• On 20 April 1978 two Soviet fighter jets intercepted Korean Air flight 902 near Murmansk after it veered off course. The jets reportedly fired at the plane after the pilot did not respond and it was forced to make an emergency landing. Two passengers died.

• Another Korean Air flight was brought down by the USSR on 1 September 1983. The Boeing 747 civilian airliner from New York to Seoul was shot down by a Soviet jet just west of the Russian island of Sakhalin killing all 269 passengers and crew, including US congressman Larry McDonald. The Russians believed it was a US military surveillance plane and fired tracer rockets as a warning but it did not respond, the Soviet fighter pilot later said. US president, Ronald Reagan called the shoot down "a massacre".

• On 6 November 1987, during the civil war in Mozambique, an Air Malawi scheduled passenger flight was shot down en route from Blantyre to Lilongwe. It crashed near the town of Ulongwe killing eight passengers and two crew.

• On 3 July 1988 the US warship USS Vincennes fired a surface-to-air missile to shoot down Iran Air flight 655 travelling from Bandar Abbas in Iran to Dubai. All 290 passengers, mostly Iranians on a pilgramage to Mecca, and all the crew were killed. US Navy officials later said the Vincennes' crew believed they were firing at an Iranian F14 jet fighter, the plane was off the usual commercial route and did not respond to requests to change course. Iran called it "a barbaric massacre".

• Ukrainian military shot down a Russian passenger jet containing 78 people on 4 October 2001 as it flew over the Black Sea travelling from Tel Aviv in Israel to Novosibirsk in Russia. Russian crash investigators concluded the Tu-154 was hit by a Ukrainian ground-to-air missile despite the fact it was on its flight plan on an international airway which did not fall under any restrictions imposed by Ukraine. It exploded in mid-air, sparking speculation it was downed accidentally by Ukranian military on exercises in Crimea.