Delta Air Lines took to the sky in 1929. Nearly a century later, it's still flying, one of the oldest continuously operating airlines in the country. But longevity comes with a paper trail. Nine decades of it, starting with the earliest documented accident in 1935 and running clear through to early 2026.
Crashes. Hijackings. Emergency landings that never made the evening news outside their own city. I went digging through all of it.
What follows is a full statistical breakdown. I built it from Wikipedia's documented record of Delta accidents and incidents, then checked it against Aviation Safety Network, NTSB filings and news archives to make sure the numbers held up. Every fatal crash. Hull loss. Hijacking. And major ground incident with a public record. They all made the cut.
One honest caveat before you dive in: the paper trail thins out the further back you go. Records from before the 1960s are spottier than what I found from the last thirty years, so I'd read these totals as the known, publicly documented history. Not a perfect government audit.
Total Number of Accidents and Incidents
48. That's the number of plane crashes Delta Air Lines has on record, dating back to 1935. This includes hull-loss crashes, hijackings, ground and maintenance incidents, and significant in-flight emergencies involving Delta mainline and its regional Delta Connection partners. This number, needless to say, is low, compared to American Airlines accidents statistics.
Number of Fatal Crashes
17 of those 48 incidents resulted in at least one death. Onboard, on the ground, or crew. That puts the fatal-incident rate at roughly 35%. Lower than some of Delta's competitors across the same time span. I'd caution against reading too much into that number alone, though. Fleet size, route volume and reporting depth all shift the comparison.
Number of Non-Fatal Crashes and Incidents
31 of the 48 recorded events involved no fatalities. Runway excursions. Engine failures that ended in safe landings. Hijackings that ended without bloodshed. Turbulence incidents. That's just under 65% of Delta's entire recorded history.
Total Number of Deaths
Across every documented incident, Delta accidents have resulted in 367 deaths, as I have estimated. Combining onboard fatalities and deaths on the ground. Two events account for the bulk of that number. Flight 191 in 1985, a Lockheed L-1011 that crashed at Dallas/Fort Worth after flying through a microburst, killing 135 of the 163 people onboard plus one person on the ground. And Flight 723 in 1973, a DC-9 that crashed into a seawall at Boston's Logan Airport, killing 89.
I should note something here. The 2006 crash of Comair Flight 5191, marketed as Delta Connection 5191, killed 50 people and is included in these totals. Comair was a Delta-owned regional carrier at the time, so the flight operated under the Delta Connection brand even though Comair carried out day-to-day operations.
Number of Hijackings
8 hijackings appear in Delta's documented record. Almost all of them cluster in the same window as the broader industry wave, from 1968 through the mid-1980s, when flights were frequently redirected to Cuba. One stands apart from the rest. The February 1974 attempted hijacking of Flight 523 at Baltimore, where the hijacker shot and killed a police officer and the plane's first officer before the standoff ended. That one's tracked separately in the fatality count, since it never left the gate.
Accidents Attributed to Pilot Error
Pilot error shows up as a contributing or primary cause in 7 of the 33 documented crash-category incidents. That's about 21%. A few worth naming:
Flight 723 (1973) — the crew failed to stabilize the approach into Logan and struck the seawall
Flight 191 (1985) — the pilot didn't acknowledge a flight controller’s frantic order to abort his landing
Flight 1141 (1988) — improper flap and slat configuration on takeoff from DFW
Comair Flight 5191 (2006) — the crew attempted takeoff from the wrong runway at Lexington
Flight 1086 (2015) — the captain's excessive use of reverse thrust degraded rudder control on landing at LaGuardia
Number of Boeing Aircraft Accidents
Boeing aircraft account for 7 documented crash-category incidents. Only 1 was fatal, the 1988 crash of Flight 1141, a Boeing 727 that went down shortly after takeoff from DFW, killing 14 of the 108 aboard. That gives Boeing the lowest fatal rate of any manufacturer with more than a couple entries on this list.
Number of Airbus Aircraft Accidents
Airbus aircraft account for 4 documented crash-category incidents. None of them were fatal. Every Airbus-related entry in Delta's record: Engine fires. Turbulence. A taxiway collision. They all ended without a single death onboard.
Accidents by Decade
Decade | Total Incidents | Fatal | Non-Fatal | Deaths |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1930s | 1 | 1 | 0 | 4 |
1940s | 3 | 2 | 1 | 20 |
1950s | 1 | 1 | 0 | 19 |
1960s | 4 | 3 | 1 | 24 |
1970s | 9 | 3 | 6 | 95 |
1980s | 8 | 2 | 6 | 149 |
1990s | 3 | 1 | 2 | 2 |
2000s | 4 | 1 | 3 | 50 |
2010s | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
2020s (through early 2026) | 13 | 3 | 10 | 4 |
A few things stand out to me here. The 1970s and 1980s carry the highest incident counts of any decade. And the 1980s alone account for more deaths than any other single decade, driven almost entirely by the 1985 microburst crash. The 2020s already show the highest raw incident count on this list, but I'd read that carefully. Almost all of them are non-fatal.
And the volume partly reflects how much more thoroughly incidents get reported and documented today than they did in, say, 1968. Fatal crashes as a share of total incidents have trended down since the 1980s, even as the fleet, route count and total flights have grown enormously.
Deadliest Delta Air Lines Plane Crashes on Record
Flight 191 (1985) — Dallas/Fort Worth: 137 deaths
Flight 723 (1973) — Boston Logan: 89 deaths
Comair Flight 5191 (2006) — Lexington, Kentucky: 50 deaths
Flight 318 (1953) — Marshall, Texas: 19 deaths
Flight 9877 (1967) — New Orleans: 19 deaths
Among the victims of Flight 191 crash was Philip Donald Estridge, known as the "father of the IBM PC". Estridge and wife Mary Ann perished in the accident on August 2, 1985. He was killed before the apex of his career, and thus, a jury ordered Delta to pay Estridge's estate a jaw-dropping $7,975,000, the largest award ever in a case involving an airplane death. Estridge was survived by three daughters, and the award was based on how much he could have earned in his career. "Delta is considering an appeal," Time Magazine reported at the time.
Delta Flight 191 accident had led to life-saving changes in aviation, including the development of airborne real-time windshear detection, windshear avoidance philosophy and pilot training.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many total plane crashes has Delta Air Lines had?
I count 48 documented accidents and incidents since 1935. 17 of them fatal.
What is Delta's deadliest crash?
Flight 191 in 1985. A wind-shear-driven microburst brought the L-1011 down at DFW, killing 135 people.
How many people have died in Delta accidents?
An estimated 367, across every documented incident I found in the record, spanning 1935 through early 2026.
Has Delta Air Lines had any hijackings?
Yes. 8 in the documented record, mostly during the wave of hijackings to Cuba between the late 1960s and mid-1980s.
