9. Deadliest Accident Involving DC-10
Turkish Airlines Flight 981 never reached its destination. All 346 people were killed after the plane crashed in the Ermenonville forest in France. It is widely known as Ermenonville air disaster, and in 1974 it was the deadliest accident in the history of aviation. Today, it is still the fourth-deadliest air catastrophe in the world. Could this tragedy have been avoided? Easily. At that time, DC-10s cargo doors did not latch correctly. It was a known and unfixed issue, so all the ramp workers had to make sure to close the cargo doors manually. Sadly, one French ramp worker had problems reading in either English or Turkish, and failed to close the cargo doors correctly. The open cargo doors caused an explosive decompression while the plane was in the air and the rest is history. Of course, after the accident, all the latching systems were upgraded.
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