Commercial Airline Accident Research Available

By: Charles Bowen Air safety already was much on our readers' minds, even before the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Now in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 atrocities, responsible news organizations need to have access to reliable facts about those times when things go so very wrong in the air.

A new service from Air Safety Online could be just what you're looking for. Touting itself as an Internet first, it is a completely searchable database of every commercial airline accident with more than 10 fatalities since 1970. Data is compiled from official and credible sources.

Designed for use by the general public as well as by members of the media and aviation professionals, the database may be browsed by airline, aircraft type, or date. You also can perform a search with multiple variables. Crash information includes date, location, airline, aircraft, registration, fatalities, and a brief description of the accident.

Overseeing the material is Editor Dan Rupp, who has been reporting and analyzing causes of commercial airline accidents for the past four years. To use the resource, visit the site at http://www.crashdatabase.com, where you can search in four different ways:

* By Airline: When you select this approach, the site lists dozens of hyperlinked airlines in the United States, Canada, Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. Click any name to search for crash reports involving that airline. (If the airline you seek is not listed, use the Custom Search, described below, in order to enter the name.)

* By Aircraft: Selecting this option brings up a hyperlinked list of aircraft by Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, Airbus Industrie, Lockheed Martin, British Aerospace, Tupolev, Antonov, and Ilyushin. Click a type to find reports listing that particular aircraft.

* By Date: When this option is selected, the site creates a list of each year from 1970 to the present. Each year is hyperlinked. Click one to see all the reports on file for that year.

* Custom Search: Use this option to tailor your search for as much or as little information as you want. Using the form, you can enter search criteria in any or all of a half dozen fields, including Accident Date, Accident Location, Airline/Operator, Aircraft Type, IATA Registration Number, and/or Keyword.

However you choose to search, the reports retrieved from the database generally include information on the date and location of the crash, the number of fatalities, the total number of passengers on board, the name of the airline, the type of aircraft, and details of the accident. These descriptions can range from a sentence fragment ("Crashed and burned on landing") to a multi-sentence paragraph.

Other considerations in using crashDatabase.com in your writing and editing:

1. In entering dates in the Custom Search, type the information in mm/dd/yy format (as in 11/14/70 to find reports of crashes on Nov. 14, 1970). You also can search a range of dates, using the "less than" and "more than" symbols to designate before or after respectively.

2. In the customized search's location field, the entry can be general -- as in "France" to find reports of crashes in that country -- or specific, as in "Paris."

3. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the database has expanded to focus on reports about these hijacked airplanes. Also from the introductory page, you will find links to information about the recent Swissair/Crossair accident and the American Airlines crash near JFK airport in New York.

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