2025 has been a worrying year for aviation accidents, and as of June 2025, the Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives (B3A) reports that there have been 360 deaths across 122 incidents. While that might sound like a high number, remember that 2024 was also rocked by 416 deaths over just 30 accidents.
This year has been immortalized by the likes of the Potomac River crash that claimed 67 lives and Air India's Flight 171, which had just one survivor. In 2024, the deadly December 29 crash of Jeju Air Flight 2216 saw 179 passengers and crew lose their lives.
Although there were two survivors, they were both members of the flight crew who were located in jump seats in the plane's tail section. An investigation is underway to determine what happened to Jeju Air Flight 2216, although reports of bird strikes causing the right engine to lose thrust might've led to the crash, where the landing gear failed to deploy, and the plane collided with the approach lighting system while performing a belly-landing at around 322 km/h.
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A BBC One documentary is titled This World: Why Planes Crash, Aviation's Deadly Year, looking at the deadliest crash in South Korean history. Among the dead were Park Seung-ho and Oh In-kyung, a couple who were returning from a golfing holiday.
Speaking in the documentary (via the Daily Mail), their son Geun-woo Park spoke about being their only child. Saying they loved him dearly, Park explained what he remembered from that fateful day: "On the 29th I was going to clean the house so that it would be tidy when they came back, and then we'd have dinner together...That was the plan."
Air traffic control had apparently warned the Boeing 737 pilots that there were birds in the area. With the pilot reporting a bird strike and having to abandon the landing, Geun-woo Park says he received a text from his mother, who witnessed the collision.
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In the heartbreaking scenes, he said: "When my mother sent the text, I thought she must've landed safely, but she said the plane couldn't land because a bird got stuck in the engine."
Her tragic final message included just five words, with Geun-woo Park's mother asking: "Should I leave a will?"
Admitting that he thought she was 'talking nonsense', Geun-woo sent her an emoji back. Unfortunately, his next two messages were never read by his mother. It was a friend of his who texted him about the crash.
Lee Seung Yeal was part of the emergency service team and went on to describe the 'horrific' scene: "The two engines were buried in the earth, and the forward fuselage was completely shattered and burnt. Only the rear fuselage was left."
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As Geun-woo rushed to the airport, he was originally optimistic as he added: "At first I believed that my family would come back, I wanted to believe that...
"But as soon as I entered the airport, I could feel that the atmosphere was not good."
The harrowing documentary looks at other disasters, including the Potomac and Air India crashes, as well as February 2025's Delta Connection Flight crash that thankfully had no fatalities.