Why small planes are more likely to crash than commercial airlines | Just The FAQs

Since the two Boeing 737 Max crashes since 2018, some have become wary of air travel, but it's small planes that have a spottier safety record.
RELATED:

Sixty-one years ago Monday, a 1947 Beechcraft Bonanza took flight from a small-town Iowa airport, carrying three pioneers of early American rock ‘n’ roll music. 

The musicians, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson, chartered a plane with hopes of cutting travel time between frigid Midwestern tour stops. A few extra hours of sleep waited at the destination, Moorhead, Minnesota. 

But the plane wouldn’t make it out of Clear Lake, Iowa, crashing in a field just miles north of the Surf Ballroom, where the early rock stars wrapped a gig hours earlier. It was one of the first tragedies to strike modern American music and a figurative end to 1950s culture. Don McLean coined it “The Day the Music Died” in his 1971 opus “American Pie.” 

» Subscribe to USA TODAY:
» Watch more on this and other topics from USA TODAY:
» USA TODAY delivers current local and national news, sports, entertainment, finance, technology, and more through award-winning journalism, photos, videos and VR.