The Crash That Resulted in The Establishment of The FAA
Last weekend I traveled to Flagstaff for a very happy event; a lovely wedding. While there I became aware of a bit of Flagstaff history residing in the City's Citizen's Cemetery.
On June 30, 1956 two state-of-the-art commercial aircraft departed Los Angeles International Airport within just a few minutes of each other. Their final 90 minute flights would end in an explosive midair crash over the Grand Canyon. Everyone on board both aircraft would perish in what would be American aviation's worst disaster to date and the first crash to claim more than 100 lives.
Interest piqued, I made a stop to the mass grave to pay respects to the victims of this terrible national tragedy that took place a month after I was born in 1956.
Here is the story:
TWA Flight 2
TWA Flight Number 2 was destined for Kansas City Downtown Airport in one of TWA's fast and comfortable Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellations. This one christened "The Star of the Seine".
Super Constellation's had a sleek curved profile and a distinctive low profile three-part tail that allowed the plane to more easily fit in the hangars of many airlines. The TWA flight carried 64 passengers (11 of whom were off duty TWA employees) plus 6 crew members. This aircraft holds additional meaning to me as my first flight at the age of five originated in Oakland on a Super Constellation operated by PSA.
United Flight 718
United Flight 718 was destined for Chicago Midway in a fast new Douglas DC-7 christened "The Mainliner Vancouver". Flight 718 carried 53 passengers and 5 crew members. The DC-7 was a slightly faster aircraft with propellers painted a distinctive red, white and blue to blend while in rotation.
Both aircraft were built in California in Long Beach and Santa Monica and deemed completely airworthy.
Both flights took off a few minutes late. The United flight initially flew towards Palm Springs and then turned towards the Grand Canyon. The TWA flight initially flew towards Daggett (Barstow) and then turned towards the Grand Canyon flying at an altitude of 19,000 feet. Seeing weather a radio call was made to climb to 21,000 feet.
The Grand Canyon was "uncontrolled airspace". In uncontrolled airspace pilots were responsible to "See and Avoid".
In an era when the US was busy building a vast new interstate highway system, the need for a modern air traffic control system had gone largely ignored. But as the number and nature of midair collisions and near misses kept increasing the public became stunned by stories of America's crude air traffic control systems. Every crash resulted in newspaper and glossy magazine human interest stories profiling lives lost. And, since commercial air travel was largely the domain of captains of industry and the upper middle class, seemingly every crash resulted in fatalities of noteworthy Americans. On the TWA flight an entire family of four from Kansas City perished returning from a visit to Walt Disney's newly opened Disneyland. Public confidence in air travel (which had been steadily increasing in the 1950's) started to decline resulting in calls for change.
The weakness in coordinated air traffic control was because American airspace in 1956 was split between the military and the Civil Aeronautics Administration. This resulted in numerous near-misses and collisions between commercial and military aircraft. Flight tracking in 1956 was largely conducted via a loose network of radio monitoring points who in turn took radio calls and relayed requested changes in flight plans regarding altitude / speed information to various flight centers.
In this case the TWA request to increase altitude to fly around thunderheads put both aircraft were on course to collide over the Grand Canyon. The crash left both aircraft in remote sites in the canyon making initial rescue and the subsequent crash investigation difficult.
CAB Crash investigators eventually surmised the DC-7 saw the TWA plane and turn to avoid it. Its elevated wing hit the tail of the L-1049. With the loss of an engine and portion of its wing the DC-7 lost control. Correspondingly, without its tail section the TWA experienced an explosive decompression and dropped form the sky.
As details of the crash unfolded the the crude methods used to track and communicate with aircraft became clear and calls were made to establish a unified national air traffic control and monitoring agency. For the first time one agency would combine flight information of both military and commercial aircraft. After 2 years of contentious hearings, the FAA Federal Aviation Agency (renamed in 1966 as the Federal Aviation Administration) was formed together with a commitment to establish a comprehensive network of radar to track aircraft flying in American airspace.
29 of the United airline victims were interred at the Grand Canyon Pioneer Cemetery. 66 of the TWA airline victims were interred at the Citizens Cemetery in flagstaff (now completely encircled by the campus of Northern Arizona University).
After 64 years, memories tend to fade. Yet, this disaster is important to understand. It served as the defining catalyst in developing a modern American air traffic control system, our national network of radar and the FAA.
Roadboy's Travels © 2020
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