Fifty years ago this month two accidents involving Trans World Airlines (TWA) aircraft at the Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati International Airport raised many questions about the safety of commercial aviation. I covered the accidents for The Enquirer and remember the time as if it was yesterday. No doubt the experience paved the way for me to work as a writer and editor for Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine.
The first crash was an aborted takeoff of a TWA 707 on November 6. The flight, TWA 159, had launched from New York and was on an intermediate stop at Cincinnati en route to Los Angeles. The takeoff was complicated by the presence of a disabled Delta Air Lines DC-9 just off Runway 27L. The Delta aircraft’s engines were at idle, but the engines projected hot gases over the runway which likely had an impact on the TWA 707. The TWA aircraft was cleared for take off and when it passed the disabled DC-9 at rotation speed, the aircraft experienced a compressor stall. The TWA crew at first thought the 707 had hit the DC-9 and they executed the abort. The 707 overran the runway and several passengers suffered injuries and one died a few days later in the hospital.
The second, TWA 128, was a Convair 880. It was the sixth loss of a Convair 880, a four-engine transport much like the 707. The aircraft crashed in the woods some 6,878 ft. short of Runway 18. While the outer marker beacon for Runway 18 was operating, the middle beacon, glide slope and runway approach lights were not working. Under those conditions, the National Transportation Safety Board stated that proper procedure would have been to maintain the minimum approach altitude of 1,290 feet above mean sea level until the crew could see the runway.
The crash killed 70 of the 82 persons on board. Surviving were ten passengers and two crew members. An infant, Tracy Jeanne Smith, was recovered from a tree in the fruit orchard became known as “The Infant of Flight 128.” She and other survivors are expected to attend a memorial service at 3 p.m.. Sunday, November 19, at England, Idlewild Park near the airport.
The 1960s marked a series of airplane crashes that occurred as aviation was growing rapidly. Since that time more than 1,000 aircraft hulls have been lost around the world, more than 500 involving fatalities. In recent years the safety record has been superb.
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Former Enterprise Airlines founder and CEO and chum Pat Sowers points out that TWA Flight 128 was one, if not the first, of a series of crashes that resulted in a fleet-wide implementation of the Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS), which has accounted for saving many lives. The Flight Safety Foundation pushed hard for world-wide implementation during the 1990s. If you have ever been in a cockpit when the GPWS sounded, you would immediately know something was wrong. It is a simple and effective alert system that has paid its way in aviation. Thanks Pat.
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