Mehiläinen Airport Health Centre, 01530 Vantaa, Finland.
Department of Forensic Medicine, University of Helsinki, 00014 Helsinki, Finland.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2018 Nov 12;15(11):2525. doi: 10.3390/ijerph15112525.
Pilot aircraft-assisted suicides (AAS) are rare, and there is limited understanding of copycat phenomenon among aviators. The aim of this study was to evaluate the possible effect the 11 September 2001, terrorist attacks had on pilot AASs in the U.S. Fatal aviation accidents in the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) database were searched using the following search words: "suicide", "murder-suicide" and "homicide-suicide". The timeline between 11 September 1996, and 11 September 2004, was analyzed. Only those accidents in which NTSB judged that the cause of the accident was suicide were included in the final analysis. The relative risk (RR) of the pilot AASs in all fatal accidents in the U.S. was calculated in order to compare the one, two, and three-year periods after the September 11 terrorist attacks with five years preceding the event. The RR of a fatal general aviation aircraft accident being due to pilot suicide was 3.68-fold (95% confidence interval 1.04⁻12.98) during the first year after 11 September 2001, but there was not a statistically significant increase in the later years. This study showed an association, albeit not determinate causal effect, of a very specific series of simultaneous terrorist murder-suicides with subsequent pilot AASs.
飞行员辅助自杀（AAS）较为罕见，飞行员中也鲜有模仿自杀现象的发生。本研究旨在评估 2001 年 9 月 11 日恐怖袭击事件对美国飞行员 AAS 可能产生的影响。在美国国家运输安全委员会（NTSB）数据库中，使用“自杀”、“谋杀-自杀”和“杀人-自杀”等关键词搜索致命航空事故。分析了 1996 年 9 月 11 日至 2004 年 9 月 11 日期间的事故。只有那些 NTSB 判断事故原因是自杀的事故才被纳入最终分析。为了比较 9·11 恐怖袭击事件前后五年期间美国所有致命事故中飞行员 AAS 的一年、两年和三年风险比（RR），计算了飞行员在所有致命事故中因自杀而导致致命通用航空飞机事故的 RR。在 9·11 恐怖袭击后的第一年，飞行员因自杀而导致致命通用航空飞机事故的 RR 是之前的 3.68 倍（95%置信区间 1.04⁻12.98），但之后几年并没有显著增加。本研究显示，非常特定的一系列同时发生的恐怖谋杀-自杀事件与随后的飞行员 AAS 之间存在关联，尽管不是确定性的因果关系。
