One month and two weeks after the crash of a freighter Boeing 747 in Brussels, a similar accident occured in Columbia. The crew survived, but two persons on ground were killed, and all my thoughts go to their relatives.

When I received the e-mail notification from NTSB, I immediately made the relation to the Brussels accident, but I could not believe it when I read it: the plane that crashed in Columbia was also operated from Kalitta-Air. Wow.

Reacting to that requires to keep a cool mind. Until otherwise demonstrated, there is no relation between these two accidents. The probability that an operator looses two aircraft is rather small, but a low probability does not means something can not happen.

If you flip a coin 10 times, there is one chance on 1024 that you get 10 times a head. Remote but not impossible. I don’t know about the aircraft accident statistics, but it’s not the first time a company loses several aircraft, but the time between these two accidents is at least disturbing.

Investigators will tell if this is simply bad luck, or if there is something wrong with Kalitta. This will take time, and until then, speculiation will go on, as always. Don’t trust anything you could read, see, or hear, unless it comes from an official investigation body.

In aviation like elsewhere, shit happens.

Click here to read the CNN coverage of this accident.

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