Douglas DC-9

The DC-9 is now a rare aircraft, and its record is mostly that of 1960s to 1980s flying. Up to 7 October 2026 it has 57 fatal events in our data. 43 count, in about 41 million passenger flights; 31 of those were before 1990, and the last was in 2008. Several accidents changed safety rules for every airliner, but few came from a flaw in the DC-9 itself. Collisions, flights into terrain and fires dominate the list.

What the DC-9 is and where it still flies

The DC-9 was Douglas's short-haul twinjet: two engines at the rear, a T-tail, five seats across and a cockpit designed for two pilots. It first flew in 1965 and entered service the same year. Douglas, later McDonnell Douglas, built 976 in five lengths, the DC-9-10 to the DC-9-50, with about 70 to 140 seats. It led to the MD-80, the MD-90 and the Boeing 717.

Northwest, Eastern, Delta, Air Canada, Alitalia and Iberia flew large fleets. Delta ended the last major-airline DC-9 passenger flights in 2014. About 20 remain, mostly freighters with small operators. You are unlikely to board one as a passenger.

Collisions and terrain

Six counted accidents were mid-air collisions, four of them with small private or military aircraft in the years before collision-warning systems. The deadliest DC-9 accident is one of them: on 10 September 1976, an Inex-Adria DC-9 was cleared to hold its level over Zagreb, the same level a British Airways Trident was on. All 113 on the DC-9 and 176 in total died. On 31 August 1986, a Piper that had entered controlled airspace without clearance hit Aeroméxico 498 over Cerritos, near Los Angeles. All 64 on board and 15 people on the ground died, and the US soon required collision-avoidance systems on airliners.

Fourteen counted accidents were flights into terrain, among them Southern Airways' crash at Huntington in 1970 with the Marshall University football team (75 dead), Alitalia at Palermo in 1978 (108 of 129) and Cebu Pacific in the Philippines in 1998 (104).

The fires

• 2 June 1983, Air Canada 797: a fire started in the rear toilet at cruise. The crew underestimated it and were slow to descend. They landed at Cincinnati, but the cabin burst into flames shortly after 23 people got out, and the other 23 died. The origin was never found.
• 11 May 1996, ValuJet: minutes after leaving Miami, a fire broke out in the forward cargo hold, started by oxygen generators wrongly shipped as cargo. The DC-9 dived into the Everglades and all 110 died. The US then required fire detection and suppression in cargo holds of this kind.

Weather and the other counted accidents

Thunderstorms brought down Southern Airways near New Hope, Georgia, in 1977, when hail and rain stopped both engines (63 of 85 died), and USAir at Charlotte in 1994, in a microburst on a go-around (37 of 57). Continental lost a DC-9 to wing ice on take-off at Denver in 1987 (28 of 82). Two runway collisions in fog killed 42 on an Aviaco DC-9 at Madrid in 1983 and 8 on a Northwest DC-9 at Detroit in 1990. The last counted accidents were Sosoliso at Port Harcourt in 2005 (108 of 110) and a Hewa Bora DC-9 that failed to get airborne at Goma in 2008.

What is left out

Six acts of violence are listed but not counted, including the Itavia crash off Ustica in 1980 (81 dead) and the bombing of JAT 367 over Czechoslovakia in 1972, which a flight attendant survived. Eight cargo, test, training, military and other non-passenger crashes are also left out; our methodology explains why.

How to tell if you are on one

Flight trackers show DC91 to DC95 for the five lengths. It looks like a short MD-80, with two engines beside a T-tail and two seats on one side of the aisle and three on the other.