American Airlines Flight 320

American Airlines Flight 320 was a scheduled flight between Chicago Midway International Airport and New York City's LaGuardia Airport. On February 3, 1959, the Lockheed L-188 Electra performing the flight crashed into the East River during its descent, killing

65 of the 73 people on board. Poor weather conditions at the destination meant that the crew had to descend through dense clouds and fog, but the aircraft flew lower than the pilots intended and it crashed into the icy river 4,900 feet (1,500 m) short of the runway at a speed of 140 knots (160 mph; 260 km/h). American Airlines had been flying the type of aircraft in commercial service for only about two weeks before the accident.

Eyewitnesses to the accident reported that the aircraft was flying significantly lower than was normal for planes approaching the airport, while surviving flight crew members claimed that the aircraft's instruments had told them that the flight was operating at safe altitudes right up to the moment of impact. An investigation by the Civil Aeronautics Board concluded that mistakes by the flight crew, the flight crew's inexperience flying the type of aircraft, and poor weather conditions were the causes of the crash. The conclusion was challenged by the Air Line Pilots Association, who felt that the crash was caused by faulty instruments and poor weather conditions, not by any mistakes made by the highly experienced flight crew.

The event was largely overshadowed by the The Day the Music Died, another aviation incident that killed rock and roll musicians, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper.

Passengers And Crew
The flight carried 68 passengers and 5 crew members, all residents of the United States. Of the 68 passengers, 5 survived, the bodies of two of the victims were never recovered. One of the two flight attendants and the captain of the flight died in the crash. Included in the passengers who died in the crash was Beulah Zachary, the executive producer of the television series Kukla, Fran and Ollie that was broadcast from 1947 to 1957. Also aboard the plane was Robert Emerson, a research professor at the University of Illinois who was internationally known for his research into plant photosynthesis, and Herbert Greenwald, a Chicago real estate developer.

The pilot of the flight, Captain Albert Hunt DeWitt, was 59 years old. He started his career at American Airlines in 1929 by flying for Thompson Aeronautical Corporation of Cleveland, which was later acquired by American. A resident of Decatur, Michigan, he was qualified to fly all of the aircraft that had been operated by American Airlines and was considered one of the most experienced commercial pilots in the world, with seven million miles flown. He had a total of 28,135 hours of flight experience, including 48 hours in the Lockheed Electra and 2,500 hours of instrument time, and had at one time acted as one of American's chief pilots in the New York area. He learned to fly airplanes when he was 24 years old. In 1930, he had been involved in an accident while he was flying a mail plane over Mishawaka, Indiana on his way to Chicago. Caught in a severe snowstorm, his aircraft stalled and entered a spin, but he was able to jump out of his plane before it crashed and he landed in a 75-foot-high tree. Before joining American Airlines, he had been a barnstormer in Indiana and Michigan and had been an instructor for various flying schools and clubs in the 1920s. He served in both World Wars; in World War I, he was a motorcycle courier, and during World War II, he served as an instructor at flight schools in New York and Chicago.He had planned to retire that May, but did not survive the crash of Flight 320. His cause of death was listed as drowning, but the medical examiner stated that he had also suffered severe internal injuries that would probably have been fatal had he not drowned.

The first officer, 33-year-old Frank Hlavacek, was a resident of Wilmette, Illinois and had been employed with the company for eight years. He had a total of 10,192 logged hours, of which 36 hours were in the Electra. He had been flying since he was 14 years old and had served with the United States Army Air Forces in World War II. Before joining American Airlines, he had owned his own air service based in La Jolla, California. After the crash, he helped two of the survivors reach the remnants of the plane's wing, where they were rescued. He suffered a broken jaw and p***** and two broken legs in the crash as well as internal injuries, but eventually recovered and returned to work at American Airlines.

The flight engineer, Warren Cook, was 36 years old and had been working for American Airlines for eleven years. He had a total of 8,700 flying hours, of which 81 were in the Electra. He served in the United States Army Air Corps from 1940 to 1945. In the accident, he suffered a badly wrenched back, cuts, and bruises. After recovering from his injuries, he returned to work at American Airlines.

Accident
The involved aircraft taken prior to the accident

The aircraft was a Lockheed L-188 Electra turbine propeller aircraft, serial number 1015, registered as tail number N6101A. This was the first Electra delivered to American Airlines. Construction had been completed by the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation on November 27, 1958. At the time of the crash, the aircraft had flown for a total of 302 hours. It was powered by four Allison 501-D13 engines.

Promoted as an efficient, fast, and profitable aircraft, the Electra was the first turbine propeller aircraft to be produced in the United States. The first plane was delivered to Eastern Air Lines in October 1958, who began operating commercial flights with the aircraft on January 1, 1959. American Airlines took delivery of its first Electra in December 1958 and its first commercial flight was twelve days before the crash. After the crash of American Airlines flight 320, two more Electras crashed in the following months after suffering catastrophic structural failures, Braniff Flight 542 crashed in September 1959 and Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 710 crashed in March 1960. Both incidents resulted in the loss of everybody aboard.After extensive research, Lockheed identified and corrected a flaw in the engine mounts which had been the cause of the structural failures of the other two crashes, but the negative publicity surrounding all of the accidents involving the plane within a short period of time led to the loss of public confidence in the safety of the aircraft, and only 174 were ever produced.

Crash Investigation
Within two hours of the accident, investigators conducted an interview with flight engineer Warren Cook, in which he stated that the flight's descent was completely routine right up to the point where the aircraft unexpectedly hit the water. They were unable to immediately interview first officer Frank Hlavacek because of his medical condition, but when interviewed several days later, he told investigators that he had been calling out indicated altitudes to Captain DeWitt during the descent in one-hundred-foot increments as they approached the runway. He said that he had barely gotten the words out for five hundred feet when the plane struck the river. Cook's statement to investigators, taken independently at a separate hospital, confirmed that they struck the river just as Hlavacek was saying "five hundred feet".

Recovery of the wreckage of the aircraft began as soon as the weather conditions permitted, with 25 percent of the plane recovered by February 5, and fifty percent by the following day. The day after the crash, salvage cranes attempted to raise the fuselage of the aircraft to the surface of the water, but they were only briefly successful before it broke apart and most of it fell back into the water. The tail section was raised by crews on the evening of February 5, and newspaper articles reported that the damage to that section suggested that the aircraft may have crashed in a "nose up" position, as though the pilot had noticed at the last minute that he was well short of the runway. Divers were brought in to locate missing sections of the aircraft beneath the surface of the water, but recovery efforts were hindered by high winds, strong river currents, and murky waters. Some pieces of the plane had been swept away by currents and had been found as far away as Northport, Long Island, more than thirty miles away. Each piece was identified, tagged, and cleaned off, and relocated to Hangar 9 of the Marine Terminal of LaGuardia Airport. The nose section and cockpit was recovered late on February 7. The cockpit was salvaged in good condition, with the spring-wound clock on the instrument panel still working when the section was recovered from the river, Investigators predicted that it would take at least two weeks to check all of the instruments to determine if they were functioning correctly at the time of the accident. Early reports from the investigation revealed that the condition of the flight control surfaces revealed that at the time of impact, the aircraft had not been in a violent turn or dive when it hit the water, On February 9, the Federal Aviation Agency announced that flying restrictions would be put in place on bad-weather landings by Lockheed Electra aircraft. The restrictions increased the minimum visibility conditions required for landing in poor conditions. In communications with flight crews, both American Airlines and Eastern Airlines described the restrictions as temporary only, likely lasting only a few days, Lockheed Aircraft Corporation expressed disappointment in the new restrictions, but agreed to cooperate with the investigation to the fullest extent. The following day, the Agency reversed course, and said that the Electra airliners could resume normal operation if they replaced the new altimeters with old-style altimeters. Both airlines agreed to immediately replace the altimeters as a precautionary step. The Agency also extended the order to include the requirement that new-style altimeters that had been installed in Boeing 707 aircraft needed to be replaced.

ASN Database
Narrative:

American Airlines Flight 320 was a scheduled service from Chicago-Midway Airport, Illinois, USA to New York-La Guardia Airport, New York. The aircraft, a Lockheed L-188A Electra, was off the ground at 21:43 hours and estimated one hour and forty-two minutes en route to New York.

At 23:27, Flight 320 made its first radio contact with La Guardia approach control. Nearing La Guardia Airport, the flight was given vectors for an ILS backcourse approach to runway 22.

Weather was reported to the crew as follows: "four hundred overcast; two miles visibility, light rain and fog".

At 23:53, the flight contacted La Guardia tower, stating they had passed New Rochelle. The flight was subsequently cleared to continue its approach to runway 22. Last radio contact was at 23:55:27 when the flight confirmed clearance to land. The Lockheed Electra aircraft descended until it struck the water seven seconds later, some 5000 feet short of the runway and 600 feet to the right of the extended centreline. Ground speed on impact was 150 mph and undercarriage and flaps were extended. The wreckage sank 10 m deep in the water of the East River.

The investigation board noted that American Airlines requested certification of their L-188A Electra aircraft for flight below 25,000 feet under which limitation it was unnecessary to install flight recorders. This was done in view of the cost of procurement, installation, and maintenance of flight recorders at the time.

The board stated: "a flight recorder in this aircraft would have enabled us to identify the causal factors involved in this accident with far greater precision".

Aftermath
A privately-owned tugboat from New England was on the river near the site of the crash when boat's crew heard the impact. It cut loose the barges that it had been towing and was the first to arrive at the scene, lighting up the area with the boat's searchlight. All eight of the survivors of the crash were saved by the crew, including one man who was pulled from 4 feet (1.2 m) below the surface of the water. At least a dozen boats from the Coast Guard and the police, and two police helicopters arrived minutes later. In the dark fog, rescuers could hear screams from survivors, but poor visibility and swift river currents made recovery of victims and survivors extremely difficult.Responders and nearby residents in the area reported hearing cries for help from locations considerably distant from the crash site.

Public safety agencies set up four rescue stations along the river to evacuate survivors, but ambulances that were taking injured survivors to hospitals had difficulty navigating the icy roads. Survivors were taken to Flushing Hospital and Queens General Hospital, where some of the initial survivors died of their injuries. Two temporary morgues were also set up on opposite sides of the river to receive victims.

By 5:00 a.m. the next morning, at least 9 survivors had been recovered, 22 bodies had been located, and 39 other victims were still missing. High winds and driving rain led the searchers to suspend the rescue operation. The New York Red Cross furnished supplies of rare blood types to aid the victims of the crash. Bodies that had been recovered were taken to Queens General Hospital for identification with assistance by agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and 25 city detectives. The agents used fingerprint records from its immigration, personal identification, and war service files to identify the victims.

After the impact, the body of the aircraft had broken into several pieces, with a twenty-foot section of the fuselage the largest intact section.After two hours, only 3 feet (1 m) of the tail of the aircraft was visible above the surface of the water. Searchers on boats and on the shore picked up plane debris, personal belongings, and mail that had been aboard the aircraft.

In Washington DC, the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) immediately dispatched two investigators as soon as authorities became aware of the crash, and ordered the airline's records to be impounded. An additional team of 25 investigators was assembled and dispatched later the next day. The team was given the task of investigating all aspects of the flight, including the weather, flight operations, engines and propellers, flight instruments, and aircraft structures. Queens County District Attorney Frank O'Connor also started an inquiry about how the rescue efforts could have been improved, with the aim of setting up a system of rescue boats to serve the city's two airports. The House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee called the head of the Federal Aviation Agency to report on the accident in a closed session in the days after the accident. After the two-and-a-half-hour meeting, a special House subcommittee was named to investigate the crash and the overall safety issues raised by the transition to jet and turboprop aircraft.

Days after the crash, news sources started reporting that there were safety systems that had not been in place at the airport that could have helped prevent the crash. A representative of the Air Line Pilots Association said that a system of flashing lights known as the Electronic Flash Approach System could have helped the pilot judge his altitude, if it had been installed. The association also called for the installation of a more comprehensive instrument landing system that would have provided altitude guidance to flight, crews landing on runway 22 in addition to the existing system that provided horizontal guidance. Such a system was already installed at the opposite end of the runway that the flight had been approaching. At the time, there were only two airports in the United States that had such a system installed on both ends of a runway. At a meeting on February 5, commissioners of the Port of New York Authority explained that the installation of such a system on runway 22 was considered to be very difficult because the approach lighting system would block the waterway used by ships to reach docks in Queens.

May All The Killed Onboard American 320, Rest In Peace.