Thursday's incident is the first fatal crash of a commercial airliner in the United States since August 2006, when Comair Flight 5191 crashed while attempting to take off from the wrong runway near Lexington, Kentucky.

CNN: Search for answers begins in Buffalo plane crash

In 1974, the first crash of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet occurred when a Lufthansa airliner crashed after takeoff at Nairobi airport in Kenya, killing 59 people.

CNN: Wednesday,

The previous FAA grounding in 1979 followed the terrible crash of the now-defunct DC-10 wide-body airliner.

CNN: Can the 'game-changer' still live up to its name?

In 2010, a French court decided that the crash had been caused by a titanium strip that had fallen from a Continental airliner.

BBC: Europe

Since Oct. 13, when a propeller plane crash in Papua New Guinea killed 28 passengers, nobody has died in an airliner, which is generally defined as a commercial, multi-engine airplane carrying 14 or more passengers.

WSJ: Airlines Count Down to Safest Year on Record

Including the Thai Airways crash, the world has seen 20 accidents involving the loss of a commercial airliner in 1998, a number similar to that for the previous two years, according to Airclaims, a London-based firm of aviation insurance loss-adjusters.

ECONOMIST: Asia��s fear of flying