Question: Why do planes crash

Sinead Quirke answered on 30 Jan 2015:

There are many reasons but think of it like putting a rigid straw through a Swiss cheese. Its very unlikely that you would get the holes to line up perfectly for you in a straight line – the cheese will stop you. Similarly an aircraft crash happens on the rare occasion when all the barriers fail – it is very rarely one thing on its own. Airplanes are very reliable and have lots of systems so that if one fails another will takeover. Part of the reason in many crashes has been poor decisions made by people.