A Day for AIDS and Aviation Disasters

The world celebrates AIDS day on December 1, the day AIDS was officially recognized by medical organizations throughout the world in 1981 and since 1988, the very first World AIDS Day was celebrated, to increase awareness, fight prejudice and battle against the social stigma that comes with AIDS. Since it was recognized on December 1st 1981, the number of AIDS carriers has been steadily increasing and as of 2009, there are over 33 million people diagnosed as being HIV positive, of which, over 2 million of them being innocent children. Since 1981, over 25 million deaths have been related to AIDS and the virus has since reached global pandemic proportions.

While the origin of AIDS have been linked as far back as in the early 1900s from a strain of HIV-related virus found in chimpanzees, and human deaths related to AIDS have been reported as early as in the late 1950s, AIDS was only officially reported on June 5th 1981. With no known cure or vaccine for HIV or AIDS, the virus has spread rapidly and has infected and killed millions within just a few decades. People who have contracted HIV have an estimated lifespan of 20 years and those who have contracted AIDS but have not seek any proper treatment would only be able to survive another one to three years. This is the reason why December 1 should be considered an important day on the calendar. To prevent a further outbreak of HIV and AIDS, people should be exposed to its risks and symptoms and be educated on the dangers and hazards and the virus.

December 1 also marks as a bad day for flying. By browsing through the history of aviation, three separate incidents have occurred on 1st December, two of them on the very same day of the same year and sharing the same aircraft type. On December 1 1974, the now defunct Trans World Airlines (TWA) had a Boeing 727 that took off from Indianapolis, Indiana and due to high crosswinds, heavy downdrafts and low visibility due to heavy snowfall, TWA Flight 514 crashed into Mount Weather in Virginia, killing all 85 passengers and 7 crew members on board that ill-fated flight. Investigations showed that while Flight 514 was unfortunate enough to crash into Mount Weather, six weeks prior to the airplane disaster, a United Airlines flight suffered the same conditions, similar approach patterns and at the same location, the United Airlines flight, however, narrowly escaped crashing into Mount Weather but the same could not be said of Flight 514.

Earlier on in the afternoon on the very same day, another Boeing 727 of Northwestern Orient Airlines took off from John F Kennedy Airport in New York and crashed near Stony Point, New York, after the crew lost control of the stalled plane and went on a downward spiral, descending over 23000 feet in the air and crashing onto the ground in just a little over a minute. Fortunately, the plane was not carrying any passengers on board and its only misfortune was that all three occupants onboard the plane, crew members of Northwestern Orient, died upon impact. Seven years later, in December 1 1981, Slovenia’s national airline, Adria Airways, had a McDonnell Douglas MD81 involved in an aviation accident. Flight 1308, a chartered flight, was flying towards Corsica when the weather took a turn for the worse; fog quickly descended over the plane and visibility was near zero. A wing of the plane collided on Mount San Pietro and upon collision; the pilot lost control of the plane and crashed into the mountain. A total of 173 passengers and 7 crew onboard the plane were killed upon impact, sending December 1 into the record books as having one of the most number of lives lost in a day due to aviation accidents.