United Air Lines flight 624

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United Air Lines flight 624
6609-UAL-DC-6-NorthRampStapletonDEN.jpg

A United Air Lines DC-6
Accident summary
Accident type Loss of control after the crew was poisoned with carbon dioxide
place at Aristes , Conyngham Township , Columbia County , Pennsylvania , United StatesUnited States 48United States 
date June 17, 1948
Fatalities 43
Survivors 0
Aircraft
Aircraft type United States 48United States Douglas DC-6
operator United States 48United States United Air Lines
Mark United States 48United States NC37506
Surname Mainliner Utah
Departure airport Lindbergh Field , San Diego , California United StatesUnited States 48United States 
1. Stopover Los Angeles Airport , California United StatesUnited States 48United States 
2. Stopover Chicago Municipal Airport , Illinois United StatesUnited States 48United States 
Destination airport LaGuardia Airport , New York City , New York United StatesUnited States 48United States 
Passengers 39
crew 4th
Lists of aviation accidents

On June 17, 1948, on United Air Lines Flight 624 (flight number UA624 ), a Douglas DC-6 crashed in flight in Columbia County , Pennsylvania . All 43 people on board were killed in the accident. The cause of the accident was found to be poisoning of the cockpit crew with carbon dioxide while descending.

Airplane and occupants

The machine used on flight 624 was a Douglas DC-6, which had completed its maiden flight the previous year. The DC-6 was a new aircraft model at the time that was only introduced two years before the accident. The aircraft involved in the accident was the 12th fully assembled DC-6 from ongoing production, it had the factory number 42871. The aircraft had been delivered to United Air Lines a year earlier and was equipped with four Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engines . She was christened Mainliner Utah and carried the aircraft registration number NC37506 . At the time of the accident, the machine had an operating performance of 1245 flight hours.

There were 39 passengers and 4 crew members on board.

the accident

The flight was supposed to be from Lindbergh Field in San Diego to LaGuardia Airport in New York City . There were stops at the Los Angeles Airport and the Chicago airport provided. The machine completed the first two flight segments without any special incidents. Shortly after the pilots made their first descent on the approach to New York, a control lamp came on to warn of a fire in the cargo compartment. Although this later turned out to be a false alarm, the crew decided to introduce CO 2 into the cargo compartment in order to smother a possible fire.

The usual procedure stipulated that the release valve for the cabin pressure should be opened before emptying the CO 2 containers so that accumulations of gas in the cabin and the cockpit could be vented. There was no evidence that the crew took this step. As a result, the CO 2 flowed from the forward cargo compartment into the cockpit and made the crew partially incapacitated. The pilots initiated an emergency descent before they lost consciousness. While descending, the machine got caught in power lines and a 66,000-volt transformer near Aristes, Pennsylvania, crashed onto a wooded hill and burned out.

Victim

All 43 people on board were killed in the crash. Prominent victims were of Broadway - impresario Earl Carroll and his partner, actress Beryl Wallace , editor of the men's fashion magazine Collier's Weekly and founder of Esquire magazine,, Henry L. Jackson , and Venita Varden Oakie, the ex-wife of Jack Oakie .

Cause of accident

The accident investigation was conducted by the Civil Aeronautics Board . This established that the cause of the accident was the crew's incapacity to act, caused by carbon dioxide build-up in the cockpit. The investigators also found that the fire warning in the cargo compartment was a false alarm.

context

At the time of the accident, it was the second fatal incident involving a Douglas DC-6. However, the first accident with this type of aircraft, the incident on United Air Lines Flight 608 a year earlier, resulted in even more deaths.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Accident Report DC-6, NC37506 , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on March 29, 2019.
  2. ↑ Deryl B Johnson: Centralia; Images of America . Arcadia Publishing, Charleston, SC 2004, ISBN 978-0-7385-3629-3 , p. 12.

Coordinates: 40 ° 49 ′ 13.5 ″  N , 76 ° 21 ′ 39.8 ″  W.