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Clearly, 2014 has been a highly turbulent year for the aviation industry. The year has witnessed two of the biggest and most mysterious airline mishaps in recent times.
In the wake of the AirAsia Flight 8501, an Airbus A320 en route from Surabaya to Singapore with 155 passengers and 7 crew on board, going off the radar, Rediff.com takes a look at the major aviation disasters of the year.
FLIGHT: Sepahan Airlines 5915
Date: August 10
Detail: The HESA IrAn-140 (an Antonov An-140 built under license) crashes shortly after takeoff from Mehrabad International Airport, Iran, killing 39 of the 48 people on board.
FLIGHT: Air Algerie AH5017
Date: July 24
Detail: The McDonnell Douglas MD-83, operated by Spain's Swiftair, was heading from Ouagadougou to Algiers carrying 116 passengers -- 51 of them French -- when it disappeared over Mali amid poor weather near the border with Burkina Faso.
FLIGHT: TransAsia Airways GE222
Date: July 23
Detail: Forty-eight people died when the Tawainese ATR-72 plane, carrying 54 passengers and four crew to the island of Penghu, crashed into stormy seas during a short flight. It made an abortive attempt to land before crashing on a second attempt.
FLIGHT: Malaysia Airlines MH17
Date: July 17
Detail: Pro-Russian rebels are widely accused of shooting down the Boeing 777 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, using a surface-to-air missile near Grabove in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board, 193 of them Dutch. Obviously, they denied responsibility.
FLIGHT: Malaysia Airlines MH370
Date: March 8
Detail: There is absolutely no clue whatsoever over what happened with this Boeing 777 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 227 passengers and 12 crew on board ever since it disappeared from radar over the Gulf of Thailand. Despite vast effort, notably in the hostile South Indian Ocean, to date no debris of any kind has been found from the flight.
FLIGHT: Algerian Air Force Lockheed C-130 Hercules
Date: February 11
Detail: The military aircraft crashed in a mountainous part of north-eastern Algeria, killing 77 people and leaving one survivor. The passengers included soldiers and members of their families.