Another crash

[Nexus]

This is getting really scary now.
Apparantly an aircraft departured from Panama, has crashed in Venezuela. 150 people may have been killed.
ATC lost contact with the plane, and reports indicates an explosion in the remote area near the border to Colombia.

So far, both aircraft type and carrier is unknown.

Truly a tragic summer for Commercial Aviation.

Edit: Aircraft belonged to West Caribbean Airways...and I guess it's an MD81/82...s

[ChuckMajik]

It's like an episode of the Twilight Zone.
But is this all within normal annual occurrences, or has there been a increase?

[Saitek]

I just came to post this. Terribly sad.  :(

Edit: There is also a crash of a helo killing 17 in Afghanistan.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4155916.stm

[Fly2e]

I just heard on my way to work.  :(

[Hagar]

It's tragic but I wouldn't read anything sinister into this. If you care to search around I'm sure you could find some sort of incident involving aircraft almost every day in some part of the world. Years ago it would have taken several days before this was reported. Now, we get to hear the news complete with pictures from the most remote parts of the world within minutes of it happening.

[beefhole]

It's like an episode of the Twilight Zone.
But is this all within normal annual occurrences, or has there been a increase?

As of the last crash, it was pretty normal-it just seemed like more because we were hearing about all of them after the A340 crash.  But after this one, it is official-commercial aviation is having a bad year. (imho)

Once again, sad to hear about things like this

[Hai Perso Coyone?]

Not a good summer indeed for comercial aviation... :-/ :-/

[Ben_M_K]

Very sad to hear! This is not good. Let's hope this is the last we see for a LONG time!

[C]

A look at the annual commercial aircraft accident stats published each year in Flight International would show that this is nothing out of the ordinary...

[beefhole]

Pushing almost 300 commercial fatalities within a week, both under suspicious circumstances is abnormal, Charlie.

[Hagar]

Fortunately this amount of fatalities is rare. Compared with the number of commercial flights every single day this demonstrates just how safe air travel is compared with other forms of transport. It was part of my job to read official incident reports & you might be surprised at how many there are, generally not fatal. I class these recent incidents as coincidence & pure bad luck. We're right in the middle of the holiday season & the airlines are busy. On another day those aircraft might have landed safely. Who knows?

[beaky]

I have no hard figures but this year I get the feeling  it's a combination of media hysteria and a real, but perhaps slight, increase in major accidents. But to know for sure one would have to examine the official records at the end of the year and compare it to the years previous .
at any rate, I'm tired of getting hit with these reports so often... :-/