Ten Plane Crashes That Changed Aviation

Of all the flights listed Air Canada 797 in 1983 was the only one where I felt a deep personal loss with the death of folk singer Stan Rogers. My interest did not end there.

Back in the early 1980s I provided childcare for a man who worked for the Airline Pilots Association. I was there when he came home the day after the fire aboard Air Canada 797 on 2 June, 1983. He was saying even then that the fire was a major event in recent aviation, and that it proved things that the pilots had been saying all along.

One issue at the time was that airlines wanted to remove "redundant equipment" in favor of the latest automation. Then the Air Canada pilot was left with a compass, a level and a radio -- all primitive devices that proved essential to getting the plane on the ground.

Another issue was the matter of Reagan firing all the air traffic controllers who had gone on strike a year or so before. The man who talked Air Canada 797 out of the sky was one of the few who had not gone on strike and had not been fired. The pilots said that Reagan's "fit of peak" was leaving the flying public endangered. This one accident proved their point to the tragic loss of 23 lives.

Later on the issues of that fire would force airlines to refit planes with less combustible less toxic materials, as well as to fit planes with smoke detectors in the lavvie, better trained staff, and contributed to the end of smoking on aircraft.