Suicide by pilot
Suicide by pilot is an event in which a certified or uncertified pilot deliberately crashes or attempts to crash an aircraft in a suicide attempt, sometimes to kill passengers on board or people on the ground. This is sometimes described as a murder–suicide. It is suspected as being a possible cause of the crashes of several commercial flights and is confirmed as the cause in others. Generally, it is difficult for crash investigators to determine the motives of the pilots, since they sometimes act deliberately to turn off recording devices or otherwise hinder future investigations. As a result, pilot suicide can be difficult to prove with certainty.
Investigators do not qualify aircraft incidents as suicide unless there is compelling evidence that the pilot was doing so. This evidence would include suicide notes, previous attempts, threats of suicide, or a history of mental illness. In a study of pilot suicides from 2002–2013, eight cases were identified as definite suicides, with five additional cases of undetermined cause that may have been suicides. Investigators may also work with terrorism experts, checking for links to extremist groups to try to determine whether the suicide was an act of terrorism.
Most cases of suicide by pilot involve general aviation in small aircraft. In most of these, the pilot is the only person on board the aircraft. In about half of the cases, the pilot was using drugs, usually alcohol or anti-depressants, that would ban them from flying. Many of these pilots had mental illness histories that they had hidden from regulators.
World War II suicide attacks
During World War II, the Russian aviator Nikolai Gastello was the first Soviet pilot credited with a "fire taran" in a suicide attack by an aircraft on a ground target, although his aircraft had been shot down and was in a rapid partially controllable descent. In the following years there were more suicide attacks; the best known by military aviators are the attacks from the Empire of Japan, called kamikaze, against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II. These attacks were designed to destroy warships more effectively than was possible with conventional attacks; between and, 3,860 kamikaze pilots committed suicide in this manner.List of declared or suspected pilot suicides
This list excludes World War II suicide attacks on ground targets.Legend:
| Confirmed suicide | |
| Believed to be suicide | |
| Attack on aircraft halted |
By pilots in control of whole flight
By hijackers
Published studies
In a 2016 study published in Aerospace Medicine and Human Performance, Kenedi et al. systematically review suicide and homicide-suicide events involving aircraft. They note that "In aeromedical literature and in the media, these very different events are both described as pilot suicide, but in psychiatry they are considered separate events with distinct risk factors." The study reviews medical databases, internet search engines, and aviation safety databases and includes 65 cases of pilot suicide and six cases of passengers who jumped from aircraft. There are also 18 cases of homicide-suicide involving 732 deaths. Pilots perpetrated 13 homicide-suicide events. Compared to non-aviation samples, a large percentage of pilot suicides in this study were homicide-suicides.Kenedi et al. note that homicide-suicide events occur only extremely rarely, but that their impact, in terms of the proportion of deaths, is significant when compared to deaths from accidents. They state: "There is evidence of clustering where pilot suicides occur after media reports of suicide or homicide-suicide. Five of six homicide-suicide events by pilots of commercial airliners occurred after they were left alone in the cockpit. This, along with a sixth incident in which active intervention by a Japan Air crew saved 150 lives, suggests that having two flight members in the cockpit is potentially protective. No single factor was associated with the risk for suicide or homicide-suicide. Factors associated with both events included legal and financial crises, occupational conflict, mental illness, and relationship stressors. Drugs and/or alcohol played a role in almost half of suicides, but not in homicide-suicides."