16 December 1960 started like any other December day in New York City. It was foggy and the holiday preparations were in full swing. As the Friday early morning commute went into overdrive, few people suspected that the deadliest air disaster in US history to that date was about to happen right over their heads, turning Christmas joy into mourning for the relatives of the 134 people who would perish in the midair collision.
It was just after 10.30 a.m. local time when a United Airlines DC-8 and a TWA Constellation collided in flight over Park Slope, New York City. The DC-8 hit city streets while the Constellation crashed into a military air base on Staten Island.
Back than air traffic control was in many ways in its infancy and controllers were tracking planes on their radar scopes using “shrimp boats”, plastic strips marked with grease pencils to identify them. They had no means of seeing altitudes, everything was based on what the pilots reported. In any case, radar had been in use in NY for about a decade only and the technology was far from perfect.
On this fatal day, the DC-8 flew 11 miles beyond the point at which it should have entered its assigned holding pattern… one of its navigation radios was not working and the error was not recognized. Subsequently it hit the TWA constellation which was manoeuvring to land at La Guardia airport.
This tragedy was the result of a mix of circumstances and events (as air disasters usually are) but it highlighted that much more the need to reform the US air traffic control system. The urgency of the monumental task was crystal clear and the federal government started to move in earnest.
This midair was also the first in the history of aviation where aircraft carried flight recorders and so the investigators had hard evidence on which to go by and formulate recommendations.
The obligation to report equipment failures when flying IFR and reduced speed in the terminal area were just a few of the measures introduced as a result of this midair collision. Other, more fundamental changes eventually set the basis of how air traffic control is done today and how aircraft are operated, contributing to a very large degree to the exemplary safety standards we have come to accept as normal.
The 16 December 1960 crash, regrettable and tragic as it was, at least triggered the necessary changes and speeded up the process of creating a modern ATC system. 134 lives was a very high price to pay but the lessons had been learned.
Watch the news on the crash here.
You can see a few nice photos by Dean Bowen, one of the pilots on the TWA Constellation, taken before he died and posted here by his stepson.
