Otto Lilienthal died

Otto Lilienthal died after a failure of one of his gliders. On his roughly 2,500th flight (August 9, 1896), he stalled in a gust of wind, causing him to fall from a height of roughly 56 ft (17 m), fracturing his spine. He died the next day, with his last words being reported as Opfer müssen gebracht werden! ("Sacrifices must be made!")

Percy Pilcher was another promising aviation pioneer; he died testing The Hawk (September 20, 1899). Just as with Lilienthal, promising designs and ideas for motorized planes were scrapped after his death.

The Wright Flyer nearly crashed on the day of its historic flight, sustaining some damage when landing. Three days before, on a previous flight attempt, Wilbur Wright overcontrolled the aircraft in pitch and crashed it on takeoff, causing minor damage in the first known case of pilot-induced oscillation.

US Army Lt. Thomas Selfridge became the first person killed in a powered fixed-wing aircraft on September 17, 1908 when his aircraft, piloted by Orville Wright, crashed after propeller separation failure during military tests at Fort Myer in Virginia. Selfridge died of a fractured skull. Wright suffered broken ribs, pelvis and a leg.

Plane crashes with large numbers of casualties set in with the early passenger flights of the 1920s. The yearly death toll of plane crashes exceeded 100 for the first time in 1928, and 1,000 for the first time in 1943. Since 1945, the number of deaths has fallen below 1,000 only five times, in 1974, 1975, 2004, 2007, and 2008.