List of Accidents and Incidents Involving Commercial Aircraft - 1970

1970

• February 4 – Aerolíneas Argentinas Flight 707, a Hawker Siddeley HS 748, crashes near Loma Alta, Argentina, killing all 37 on board.
• February 15 – Contaminated fuel causes dual engine failure shortly after takeoff from Las Américas International Airport near Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic in the Dominicana DC-9 air disaster; all 102 on board were killed.
• February 21 – A bomb in the cargo hold of Swissair Flight 330, a Convair CV-990, detonates nine minutes after takeoff from Zurich International Airport, Switzerland; all 38 passengers and nine crew perish.
• March 31 – Japan Airlines Flight 351, a Boeing 727, is hijacked to North Korea by a Japanese Red Army faction.
• April 21 – Philippine Airlines Flight 215, a Hawker Siddeley HS 748, explodes in mid-air and crashes 75 mi (121 km) north of Manila; killing all 36 on board; a bomb is suspected.
• May 2 – ALM Flight 980, a Douglas DC-9 operated by Overseas National Airways, ditches near St. Croix, Virgin Islands, killing 23, including two infants and one crew member; 40, including 4 crew members, survive.
• July 3 – The 1970 Dan-Air de Havilland Comet crash takes place near Girona, Spain due to a navigation error, killing all 112 on board.
• July 5 – Air Canada Flight 621, a Douglas DC-8, explodes following a failed landing at Toronto Pearson International Airport, with 109 fatalities.
• August 9 – LANSA Flight 502, a Lockheed L-188 Electra turboprop, crashes and burns shortly after takeoff from Cuzco, Peru, killing 99 people on the plane and two on the ground; among the dead are 49 U.S. high school exchange students.
• August 12 – China Airlines Flight 206, a NAMC YS-11, crashes in thick fog and a severe thunderstorm into Yuan Mountain, near Taipei International Airport, killing 14 of 31 people on board.
• September 6 – The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine orchestrates the Dawson's Field hijackings of El Al Flight 219 (Boeing 707), Pan Am Flight 93 (Boeing 747), Swissair Flight 100 (Douglas DC-8), TWA Flight 741 (Boeing 707), and (on September 9) BOAC Flight 775 (Vickers VC10); the unprecedented scale of the incident draws international outrage and plays a major role in instigating the eventual widespread implementation of air passenger screening, heretofore done only haphazardly and inconsistently; Flight 93 is the first ever loss of the Boeing 747.
• October 2 – In what is known as the Wichita State Crash, a Martin 4-0-4 aircraft crashes near Silver Plume, Colorado; it is one of two planes carrying the Wichita State University football team to Logan, Utah for a game; twenty-eight passengers, the plane's captain and a flight attendant die out of forty passengers on board.
• November 14 – Southern Airways Flight 932, a chartered Douglas DC-9, crashes on approach at Tri-State Airport in Huntington, West Virginia, killing all 75 on board, including 37 players of the Marshall University football team and all but one of the coaching staff.