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You're looking for the wrong flight. It's MH370 that went missing. MH770 flies from Kuala Lampur to Karabi.

Well, on the page someone linked earlier:

http://www.airdisaster.com/statistics/

All Nippon has the single best incident rate of any airline. So that might be why. (Certainly would tend to blow another hole in the article's theory, though.)

> Indian culture is hierarchical, and deference to your superiors counts enormously. Yet, Indian airlines do not have worse-than-average crash rates.

    Well yeah, that's true as long as we ignore reality.

http://www.airdisaster.com/statistics/

    According to this website, Indian airlines accident rates are spectacularly higher than western airlines. Air India's accident rate is even higher than KAL's, which is the example airline for Gladwell's theory.

Indian culture is hierarchical, and deference to your superiors counts enormously. Yet, Indian airlines do not have worse-than-average crash rates.

From this site:

Accident rates:
Air India Rate - 6.82
Korean Air rate - 5.38

Delta Air rate - 0.3

A320 crashes http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=03221998&reg=RP-C3222&airline=Philippine+Airlines

The aircraft overran runway 4 while landing. A malfunction of the onboard flight computers prevented power from being reduced to idle, which inhibited thrust reverse and spoilers from being used. The offending engine was shut down, and brakes applied, but the aircraft was unable to stop before the end of the runway

I couldn't read the article you referenced ("server not responding"), but the accident report states this was caused by pilot error, not malfunctioning computers. From Wikipedia: "A selection by the pilot of the wrong mode on the onboard flight computers prevented power from being reduced to idle, which inhibited thrust reverse and spoilers from being used. The offending engine was shut down, and brakes applied, but the aircraft was unable to stop before the end of the runway".

There's a surprising number of people who believe that the high level of automation on Airbus is intrinsically more dangerous, but the figures show that the Airbus A320 is the safest narrow-body jet you can fly on. It's true that automated stuff can go wrong, but this can be more than compensated for by the ways it makes flying (or driving) safer.

the self diving cars better have the same level of code review that autoplot software get's.

and even if that you can still get errors like this

http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=01201992&reg=F-WWDP&airline=Air+Inter

        While on approach into Strasbourg the aircraft impacted the side of a mountain. The cause of the crash was found to be a faulty design in an autopilot mode selector switch which led the flight crew to inadvertently select a 3,300 foot per minute descent rate on the approach instead of the desired 3.3 flight path angle.

or this

http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=09141993&reg=D-AIPN&airline=Lufthansa

        The aircraft skidded off the end of the runway during landing. The aircraft touched down with sink rate low enough that the onboard flight computers did not consider it to be "landing," which inhibited thrust reverse and brake application for nine seconds.

http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=03101997&reg=A40-EM&airline=Gulf+Air

        A flight control failure at V1 caused the crew to abandon the takeoff, with deceleration beginning at V1+8 knots. The aircraft overran the runway, causing the nosegear to collapse. The flight control problem was traced to a faulty microchip in the aircraft's Fly-By-Wire system.

the self diving cars better have the same level of code review that autoplot software get's.

and even if that you can still get errors like this

http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=01201992&reg=F-WWDP&airline=Air+Inter

        While on approach into Strasbourg the aircraft impacted the side of a mountain. The cause of the crash was found to be a faulty design in an autopilot mode selector switch which led the flight crew to inadvertently select a 3,300 foot per minute descent rate on the approach instead of the desired 3.3 flight path angle.

or this

http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=09141993&reg=D-AIPN&airline=Lufthansa

        The aircraft skidded off the end of the runway during landing. The aircraft touched down with sink rate low enough that the onboard flight computers did not consider it to be "landing," which inhibited thrust reverse and brake application for nine seconds.

http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=03101997&reg=A40-EM&airline=Gulf+Air

        A flight control failure at V1 caused the crew to abandon the takeoff, with deceleration beginning at V1+8 knots. The aircraft overran the runway, causing the nosegear to collapse. The flight control problem was traced to a faulty microchip in the aircraft's Fly-By-Wire system.

the self diving cars better have the same level of code review that autoplot software get's.

and even if that you can still get errors like this

http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=01201992&reg=F-WWDP&airline=Air+Inter

        While on approach into Strasbourg the aircraft impacted the side of a mountain. The cause of the crash was found to be a faulty design in an autopilot mode selector switch which led the flight crew to inadvertently select a 3,300 foot per minute descent rate on the approach instead of the desired 3.3 flight path angle.

or this

http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=09141993&reg=D-AIPN&airline=Lufthansa

        The aircraft skidded off the end of the runway during landing. The aircraft touched down with sink rate low enough that the onboard flight computers did not consider it to be "landing," which inhibited thrust reverse and brake application for nine seconds.

http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=03101997&reg=A40-EM&airline=Gulf+Air

        A flight control failure at V1 caused the crew to abandon the takeoff, with deceleration beginning at V1+8 knots. The aircraft overran the runway, causing the nosegear to collapse. The flight control problem was traced to a faulty microchip in the aircraft's Fly-By-Wire system.

autopilots acting on bad data or coding issues??? had lead to crashes.

What about that air show crash where you had stuff like

Thus he may not have heard these warnings (and thus any other warning or alarm as they sound in cockpit and not always in the headset).

that black boxes had been tampered with. (maybe to cover up the airbus issues with it's autopilot)

In the month prior to the accident, Airbus had posted two Operational Engineering Bulletins (OEBs) indicating possibilities of anomalous behavior in the A320 aircraft. These bulletins were received by Air France, but were not sent out to pilots until after the accident:

A320 crashes
http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cgi?date=03221998&reg=RP-C3222&airline=Philippine+Airlines
        The aircraft overran runway 4 while landing. A malfunction of the onboard flight computers prevented power from being reduced to idle, which inhibited thrust reverse and spoilers from being used. The offending engine was shut down, and brakes applied, but the aircraft was unable to stop before the end of the runway

I'm confused, do I go to the Cargo Letter or Airdisaster.com for news on this ?
Guess I should check Wrecked Exotics while I'm at it.

I don't think you have considered just what kind of abuse an airplane can take and still stay up.

Sure you can put a hole through a fuselage, but even with half of the walls missing, an airplane can still land safely, not like it hasn't happened before.

When the pilot didn't put the plane into landing mode, but insisted on trying to land ... bad things happen.

Man-machine interface is a critical thing here. For get modes, unless the machine requests confirmation for human inputs that seem to demand a mode switch ... like landing.

http://www.airdisaster.com/movies/

The number of crashes by Boeing or Airbus are meaningless by itself. Since Boeing has so many more flights you have to compare the rate of accidents for which Boeing is generally better: http://www.airdisaster.com/statistics/

last link: http://www.airdisaster.com/statistics/

Initiative needed. All sorts of information shows up on a simple Google search.

http://www.airdisaster.com/investigations/af296/af296.shtml

There are a number of discussions of how Airbus grabbed the flight data recorders and didn't return them for two weeks. The "official" conclusion put the pilot and crew at fault and did claim slow spool-up.

But if you actually remember this when it happened, the initial news was from the crew who claimed they gave power to complete the fly-by and the engines stayed at idle and wouldn't respond until they cycled the throttles to get the computers to "let go" so they could add power. The engines didn't respond until the airplane was hitting the trees which doomed the aircraft.

Airbus was emphatic that there were absolutely no problems with the aircraft controls. The pilot was emphatic that when he throttled up, there was no response. It wasn't lag. The engines were locked at low power because the airplane thought it was landing. Only when the pilot cycled the throttles did he get a response.

It looks like the system will degrade to a manual mode, but can the human override the computer as needed? It may have helped in this case http://www.airdisaster.com/investigations/af296/af296.shtml.

The actual story turns out to be a lot more complicated than that. There is some evidence that Airbus didn't adequately warn pilots about two known problems: refusal of the engines to accelerate upon command, and an altimeter misreading problem (see http://www.airdisaster.com/investigations/af296/af296.shtml for info).

What actually happened (the true data from the crash) may never be known, because there was an apparent attempt by Airbus to cover up the true cause, by faking the flight recorder data (see http://www.crashdehabsheim.net/CRenglish%20phot.pdf for info). I'm not generally a conspiracy theorist, but in this case there is a LOT of evidence that Airbus and many officials hid the truth, to protect the state-run company from the proper blame.

Aside from the controversy, it is widely accepted in the aviation community (my job, by the way) that the COMPUTER was the cause of the problems, not the engines or sensors.

Since that accident, I have heard of several other Airbus accidents related to flight control computer "fly-by-wire" anomalies, and a number of pilots with whom I work refuse to fly on any Airbus aircraft for this reason. It's not the fly-by-wire thing that bothers them - it's the Airbus way of doing things.

Well, the captain claimed that the throttle was unresponsive and it seems that someone swiped the original flight data recorder, so I'd say you are pretty darned sure of some murky facts :)

But I didn't mean to start an argument over that incident - just using it as an example of the plane overriding the pilot. In this case it seems to have been unintentional, as according to this site the engine defect was fixed following the accident:

OEB 19/1 (May 1988): Engine Acceleration Deficiency at Low Altitude. This means that it was already known before the accident that the engines sometimes did not respond normally to the pilot's commands on the Airbus A320. However Air France did not inform their pilots about this anomaly. After the Habsheim accident, the engines have been modified (OEB 19/2, August 1988).

There was a problem in the A320 altimeters as well that was also corrected. It was not a software lockout, but a man or machine problem.

So anyway, I stand corrected and will try to change those neurons :)

what stops someone from landing on a country road somewhere

Gas stations and road signs. I'm sure they'll make a law just for you though.

Well, any combustion reaction requires oxygen, right? Apparently, the constraint on altitude comes from the need to maintain a certain pressure within the cabin, not the availability of oxygen.

Actually, they have crashed: http://www.airdisaster.com/photos/qf1/photo.shtml They just haven't had a hull loss.

Actually, Southwest Airlines has never had a crash in the way most of us think of one, though they did have a nosegear snap on Flight 1445 on March 5, 2000. No loss of life in their history so far. Granted, unless you're flying a relatively few destinations in the U.S. you're not going to get to use them.

FAA is very conservative...

When it comes to airplanes, I'm pretty conservative, too. I don't care for fly-by-wire, I don't care for 10-15 year old carbon fibre. (Heh, maybe I should just stay away from Airbus) Neither of these are ready for prime time yet. Put your phone next to your speakers and listen to the noise when it rings. I'll grant that it doesn't reach the power supply and blow up the caps. In fact it hasn't caused a crash yet either. But we're talking about a matter of convenience here, so to me, I think it's fine to go nice and slow.

FAA is very conservative...

When it comes to airplanes, I'm pretty conservative, too. I don't care for fly-by-wire, I don't care for 10-15 year old carbon fibre. (Heh, maybe I should just stay away from Airbus) Neither of these are ready for prime time yet. Put your phone next to your speakers and listen to the noise when it rings. I'll grant that it doesn't reach the power supply and blow up the caps. In fact it hasn't caused a crash yet either. But we're talking about a matter of convenience here, so to me, I think it's fine to go nice and slow.

That crash seems to have been the result of several problems including human error, but there was no remote control involved, see:
http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id= 19880626-0&lang=en
http://www.airdisaster.com/investigations/af296/af 296.shtml

Be careful with the word "all". Most jets typically have a pressure vessel that is not the entire interior of the aircraft; for instance, every jet I know of, the APU is outside the pressure vessel. In particular, in the EMB-145, not only is the APU not in the pressure vessel, the entire cargo compartment is NOT pressurized! The main outflow valves from the cabin dump into it. This is a relatively small A/C, so its cargo compartment is not under the pax compartment - it is the entire cross-section of the fuselage at the aftmost stations, so structurally the engineers felt it was easier to cap the pressurised section before the fuselage began to narrow near the tail.

As to collapsing floors due to depressurization, that is exactly what took out a DC-10 many years ago: http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_details.cg i?date=03031974&reg=TC-JAV&airline=Turkish+Airline s

The units for all three numbers are fatal accidents per million miles, my mistake typing the wrong units. But as for you, YOU could have taken 5 minutes to check that my figures were RIGHT, the units were just typed in wrong. But no, you just went and laid into me.

While you were busy turning the numbers in your favor, and discrediting mine, you forgot two things:

* My mentioning of the fact that crashes are most likely during takeoff and landing does not ursurp the significance of my original statistic: that
the Shuttle has safety on the same order as general aviation. No aspect of spaceflight is so routine that you can ignore it statistically, not even the orbital flight portion.

There could be a critical failure of onboard equipment, or collision with derbis or the space station. The fact that we HAVN'T yet had an orbital accident only means we're more and more likely to see one. Would be very funny if, after all this preparation for another foam hit, the Shuttle explosively decompresses in-orbit because someone forgot to tighten a screw after fucking with the Shutle for the hundredth time this month.

* You're deluded that the Shuttle, a craft which moves THIRTY TIMES FASTER than a commercial passenger aircraft, and travels further than the average airline trip JUST TO GET TO ORBIT, should have anywhere near the same saftey record. The numbers I put forth, the crashes per million hours, look at the numbers from their good side, and your comparison looks at the numbers from their bad side. Somewhere in-between those is the true reliability for the Shuttle, and they're NOT THAT BAD.

My point is that, how could you NOT be satisfied with those numbers? This craft is EXPERIMENTAL. No two are exactly the same, and the later-built models benefited from the earlier ones. For a craft of such complexity and uniqueness, pushed to such excessive speeds and tensions, how could you expect anything more?

Remember your baby, the commericial aircraft industry (read: air bus)? It used to be quite dangerous to take a flight. In the last 35 years, the accident rate of commercial airlines has reduced over an order of magnitude! There also every indication that accident rates in the 50s and 60s were even higher!

Well, guess what folks? Right now our "space bus" industry is in the "1940s" of the commercial aircraft industry. Most of our spaceplanes are still custom-built, and there's still a lot left to learn. Commericial interestest are only just now starting to explore the possibilities of manned space flights. And you want the reliability of our commercial aircraft industry for the year 2000? You're NUTS.

Sure, the Space Shuttle isn't nearly as safe as modern aircraft, but that didn't stop people from flying fairly dangerous "air busses" back in the 1940s as the industry was budding. On the same line, the Space Shuttle is a bit more dangerous than modern aircraft, but not so much that you can't justify the flight. Call me back when your head finds its way out of your ass.

Just one word: UPS. If it's important enough to need redundancy, it's important enough to need battery backup, and it would not take much battery power (=weight) to power a wireless transceiver for a short period of time.

That was my initial thought, but after reading the reports on EgyptAir 990 (pdf available on this page), I'm starting to wonder. That was the one where the First Officer attempted to dive the plane into the ocean, was thwarted when the Captain returned to the flight deck... and then we don't know what happened, because the FO cut off power to the engines and the data and voice recorders lost power. All we know after that point is from radar -- the plane climbed back up before breaking apart and crashing into the ocean after all.

Even in the ValuJet case in my original post, we don't have flight and voice data after the fire burned away the power lines. There may be some good reason not to put batteries all over the plane -- corrosion or fire concerns, or perhaps weight in older-technology batteries. I was hoping that such details would come up in the discussion, but then, this is Slashdot: a bunch of guys who know a lot about computers, which enables them to think they know a lot about everything else.

Like some VB hack who thinks he knows about avionics and control surfaces... oh, sorry, that's me, never mind. Strike that last comment from the record.

I know you're joking, but wireless control of control surfaces could prevent accidents where debris from turbine failures cut flight controls and it could even help with the infamous 737 hydraulic control reversal problems that might be related to several major crashes.

The newly delivered aircraft was to perform a charter flight on behalf of the Mulhouse Flying Club. The crew was to overfly Mulhouse-Habsheim airport two times (first at low speed, gear down at 100ft and the other at high speed in clean configuration) as part of an airshow. The aircraft took off from Basle-Mulhouse at 2:41pm local time and climbed to 1000 feet. The crew started the descent three minutes later and Habsheim was in sight at 450ft agl. The first officer informed the captain that the aircraft was reaching 100ft at 14:45:14. The descent continued to 50ft 8 seconds later and further to 30-35ft. Go-around power was added at 14.45:35. The A320 continued and touched trees at the end of the runway at 14:45:40 with a 14 pitch attitude and an engine speed of 83% N1. The plane sank slowly into the forest and a fire broke out. Failure of the Captain to maintain sufficient altitude and airspeed for recovery after a low approach to a runway with obstacles near the departure end.

There are reasons why cell phones are banned in all hospitals. EMI can be unpredictable. It's best to err on the side of caution when your life and the lives of 400 other passengers are on the line.

The country that offers the LEAST regulation in regards to launching orbitals will be the country that takes in the most tourists in this incredibly expensive (but always getting cheaper) business.

Rivers lakes?

Date: 13 January 1982
Airline: Air Florida
Flight No.: 90
Aircraft: B737-222
Location: Washington, DC
Fatalities: 74:79+5

http://www.airdisaster.com/photos/af90/photo.shtml

You would be willing to get on an aircraft that has no human backup in case of computer/mechanical failure?? You're a braver man than I. I suggest you read about United 232 or other similar occurrences and see if you think that's still a good idea.

Also I see a lot of you saying that "more people are just choosing not to fly" and I wonder where you get the data to back this up? I fly to about 3 cities a week and the planes are full more often than not, so I'm not sure where you're getting that perception from.

Finally if you are even remotely aware of the process manufacturers have to go through to get their aircraft FAA certifed you would realize that to "add another door to the aircraft" is not exactly a feasible suggestion. It's not like adding a room on to your house.

Oh, and the plate steel is already there. Reinforced cockpit doors were required quickly after 9/11.

Denny

the investigation concluded he was using the barometric altimeter instead of the radio altimeter to measure altitude. and it apears the device wasn't calibrated correctly deu to manufacturing errors (http://www.airdisaster.com/investigations/af296/a f296.shtml#oeb)

he also had an engine stall when he tried to ramp the power up. due to the long delays (again, manufacturing errors) in delivering power at low altitude, the pilot thought it was a short circuit in the controls, so he pulled the lever all the way down, then up. this caused one of the engines to stall. this conclusion came after survivors said they heard two loud bangs coming from one ot he engines, also, the trees chopped by the wings were chopped lower at one side of the plane, indicating that one of the engines was producing more power than the other.

Supersonic long range air travel SHOULD be the way we are heading, but everyone's so freaking scared of them now because of the concorde crash,

The thing flew for over 30 years with only one crash that wasn't really its fault (re: debris on the runway flattened a tire which ruptured a fuel tank). Hell, in that time, how many passenger jets have gone down? dozens. And people still fly on those.

...Auto-landing is used all the time...

Let's hope it doesn't land too softly

--
Problem - Test flight OK, except autoland very rough.
Solution - Autoland not installed on this aircraft.

I'd have more faith in such an ongoing investigation if it wasn't an Airbus fly-by-wire system that put their plane into a ground at an air show.

This after numerous problems had already been documented. And Airbus swapped the actual crash flight recorder to help their case that it wasn't a problem with the plane.

http://www.airdisaster.com/investigations/af296/af 296.shtml

http://www.airdisaster.com/investigations/af296/af 296.shtml

The pilot had made a slow pass over the field, and when he tried to pull the plane up, the computer overrode his commands thinking he was trying to land, and that is why they crashed into the forest.

While there some conspiracy theories, as with many catastrophes, the generally accepted story differs very substantially from the above.

The aircraft was flown at maximum angle of attack (AOA) at about 30-35 ft above the runway during an air show, with passengers on board. The pilot disconnected the autothrottle system, as its "alpha-floor" system would have automatically increased the engine thrust, preventing him from slowing the aircraft as much as he wanted. The aircraft eventually ended up at about 30-35 ft above the runway, with the engines at idle, and at the maximum allowable AOA.

The co-pilot noted that the obstacles ahead were higher than the aircraft, alerted the pilot, who pushed the thrust levers (i.e. throttles) ahead, and pulled back on the controls. The flight control system did not allow the pilot to raise the aircraft's nose, as that would have required increasing the angle of attack, and the wing would have stalled. The only way out of the hole he dug was to get more thrust. The faster you go at a given AOA, the more lift the wing produces. The fact that lift is now greater than the weight means the flight path starts to curve upwards, and the nose rises, even at the same AOA. But, it takes about 7 seconds for a modern high-bypass ratio turbofan engine to accelerate from idle to full thrust (the regulations allow 8 seconds), and they hit the trees 5 seconds after he pushed the thrust levers forward.

The flight control system's AOA limiting function prevented a much more serious accident, as if the wing had stalled the aircraft would have went out of control. As it was, it hit the trees in controlled flight, and only three people died.

After that, an emergency pilot override was placed in AirBus jets.

There is no emergency override in the Airbus jets. The pilot can manually turn off enough flight control computers to put the flight controls in Direct Law, where there are no longer any artificial limits on what he can do, but this would not have prevented this accident. He would have crashed much earlier in the sequence if he had tried to do the same thing in Direct Law.

The Boeing 777 can takeoff and land automatically.

The Boeing 777 cannot takeoff automatically. It can land automatically, as can all the other modern large airliners, including Airbus A320, A330 and A340.

The problem is that so many European governments are involved in the project, and so many politicians are getting "benefits" from it that it simply isn't allowed to criticise Airbus.

TWW

Sorry, that's incorrect.

What you're talking about here is Air France Flight 296. There's a full description on the link, but the short version is that the pilot tried to throttle up because the plane was too low, and the fly-by-wire system overrode him due to a fault. Nothing to do with the autopilot at all --- autopilot landings are quite common these days.

(There's also been a lot of controversy about that accident, because there are a number of irregularities with the investigation indicating that the evidence has been tampered with. Check out this link for more information.)

(Oh, yes; only three people died, although about 50 were injured.)

It's not a terribly good example (as it crashed, killing everyone on board), but the recent Helios crash, where decompression at altitude knocked out the pilots, might have been averted if cabin crew were able to bring one of the portable oxygen units through to the pilots (on the assumption here that the pilots' oxygen supply was faulty or (more likely) accidentially left turned off).

I'm sure there are numerous other emergency situations where external access to the flight deck might save a plane. I think the current solution of a secure door with reasonably secure override mechanism is better than sealing off entirely.

I think we should remember that terrorists adapt their tactics. We should not focus on ever-more elaborate schemes to protect the cockpit even more when we should be looking at general prevention (intelligence, diplomacy) and trying to anticipate how they may evolve their attacks.

Going back on topic, I think a subtle way of notifying the cockpit of problems is a good thing; inpenetrable flight decks and automatic flight controls less so.

After my last trip from Miami to Australia I got curious about the longest scheduled airline flight these days. It seems that as of last summer there's a Newark-to-Singapore flight, SQ 21, that lasts 18 hours and 35 minutes non-stop on a stripped-down (no first class!) Airbus 340-500. (The return, SQ 22, is a bargain at only 18:25.) The distance is 9534 statute miles (8285 nautical miles); the article is in error on this.

Of course, things were worse in the old days. There used to be 21-23 hour nonstop flights from London to the U.S. west coast on Lockheed L-1649A Super Constellation Starliners (see Starliner if you'd like to buy your own), but perhaps the all-time record is held by KLM:

"Perhaps the most famous day in the early history of KLM was October 1, 1931, when the airline began regular passenger service between Amsterdam and Batavia (now known as Jakarta in Indonesia) using Fokker F.12 aircraft fitted with four luxury seats. The trip lasted 10 entire days, including 81 hours of flying time. It was the longest regularly scheduled flight offered by any airline in the world."

Absolutely nothing. So I'll repeat myself AGAIN. If you're going to develope "risky" software, if you're going to be a whistle-blower, if you're going to expose weaknesses in...whatever, then there is only ONE way to protect yourself. Do it ANONYMOUSLY!!! To hell with the attributions! The only thing you're going to get is retribution. Get your act together, people. When software patents hit the streets, you're either going to use Microsoft, or your going to be illegal. And if you're going to take the high road, then leave your damn name off. Otherwise you're only looking for trouble. Damn! I swear. This exactly like trying to remind the pilot to, most importantly, fly the plane when something goes wrong. All to often, the entire crew is trying to fix a burned out bulb while the plane is flying into the ground. And it happens over and over again as if nobody ever heard the warning.

(I am a private pilot). If you are flying in IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions - on instruments alone), you have placed the lives of your pax in the hands of the pilot and his instruments. There are no outside clues when things go wrong. See here
for the top 100 air disasters. Two of them were purely ILS failures.

I'm not so confident that it can't happen. There are numerous anecdotal stories in the industry of NAV equipment wandering off course. In 1999 there were 76 reported incidents of possible cellphone interference. On IMC, and especially when on approach, these have the potential to end in disaster.

Also, there are a lot of runways that have lakes or the sea at the end of them. So if your plane fails to stop on the runway, it is most likely to end up wet.
BTW crash pics have been available here for years (seems to be pop up infested these days though)

And if you want to listen to the horror that is an airplane crash, you can get your fill of last minute talk and screaming here: http://www.airdisaster.com/cvr/cvrwav.shtml

The crash landing of a Varig 707 in 1973 was due to a fire probably started in the aft lavatory by a cigarette. 123 people died.

See

here, here, and here

(Scroll down or search for cigarette on the latter page).

This just in live pictures from the scene!