., 1978, ISBN0-89009-771-2, p. 94.
^Mondey, David, ed., The Complete Illustrated History of the World's Aircraft, Secaucus, New Jersey: Chartwell Books, Inc., 1978, ISBN0-89009-771-2, p. 91.
^ abBrogan, Patrick, The Fighting Never Stopped: A Comprehensive Guide to Global Conflict Since 1945, New York: Vintage Books, 1990, ISBN0-679-72033-2, p. 23.
^Mondey, David, ed., The Complete Illustrated History of the World′s Aircraft, Secaucus, New Jersey: Chartwell Books, Inc., 1978, ISBN0-89009-771-2, p. 61.
^Guttman, Robert, "Dreams of Human-Powered Flight," Aviation History, January 2017, p. 15.
