So the next time you find yourself on that beige page, reading the final words of a cockpit voice recorder, remember: you are standing in someone’s life’s work. It is grim. It is flawed. And it is absolutely essential.
For over two decades, this unassuming, almost deliberately ugly website has been the single most comprehensive, publicly accessible repository of commercial aviation accident data. It is a digital morgue, a historian’s goldmine, and a nervous flyer’s nightmare—all wrapped in HTML that has not been updated since the era of dial-up. planecrashinfo
Plane crashes are rare but can be devastating events. They can occur due to various reasons, including: So the next time you find yourself on
The core of the website is its extensive database, which documents thousands of aviation events worldwide. The Plane Crash Info Database includes: And it is absolutely essential
The aviation community is split. Purists argue that accident data should be free and open. Ron has defended the fee as necessary for server costs and his own research time. However, critics note that much of the raw data is scraped from government sources. The result is a strange hybrid: a public servant that charges admission.