List of deaths by aircraft misadventure

This is a list of famous people who have died by various forms of aircraft misadventure.

This list is sectioned by type of aircraft. For a list of aviation-related deaths by occupation of the person see the separate list of people who died in aviation-related incidents. There are also lists of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners.

Aircraft crash

*Thomas Selfridge - September 17, 1908 (first person to die in an aircraft accident)
*Charles Rolls - July 12, 1910 (founder of Rolls-Royce, first Englishman to die in an aircraft accident)
*Edvard Rusjan - January 9, 1911 (first Slovene aviator)
*Eugene Ely - October 19, 1911
*Harriet Quimby - July 1, 1912
*Captain Eustace Loraine and Staff Sergeant R H V Wilson - July 5 1912 (First Royal Flying Corps personnel to died in an aircraft crash)
*Raymonde de Laroche - July 18, 1919
*Lothar von Richthofen - July 4, 1922 (WW 1 ace and brother of Manfred von Richthofen, who was the top ace during the war)
*Dmytro Vitovsky - 1919
*Bessie Coleman - April 30, 1926
*Rodriguez Lopez Sr. - 1927
*Roald Amundsen, 1928
*Knute Rockne - March 31, 1931
*Carlos Gardel - June 24, 1935 crash on takeoff of overloaded plane, Medellin Colombia.
*Will Rogers, Wiley Post - August 15, 1935
*José Sanjurjo July 20, 1936
*Emilio Mola June 3 1937
*Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan - July 2, 1937
*Amy Johnson - January 5, 1941 - drowned after parachuting from her aircraft, an Airspeed Oxford.
*Frederick Banting - 21 February 1941
*Carole Lombard - January 16, 1942
*Fritz Todt - February 8, 1942 - Founder of the Nazi's infamous Organisation Todt.
*Prince George, Duke of Kent - August 25, 1942, Scotland, on active service
*Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto - April 18, 1943 - plane shot down
*Leslie Howard - June 1, 1943 - Bay of Biscay, plane shot down
*Władysław Sikorski - July 4, 1943, Gibraltar at take off
*Edward O'Hare - November 26, 1943 U.S. Naval Flying Ace, namesake of O'Hare Airport
*Joseph Kennedy, Jr. - August 12, 1944
*Glenn Miller - December 14, 1944, English Channel
*Admiral Bertram Ramsay - January 2, 1945
*Lothar Sieber, killed after the first vertical take-off manned rocket in a Bachem Ba 349 - 1 March 1945
*Major Richard I. Bong - August 6, 1945
*Subhash Chandra Bose - August 18, 1945
*Prince Gustaf Adolf, Duke of Västerbotten - January 26, 1947
*Kathleen Kennedy - May 13, 1948
*18 Torino footballers, 13 others (Superga air disaster) - May 4, 1949
*Marcel Cerdan, Ginette Neveu - October 27, 1949
*Bill Barilko, August 26, 1951
*Richard E. Ellsworth, USAF Brigadier General - March 18, 1953
*Jacques Thibaud, September 1, 1953
*William Kapell, October 29, 1953
*Kim Sigler - November 30, 1953
*Wilbur Shaw, October 30, 1954
*Guido Cantelli November 24, 1956, conductor, Music Director La Scala
*Ramon Magsaysay - March 17, 1957
*Busby Babes, 8 players from Manchester United; 15 others - February 6, 1958
*Buddy Holly, Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, Roger Peterson - February 3, 1959 (see also The Day The Music Died)
*Barthelemy Boganda - March 29, 1959
*Camilo Cienfuegos, Cuban revolutionary October 28 1959
*16 Cal Poly San Luis Obispo football players, 6 others - October 29, 1960
*Laurence Owen, Bradley Lord, among 18 members of U.S. figure skating team; 55 others - February 15, 1961
*Dag Hammarskjöld - 18 September, 1961
*Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas - March 5, 1963
*Ken Hubbs - February 13, 1964
*Jim Reeves - July 31, 1964
*Theodore Freeman - October 31, 1964
*Elliott See, Charles Bassett - February 28, 1966
*Tony Lema - July 24, 1966
*F. Nelson Blount - August 31, 1967
*Otis Redding - December 10, 1967
*Yuri Gagarin - March 27, 1968
*Mohammed bin Laden - Sept 3, 1967
*Rocky Marciano - August 31, 1969
*14 Wichita State University football players, 17 staff - October 2, 1970
*37 Marshall University football players, 6 guests [http://members.aol.com/jeff1070/marshall2.html] - November 14, 1970
*Audie Murphy - May 28, 1971
*13 Montevideo rugby union players; 16 more die before rescue after 72 days - October 13, 1972
*Lance Reventlow - July 24, 1972
* Prince William of Gloucester - August 28, 1972
*Hale Boggs (U.S. House Majority Leader), Nicholas Begich - October 19, 1972
*Roberto Clemente - December 31, 1972
*Jim Croce - September 20, 1973
*Graham Hill - November 29, 1975
*Ronnie VanZant, Steve Gaines - October 20, 1977 (Lynyrd Skynyrd)
*14 University of Evansville basketball players - December 13, 1977
*Thurman Munson - August 2, 1979
*14 members of U.S. Olympic boxing team, 8 others - March 14, 1980
* Sanjay Gandhi - June, 1980 - political heir to Indian PM.
*Jaime Roldós Aguilera - May 24, 1981
*Omar Torrijos - July 31, 1981
*Jud Strunk - October 5, 1981
*Randy Rhoads - March 19, 1982
*Keith Green - June 28, 1982
*Stan Rogers - June 2, 1983
*Samantha Smith - August 25, 1985
*Ricky Nelson - December 31, 1985
*Samora Machel - October 9, 1986
*Zia-ul Haq - August 17, 1988
*H. John Heinz III - April 4, 1991
*John Tower - April 5, 1991
*Alan Kulwicki - April 1, 1993
*George S. Mickelson - April 19, 1993
*Zambia national football team - April 28, 1993
*Cyprian Ntayamira - April 6, 1994
*Juvénal Habyarimana - April 6, 1994
*Rep. Ron Brown - April 3, 1996
*Jessica Dubroff - April 11, 1996
*Brook Berringer - April 18, 1996
*John Denver - October 12, 1997
*Payne Stewart - October 25, 1999 (Note: The circumstances of this flight indicate that Stewart and the others on board most likely died several hours before their plane crashed.)
*John F. Kennedy Jr. - July 16, 1999
*Mel Carnahan - October 16, 2000
*2 Oklahoma State University 2 basketball players and 8 staff - January 27, 2001
*Aaliyah - August 25, 2001
*Barbara Olsen, David Angell - September 11, 2001
*Melanie Thornton, Singer, November 24, 2001
*Hansie Cronje - June 1, 2002
*Paul Wellstone - October 25, 2002
*Boris Trajkovski - February 26, 2004
*10 Hendrick Motorsports team members (including family and pilots) - October 24, 2004
*John T. Walton - June 27, 2005
*Peter Tomarken - March 13, 2006 - American television personality
*Cory Lidle - October 11, 2006 - American baseball pitcher

Airship crash

*William A. Moffett, 1933, American admiral, in the USS "Akron" crash
*Lord Thomson, 1930, British Secretary of State for Air, in the R101 disaster
*Captain Graydon Evans, test pilot for Consolidated Aircraft Corporation. Died in crash in Fort Worth, TX, buried in Greenlawn Cemetery, Sandyville, OH, November 25, 1942

Balloon crash

* Maxie Anderson - June 27, 1983

Helicopter Crash

* Abdul Salam Arif, President of Iraq, 1966
* René Barrientos, President of Bolivia, 1969
* Gary Powers - August 1, 1977
* Michael Findlay, 1977
* Alia al Hussein, 1977
* Vic Morrow - July 23, 1982
* Jane Dornacker - October 22, 1986 (accident was broadcast live, during a traffic report)
* Rashid Karami, Prime Minister of Lebanon, 1987
* Stevie Ray Vaughan - August 27, 1990
* Marie Rossi - March 1, 1991
* Bill Graham - October 25, 1991
* Ulysses Guimarães, Brazilian leader of PMDB party, 1992
* Davey Allison - July 13, 1993
* Frank Wells - President and Chief Operating Officer, Walt Disney Company, 1994
* Matthew Harding - British businessman and vice-chairman of Chelsea football club, October 22, 1996
* M.H.M. Ashraff, Sri Lankan Muslim political leader, 2000
* Svyatoslav Fyodorov - July 2, 2000
* Shirley Strachan, Lead singer of Skyhooks, August 29, 2001
* Alexander Lebed - April 28, 2002
* Igor Farkhutdinov, governor of Sakhalin, 2003
* Patriarch Peter VII of Alexandria, 2004
* John Garang, Sudanese vice-president, 2005
* Ramón Martín Huerta, Mexican minister of public security, 2005
* Howard Kerzner, heir to magnate Sol Kerzner, 2006
* Guadalupe Larriva, Ecuador 's first female defence minister and 6 other people (including her teenage daughter) 24 January, 2007 [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6297093.stm] [http://www.itv.com/news/world_41bedebb1ccf3b3bee8a0e53db3e91e6.html] [http://www.clarin.com/diario/2007/01/26/elmundo/i-02401.htm]
* Colin McRae, MBE, a Scottish World Rally Championship (WRC) driver that was killed in September 2007 when the helicopter that he was piloting crashed.

See also

* Lists of people by cause of death
* List of people who died in aviation-related incidents
* List of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners
* List of Bermuda Triangle incidents
* List of space disasters
* Air safety