Plane Crashes in 1979
Wikidata lists 45 aviation accidents in 1979, with 1,384 deaths recorded against them. These are the counts in Wikidata, not an official world total. The deadliest listed: American Airlines Flight 191 (25 May 1979, 273 dead).
45
Aviation accidents in Wikidata, 1979
25
Of them with deaths
1,384
Deaths recorded in Wikidata
Deadliest firstAviation accidents of 1979
| Date | Accident | Aircraft · operator · where | Deaths |
|---|---|---|---|
| 25 May 1979 | American Airlines Flight 191 | McDonnell Douglas DC-10 · American Airlines · Des Plaines · United States | 273 |
| 28 Nov 1979 | Air New Zealand Flight 901 | McDonnell Douglas DC-10 · Air New Zealand · Flight TE901 · Mount Erebus | 257 |
| 11 Aug 1979 | 1979 Dniprodzerzhynsk mid-air collision | Tupolev Tu-134 · Aeroflot · Flight SU7880 · Petrykivka Raion · Soviet Union | 178 |
| 26 Nov 1979 | PIA Flight 740 | Boeing 707 · Pakistan International Airlines · Flight PK740 · Ta'if · Saudi Arabia | 156 |
| 31 Oct 1979 | Flight 2605 by Western Airlines | McDonnell Douglas DC-10 · Western Airlines · Aeropuerto Internacional Benito Juárez · Mexico | 72 |
| 29 Aug 1979 | Aeroflot Flight 5484 | Tupolev Tu-124 · Aeroflot | 63 |
| 11 Jul 1979 | 1979 Garuda Fokker F28 crash | Garuda Indonesia · Indonesia | 61 |
| 12 Feb 1979 | Air Rhodesia Flight 827 | Air Rhodesia | 59 |
| 17 Mar 1979 | Aeroflot Flight 1691 | Aeroflot | 58 |
| 13 Mar 1979 | Alia Royal Jordanian Flight 600 | Royal Jordanian · Flight 600 · Doha International Airport | 45 |
| 25 Dec 1979 | Bagram Il-76 crash of 1979 | Ilyushin Il-76 · Afghanistan | 43 |
| 28 Aug 1979 | Aviation accident in Taiwan, 28 August 1979 | C-119L Flying Boxcar · Republic of China Air Force · Shaolai Mountain · Taiwan | 20 |
| 31 Jul 1979 | Dan-Air Flight 0034 | Dan-Air · United Kingdom | 17 |
| 30 May 1979 | Downeast Flight 46 | Downeast Airlines · United States | 17 |
| 29 Mar 1979 | Quebecair Flight 255 | Quebecair · Quebec City · Canada | 17 |
| 8 Oct 1979 | Swissair Flight 316 | Swissair · Ellinikon International Airport · Greece | 14 |
| 3 Aug 1979 | Aviation accident in Soviet Union, 3 August 1979 | Rzhevka Airport · Soviet Union | 10 |
| 22 Aug 1979 | Aviation accident, 22 August 1979 | Hawker Siddeley HS 748 · SATENA | 4 |
| 26 Mar 1979 | Aviation accident in Soviet Union, 26 March 1979 | Soviet Union | 4 |
| 22 Mar 1979 | Crash of a Tupolev TU-134A in Liepaja | Aeroflot · Liepāja · Latvian Socialist Soviet Republic | 4 |
| 26 Jul 1979 | Lufthansa Flight 527 | Lufthansa | 3 |
| 18 Jan 1979 | Aviation accident, 18 January 1979 | Belgorod | 3 |
| 2 Jan 1979 | Aviation accident, 2 January 1979 | Molodyozhnaya Station | 3 |
| 17 Feb 1979 | Air New Zealand Flight 4374 | Air New Zealand · New Zealand | 2 |
| 17 Jun 1979 | Air New England Flight 248 | de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter · Air New England · United States | 1 |
| 15 Nov 1979 | American Airlines Flight 444 | American Airlines · United States | 0 |
| 4 Apr 1979 | TWA Flight 841 | Boeing 727 · Trans World Airlines · Flight TW841 · Saginaw · United States | 0 |
| 23 Dec 1979 | 1979 Manari Douglas Airways crash | — | |
| 23 Dec 1979 | 1979 Turkish Airlines Ankara crash | Turkey | — |
| 10 Dec 1979 | Aviation accident, 10 December 1979 | Khabarovsk Krai | — |
| 23 Nov 1979 | Aviation accident, 23 November 1979 | Vitebsk District | — |
| 18 Nov 1979 | Aviation accident, 18 November 1979 | — | |
| 16 Nov 1979 | Aeroflot Flight 564 | Aeroflot · Flight 564 · Vologda Airport | — |
| 14 Sep 1979 | ATI flight 12 | Italy | — |
| 11 Sep 1979 | Aviation accident, 11 September 1979 | — | |
| 3 Sep 1979 | Sterling Airways Flight 4133 | — | |
| 3 Sep 1979 | Aviation accident in Russia, 3 September 1979 | Flight А-513 · Amderma · Russia | — |
| 4 Aug 1979 | Aviation accident, 4 August 1979 | — | |
| 21 Jul 1979 | Toa Domestic Airlines Flight 381 | NAMC YS-11 · Toa Domestic Airlines · Haneda Airport · Japan | — |
| 25 Jun 1979 | Aviation accident in Czechoslovakia, 25 June 1979 | Czechoslovakia | — |
| 18 Apr 1979 | New York Airways flight 972 (1979) | — | |
| 22 Mar 1979 | Aviation accident, 22 March 1979 | — | |
| 14 Mar 1979 | Aviation accident, 14 March 1979 | — | |
| 30 Jan 1979 | PP-VLU | Boeing 707 · Varig · Flight RG-967 · Pacific Ocean · Brazil | — |
| 15 Jan 1979 | Aeroflot Flight 7502 | Aeroflot · Flight 7502 · Minsk | — |
"—" = no death toll recorded in Wikidata yet. Names link to the Wikidata item.
Month by month, 1979
| Month | Wikidata accidents | Deaths |
|---|---|---|
| January | 4 | 6 |
| February | 2 | 61 |
| March | 7 | 128 |
| April | 2 | 0 |
| May | 2 | 290 |
| June | 2 | 1 |
| July | 4 | 81 |
| August | 6 | 275 |
| September | 4 | 0 |
| October | 2 | 86 |
| November | 6 | 413 |
| December | 4 | 43 |
Latest crash reports we recorded
Global Incident Tracker's own records begin in August 2026.
What this page shows, and what it misses
Two separate records, never added together. Wikidata: every item classed as an aviation accident (or a kind of one, such as a helicopter crash, mid-air collision or runway excursion) with a date in 1979, with the death toll, country, operator and aircraft as entered there. It favours larger, widely reported accidents, and new entries appear days or weeks after a crash.
Neither is an official world total, and the two counts differ because they count different things. For US civil aviation alone, the NTSB's CAROL accident database lists every accident it investigates, most of them small private aircraft.
Aviation accident data: Wikidata (CC0 public domain), from its structured fields only. Crash reports: Global Incident Tracker.
QuestionsPlane crashes in 1979
How many plane crashes have there been in 1979?
Wikidata lists 45 aviation accidents in 1979, with 1,384 deaths recorded against them. These are the counts in Wikidata, not an official world total. The deadliest listed: American Airlines Flight 191 (25 May 1979, 273 dead).
Which was the deadliest plane crash of 1979?
Among the aviation accidents listed in Wikidata for 1979, the deadliest is American Airlines Flight 191 on 25 May 1979 in United States, with 273 deaths recorded.
Why do different sites give different numbers of plane crashes?
Because they count different things. Some count only airliner accidents, some every accident of a small private plane, some only those with deaths. Wikidata lists accidents that someone has added as a structured item, which favours larger and widely reported crashes. Global Incident Tracker counts crash reports it picked up from news and official feeds. For the United States alone, the NTSB investigates over a thousand civil aviation accidents a year, most of them small private aircraft.