When someone commits suicide on their own, it's a terrible tragedy. When a pilot does it while flying a plane full of passengers, it's a terrible tragedy and a very, very big problem:

For decades, commercial airline travel has gotten progressively safer. But one cause of deaths has stubbornly persisted: pilots who intentionally crash in murder-suicides.

Preliminary evidence suggests the crash of a China Eastern Airlines Corp. jet in March may be the latest such tragedy, a person familiar with the investigation said. If confirmed, that would make it the fourth since 2013, bringing deaths in those crashes to 554.

So as aircraft become more reliable and pilots grow less susceptible to errors, fatalities caused by murder-suicides are becoming an increasingly large share of the total. While intentional acts traditionally aren't included in air-crash statistics, they would be the second-largest category of deaths worldwide if they were, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. By comparison, 1,745 people died as a result of pilot error, mechanical failures or other causes on Western-built jets from 2012 through 2021.

Yeah uh so I had no idea this was happening.

It's worth noting that authorities seem rather aware of the serious and pressing nature of this problem but that they're not always willing to be honest about it:

[B]ecause of the taboo nature of suicide, the cases create unique political and cultural challenges, at times leaving such events shrouded in mystery or open to dispute. The probe into Malaysia Airlines Flight 370's disappearance over the Indian Ocean in 2014 found it was likely flown there on purpose, for example, but the Malaysian government's report contains no information on who may have done so or why.

So pilots are killing themselves and their passengers and some national leaders aren't even willing to, you know, discuss it?

I'm not saying don't get on a plane. I'm just saying...I might kinda think it over a bit before I myself get on one.

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