What is the most common cause of commercial airliner crashes?
by 
Andy Ninja Is Wicked Back To Work
ANSWERS: 2
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Controlled Flight into Terrian (CFIT) CFIT is a significant accident categorization, cited as the cause of most aircraft accidents. CFIT results when an airplane suddenly deviates from its normal flight pattern and flies into terrain. A CFIT accident is one in which "an otherwise-serviceable aircraft, under control of the crew, is flown (unintentionally) into terrain, obstacles or water, with no prior awareness on the part of the crew of the impending collision." The Boeing 757 Cali accident ("CALI") was an example of CFIT and, most recently, the NTSB has been investigating the Boeing 747-300 Guam accident as a possible CFIT-caused accident. CFIT is responsible for claiming the lives of 2,200 people between 1988 and 1995 in 37 accidents. Further, 60% of the commercial airline crashes worldwide caused by CFIT were comprised of aircraft flying non-precision approaches. [ Source: http://www.aviationtoday.com/reports/III.htm ]
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To attempt to address Milaya's question, the two main causes of CFIT would be pilot error and mechanical malfuction. Pilot disorentation can cause them to maneouvre the aircraft in a way that they thought was avoiding terrain, but was really flying towards it. Mechanical malfunction is a broad cause, but it can be broken down into many smaller categories. The two most common to break it into would be failures caused by maintenance errors (human error again), and just plain mechanical failure. An example of mechanical failure that causes the pilot (or autopilot) to fly into terrain would be a failure in one of the flight gauges, such as an altimeter or attitude indicator. This happened on a passenger jet where the static ports on the wing were taped over for washing the aircraft, but the tape was not removed afterwards. This blocked the static ports. Static ports measure outside air pressure to feed instruments such as the altimeter and rate of climb gauge. Subsequently, the instruments were wrong on the next flight, and the pilots followed those instruments right into the ocean.
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