Boeing 737’s fatal crashes over the last decade

A Boeing 737-800 jet operated by China Eastern Airlines crashed in the mountains of southern China on Monday Mar. 22. Media reports said there were no signs of survivors from the aircraft, which had 132 people on board.

The 737-800, a predecessor to the 737 MAX, has a good safety record but crashes involving some other Boeing models, notably the 737 MAX, have brought scrutiny over the last decade. Here are details on some of the worst Boeing crashes over the last decade:

Boeing 737 family accidents
The following is a list of accidents and incidents involving the Boeing 737 family of jet airliners, including the Boeing 737 Original (737-100/200), Boeing 737 Classic (737-300/-400/-500), Boeing 737 Next Generation (737-600/-700/-800/-900) and Boeing 737 MAX (737 MAX 7/8/200/9/10) series of aircraft.

The 737 first entered airline service in February 1968; the 10,000th aircraft entered service in March 2018. The first accident involving a 737 was on July 19, 1970, when a 737-200 was damaged beyond repair during an aborted takeoff, with no fatalities; the first fatal accident occurred on December 8, 1972, when United Airlines Flight 553 crashed while attempting to land, with 45 (43 onboard plus 2 on the ground) fatalities; and, as of March 2022, the greatest loss of life aboard a 737 occurred on October 29, 2018, when Lion Air Flight 610, a 737 MAX 8, crashed into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff, with 189 fatalities.

Several accidents of the 737 Original and Classic series were due to a design flaw in a power control unit (PCU) causing uncommanded rudder movement under thermal shock: see Boeing 737 rudder issues for further info.

In October 2018 and March 2019, two fatal crashes of 737 MAX aircraft led to a worldwide grounding of all 737 MAX aircraft until December 2020.

For full list of accidents and incidents go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_Boeing_737

737-600/-700/-800/-900 Next Gen aircraft – Fatal accidents

• September 29, 2006: Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907, a brand-new 737-800 with 154 people on board broke up and crashed following a midair collision in Brazil with an Embraer Legacy 600. All on board the 737-800 died. The Legacy landed safely at a Brazilian Air Force base.
• May 5, 2007: Kenya Airways Flight 507, a 737-800 carrying 108 passengers and six crew lost contact and crashed into a swamp on a flight to Nairobi, Kenya from Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, after making a scheduled stop at Douala, Cameroon. There were no survivors.
• February 25, 2009: Turkish Airlines Flight 1951, a 737-800 coming from Istanbul, crashed in a field near the Polderbaan while attempting to land at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. The fuselage broke into three pieces after the crash and the engine pylons separated. Of the 135 passengers and crew, there were nine fatalities: five passengers and four crew members (including both pilots and a pilot-in-training); 84 people suffered injuries. Crash investigations initially focused on a malfunctioning left radar altimeter, which may have resulted in false altitude information causing the autothrottle to reduce power.
• January 25, 2010: Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409, a 737-800, crashed into the Mediterranean Sea shortly after take-off from Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport. The flight had 90 passengers and 8 crew, 50 passengers of whom were Lebanese, and was bound for the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. There were no survivors.
• May 22, 2010: Air India Express Flight 812, a 737-800, overran the runway on landing at Mangalore International Airport; 158 passengers, including six crew on board, died. There were eight survivors. The airliner crashed through the fence at the end of the runway going into a valley 200 feet below. Although the 8,000 ft runway is sufficient for landing there was no bare land at the end of the runway on the table top airport to account for mistakes.
• August 16, 2010: AIRES Flight 8250, a 737-700, crashed and split into three pieces on the Colombian island of San Andres. There was no fire and two fatalities reported.
• March 19, 2016: Flydubai Flight 981, a 737-800 flying from Dubai, United Arab Emirates to Rostov-on-Don, Russia, crashed on the final approach to Rostov-on-Don Airport in inclement weather. All 62 people on board died.
• April 17, 2018: Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, a 737-700, made an emergency landing at Philadelphia International Airport following an in-flight engine failure of the left engine. Debris from the engine cracked a cabin window which then failed, causing explosive decompression; a passenger partially ejected from the aircraft later died of her injuries.
• September 28, 2018: Air Niugini Flight 73, a 737-800, on a flight from Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia, to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, with an intermediate stop at Chuuk International Airport, undershot the runway at Chuuk and landed in a lagoon. One of the 47 occupants died.
• January 8, 2020: Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 operated by a Boeing 737-800, crashed shortly after taking off from Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran, Iran, bound for Kyiv, Ukraine. There were no survivors among the 167 passengers and 9 crew. On January 11, 2020, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps admitted in a statement that they had unintentionally shot down the plane because of human error.
• February 5, 2020: Pegasus Airlines Flight 2193 operated by a Boeing 737-800, on a flight from İzmir, skidded off the runway at Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen International Airport before splitting into three pieces of fuselage, leaving 3 dead and 179 injured.
• August 7, 2020: Air India Express Flight 1344, operated by a Boeing 737-800, overshot the runway during landing in heavy rain and crashed into a gorge at Calicut International Airport; both pilots and 18 passengers on board died.
• March 21, 2022: China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735, operated by a Boeing 737-800, crashed while en-route from Kunming Changshui International Airport to Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport. The aircraft was carrying 132 occupants, all of whom died.

737-8 Max aircraft – Fatal accidents

• October 29, 2018: Lion Air Flight 610, a 737 MAX 8, registration PK-LQP, on a flight from Jakarta, Indonesia to Pangkal Pinang, Indonesia, crashed into the sea 13 minutes after takeoff, with 189 people on board the aircraft: 181 passengers (178 adults and three children), as well as six cabin crew and two pilots. All on board died. This is the deadliest air accident involving all variants of the Boeing 737 and also the first accident involving the 737 Max.
• March 10, 2019: Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a 737 MAX 8, registration ET-AVJ, on a flight from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to Nairobi, Kenya, crashed six-minutes after takeoff; all 157 people aboard (149 passengers and 8 crew members) died. The plane was only four months old at the time of the accident. In response, numerous aviation authorities around the world grounded the 737 MAX series, and many airlines followed suit on a voluntary basis. On March 13, 2019, the FAA became the last authority to ground the aircraft, reversing its previous stance that the MAX was safe to fly.