44 amateur pilots used airplanes for suicide

About 44 amateur pilots in the United States have committed suicide by deliberately crashing their small airplanes during the past 30 years, according to a new federal report.

The suicide flights involved small, single-engine airplanes that private pilots flew into the ground, water or a building without injuring anyone on the ground, USA Today reports, citing federal crash records.

All of the suicidal pilots were males, and many had recently faced break-ups with wives or had confronted legal troubles, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report.

The suicides usually take place near small airports used mostly by private airplanes where the pilot is not paid to fly, according to NTSB reports.

The suicide crashes normally lack the publicity of last Tuesday’s crash of a German airliner that killed 150 passengers and crew. The German co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, reportedly had a history of depression and suicidal tendencies.

The most recent suicide plane crash took place on January 11 when a 41-year-old man flew his single-engine, light aircraft into a field 30 miles (48 km) northeast of Denver, Colorado after his wife told him she wanted a divorce, according to an NTSB report.

The wife told police that her husband had said five years earlier that if she ever left him, he would fly his airplane into the ground.

The most notable airplane suicide occurred on February 18, 2010 in Austin, Texas when a local pilot reportedly angry at the US government deliberately crashed his single-engine Piper Dakota light aircraft into an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) office building, killing himself and an IRS employee.

The suicide attack by Andrew Joseph Stack injured 13 other people and ignited a massive fire.

Still, the number of airplane suicides in the US is far less than the hundreds of people who kill themselves each year by stepping in front of trains.

According to a report last week by the Federal Railroad Administration, approximately 340 people killed themselves by standing in the path of passenger or cargo trains in 2014.

The number of airplane suicides is also tiny compared with the approximately 350 people a year who are killed in private aircraft accidents in the US.