Suicide by aircraft

Investigators do not classify aircraft incidents as suicides unless there is compelling evidence, which may include suicide notes, past suicide attempts, explicit threats of suicide, or a documented history of alcohol abuse, drug addiction, depression, or other forms of mental illness. One study analyzing pilot suicides between 2002 and 2013 identified eight cases as definite suicides, and five cases that may have been suicides. In some cases, investigators may collaborate with terrorism experts to investigate potential connections to extremist groups, aiming to ascertain whether the suicide was an act of terrorism.

A Bloomberg News study focusing on crashes involving Western-built commercial airliners, revealed that pilot murder-suicides ranked as the second most prevalent cause of airline crash deaths between 2011 and 2020. The study also found that such deaths increased over the period from 1991 to 2020, while deaths due to accidental causes significantly decreased.

World War II suicide attacks

During World War II, the Russian aviator Nikolai Gastello was the first Soviet pilot credited with a (later disputed) "fire taran" in a suicide attack by an aircraft on a ground target, although his aircraft had been shot down and was in a rapid partially controllable descent. Another early example took place during the attack on Pearl Harbor where First Lieutenant Fusata Iida, commander of the Japanese 3rd Air Group, told his men before taking off, that if his aircraft were to become badly damaged he would crash it into a "worthy enemy target".

In the following years there were more suicide attacks; the best known by military aviators are the attacks from the Empire of Japan, called kamikaze, against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II. These attacks were designed to destroy warships more effectively than was possible with conventional attacks; between October 1944 and 1945, 3,860 kamikaze pilots died by suicide in this manner.