You might be surprised to learn that airplanes are the safest mode of transportation. When compared to other modes of transportation, they have the fewest number of malfunctions and the fewest recorded number of fatalities.

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The reason for this is, of course, that there are fewer people who travel by plane than those who choose to travel by bus, train, ship, or any other large passenger-carrying vehicle. Even if we calculate it in percentages, flying is still the safest mode of transportation. If you have any doubts, just ask Superman... He said it several times in his films.

Okay, that's a lame way to confirm a fact. If you have any doubts about this information, you can conduct your own research and be certain that planes are the safest mode of transportation available. Despite their safety, planes can still crash. Let us look at why they do it in this article. Let us look into three of the worst aviation disasters in history.

The SAA and BOAC Plane Crash Incidents

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• BOAC 783 Crash : May 2, 1953

• BOAC 781 Crash : January 10, 1954

• SAA 228 Crash : April 20, 1968

These three of the worst flight disasters in history were caused primarily by two factors: metal fatigue outside the cabin and depressurization of the cabin itself, which resulted in the same event in the fuselage. The analysis of the flight engineers who examined the debris and wreckage for BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation) Flight 781 and BOAC Flight 783 concluded that metal fatigue was the initial problem that caused too much stress for the airplane's cabin area.

Technical Factors That Caused the Accidents

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It was stated that during the construction of those planes, the trend at the time was fusing plane alloys together with metal rivets rather than special metal glue, which became the norm for modern airplanes because metal rivets do not provide the kind of air-tight insulation that metal glue can, which resulted in a shaking and vibration motion for the front area of the plane, which eventually broke down the main structure of the entire aerial vehicle.

The metal fatigue findings were supported by the notion that the airplane cabin experienced repeated pressurization and depressurization. Such constant movement of those metals held together only by rivets dealt a catastrophic blow to the plane's overall structure, resulting in the in-flight breakup that killed all people on board.

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The passengers on those flights were found to have shattered skulls and badly wounded lungs, which led to the depressurization issue being strongly implied and corroborated by other investigations. It was also discovered that there is a high probability that the passengers will collide with the plane's ceiling, which would explain why the majority of the passengers had shattered skulls.

How The Investigators View The Causes

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When investigators used a microscope to examine the area where the rivets are on the plane, it was discovered that metal fatigue occurred as a result of the plane's improper construction in relation to the speed at which it is intended to fly. While such a construction method would suffice for slower planes, it would not be able to withstand such stress because the planes were designed to be faster and more maneuverable than those that came before them.

Metal fatigue was still the primary cause in the case of the SAA (South African Airways) 295 disaster, though square-shaped windows were identified as one of the main causes that destabilized the plane's integrity during the plane's transit moment. It can be seen that SAA was at a higher altitude than the two BOAC planes, at 35,000 feet before it completely broke off. BOAC 783 separated at 7,500 feet, while 781 was at 27,000 feet. They had different levels of aerial paths, but the underlying cause was the same: metal fatigue.

Conclusion

The absence of cockpit voice recorders on those planes made it difficult to determine what happened. If they had been present during the plane's construction, they could have made a much more accurate assessment. There is strong evidence that the speed at which the turbines propel the plane does not correspond to the plane's robustness.

In aviation, higher speeds cause more drag, and higher drag causes more stress on the structure of a moving vehicle. Although the pressurization capabilities of BOAC planes at the time were thought to be more than adequate, the way the planes' hulls and alloys here fused together were simply not strong enough to withstand such physical strain.