The March 13 , 1950 edition of the '' New York Times '' reported thus : " London , 12 March — Eighty men and women were killed in Wales today in an aeroplane crash , the worst disaster in the history of aviation . Three men survived . The death toll eclipsed the previous record for airplanes , set last Nov. 2 , when an fighter plane rammed an airliner near the National Airport in Washington , causing the deaths of fifty-five persons . It also exceeded the toll of seventy-three dead in the loss of the United States Navy dirigible '' Akron '' off Barnegat , N.J. , on 4 April 1933 . The eighty persons lost in Wales went to their destruction in a type of aircraft – the British Avro Tudor – that had already caused fifty-four fatalities and had been banned from passenger service on Britain 's publicly owned international airlines . " The death toll of 80 exceeded the previous aviation fatality total , which was the 73 lives lost on the US Navy dirigible '' Akron '' in 1933 . This record would be surpassed on 20 December 1952 , when 87 lives were lost when a US Air Force Douglas C-124 Globemaster II crashed near Moses Lake , Washington . As far as civilian aviation-related deaths , the Avro disaster resulted in the highest loss of lives until 128 died in the 1956 Grand Canyon mid-air collision . The Tudor 's single death toll for a civilian aircraft was the highest on record until 1958 , when a KLM Super Constellation went down off Ireland , claiming 99 lives
crashed
1952 Moses Lake C-124 crash
Llandow air disaster