United Air Lines flight 736

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United Air Lines flight 736
United Airlines Flight 736 DC-7 collected debris.jpg

Parts of the DC-7
Accident summary
Accident type Airplane collision in the air
place Arden , Nevada , USA
date April 21, 1958
Fatalities 49
1. Aircraft
Aircraft type Douglas DC-7
operator United Air Lines
Mark N6328C
Departure airport Los Angeles , California , USA
Destination airport New York City
Passengers 42
crew 5
Survivors no
2. Aircraft
Aircraft type North American F-100F Super Saber
operator United States Air Force
Mark 56-3755
Departure airport Nellis Air Force Base , Nevada , USA
crew 2
Survivors no
Lists of aviation accidents

United Air Lines flight 736 was a flight from Los Angeles via Denver and Kansas City to Washington, DC and New York City that flew on April 21, 1958 at 8:30 a.m. local time with a United States Air Force fighter aircraft in the Air collided . On board the Douglas DC-7 there were 42 passengers and five crew members, in the cockpit of the North American F-100F Super Saber there was a pilot in training and his flight instructor. The clash occurred in Nevada , about 15 km southwest of Las Vegas . Both planes went out of control as a result of the collision and crashed. There were no survivors. With 49 victims, the accident is still the most serious aviation accident in the Las Vegas region.

That plane crash and another mid-air collision where a Capital Airlines plane and a military jet crashed over Brunswick , Maryland just a month earlier , and TWA Flight 2 and United Air Lines Flight 718 two years earlier over the Grand Canyon led to a change in the procedure for the allocation of controlled airspace for military and civil aircraft and triggered extensive improvement measures in air traffic control as a whole. In August 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal Aviation Act of 1958 , which made direct reference to the United 736 crash and which established the Federal Aviation Agency .

Course of events

United Air Lines flight 736 left Los Angeles International Airport at 7:37 a.m. local time. There were 42 passengers and five crew members on board. The flying pilot was Duane M. Ward, Arlin E. Sommers was the first officer, and Charles E. Woods was the flight engineer. For the flight to the first stopover at Stapleton International Airport in Denver, the aircraft was assigned an altitude of 21,000 feet.

The North American Aviation F-100F-5 Super Saber fighter aircraft with a pilot in training and his flight instructor in a tandem cockpit took off from Nellis Air Force Base at 7.45 a.m. to train on instrument flight . In the front seat sat the flight instructor Captain Thomas Coryell and behind that his flight student Lieutenant Gerald Moran, who was to complete part of the flight under a viewing hood as part of his training. At 8:28 a.m., Moran reported to the control tower at Nellis Air Force Base to announce a drop to 14,000 feet. The F-100 started this maneuver at a speed of 280  knots (about 520 km / h) and increased this speed during the dive.

At the same time, United Air Lines Flight 736 was approaching Las Vegas at a speed of about 312 knots (about 578 km / h) in a northeast direction. The Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA), under whose control the airliner was en route, had no knowledge of the F-100 and the Air Force controllers were unaware of the civil aircraft.

With a clear sky and excellent visibility, the flight paths of the two aircraft crossed at 8:30 a.m. around 15 km southwest of the rotary radio beacon . The two aircraft collided almost head-on at an altitude of 21,000 feet with an estimated collision speed of 665 knots (around 1,230 km / h).

The descending F-100 had hit the right wing of the aircraft with its own right wing at a flight speed of 444 knots (about 820 km / h), which inevitably got both aircraft out of control. When the DC-7 fell, aerodynamic forces tore the engines from their wings. The United Air Lines plane crashed on what was then an empty stretch of desert outside of Arden and exploded. The crash site was then about three and a half kilometers south of the nearest paved road, the Blue Diamond Road ; today it is on the edge of the development, near the intersection of Cactus Avenue and Decatur Blvd. The F-100 crashed into a mountainous, uninhabited area a few kilometers further south near the town of Sloan .

Press reports at the time indicated that eyewitnesses had seen the collision and subsequent crash of both planes. Some of these eyewitnesses reported a parachute drifting away , so there was initially hope that one of the pilots of the military jet could have saved himself with the ejection seat . After the parachute was found, it turned out to be a braking parachute .

Investigation of the cause

At the request of the local sheriff and United Air Lines , the FBI dispatched fingerprinting experts to help identify the victims. Newspaper articles that appeared in the Las Vegas Review journal to mark the 40th and 50th anniversaries of the disaster indicated that the FBI was also looking for confidential papers that a group of military vendors who were on board were in briefcases had with them and were said to have been of importance for national security. As a result, it is said that the military, defense industry and some other large companies prevented key people from traveling together on an important project in a single aircraft.

According to investigations by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), the weather and condition of the two aircraft played no role in the accident . The investigation report found the likely reason for the accident to be the high rate of frontal aircraft approaches at that time and, in view of the high altitude, also restrictions by people and the cockpit. The report also cited the failure of Nellis Air Force Base and the CAA as a reason, as they knowingly accepted the threat to civil scheduled flights from military training flights. Practice flights were carried out within several airways for more than a year before the accident , even after several crews of civil aircraft had reported dangerous approaches by military jets.

consequences

The Federal Aviation Act of 1958 came into effect. With him, the CAA was dissolved and the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA, later renamed the Federal Aviation Administration ) was created. The FAA gained unprecedented and absolute sovereignty over control of American airspace, including military activities, and after air traffic control procedures and facilities were modernized, air collisions decreased significantly.

The F-100 supersonic aircraft has been the subject of frequent incidents during its years of service. Most of the casualties came in 1958, when 47 pilots on this type were killed while on duty and 116 F-100s were lost, an average of one crash every three days.

Two other large commercial aircraft crashes occurred in the crash area:

These two crash sites are in rugged, mountainous areas and the rusty remains of the DC-3 and Fairchild F-27 are still on site. However, the United crash site has been cleared and efforts are being made to build houses on the site. In 2008, a small self-made memorial was the only memento of the victims of the 1958 disaster.

Web links

Commons : United Airlines Flight 736  - Collection of images, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Aircraft accident data and report in the Aviation Safety Network , accessed on November 9, 2009.
  2. ↑ a b Flight accident data and report of the flight accident with the number 19 from 1958 in the Accident Database of Plane Crash Info
  3. ^ A b c d Henry Brean: 1958 CRASH: DEATH IN DESERT AIR, Collision of Air Force jet, civilian airliner helped change aviation regulations ( English ) Las Vegas Review-Journal. April 20, 2008. Retrieved November 9, 2009.
  4. ↑ Aircraft accident data and report in the Aviation Safety Network (English)
  5. ^ The Federal Aviation Administration and Its Predecessor Agencies ( English ) US Centennial of Flight Commission. Archived from the original on August 29, 2009. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved November 9, 2009. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.centennialofflight.gov
  6. ↑ Death Of Plane's Crew Leaves 10 Fatherless (English) . In: Deseret News , April 22, 1958, p. 1. Retrieved November 9, 2009. 
  7. ↑ a b AIR AGE: High Crime? ( English ) Time. May 5, 1958. Retrieved November 9, 2009.
  8. ^ Reed Madsen: Blackened Pits, Strewn Parts Mark Death Site (English) . In: Deseret News , April 22, 1958, p. 1. Retrieved November 9, 2009. 
  9. ↑ a b Memorial sought for fighter, airliner collision (English) . In: Air Force Times , April 22, 2008. Retrieved November 9, 2009. 
  10. ↑ Airliner, jet collision over Nevada Kills 49 (English) . In: Ellensburg Daily Record , April 21, 1958, p. 1.4. Retrieved November 9, 2009. 
  11. ↑ Jack V. Fox: Probers Seek Clues In Airliner Wreckage (English) . In: Deseret News , April 22, 1958, pp. 1.7. Retrieved November 9, 2009. 
  12. ↑ Warren Bates: SKY FIRE, METAL RAIN Forty years ago today, a jet fighter and a commercial airliner collided northeast of Las Vegas, killing 49. ( English ) Las Vegas Review-Journal. Archived from the original on October 31, 2004. Retrieved November 9, 2009.
  13. ↑ Doug Scroggins: Remembering Flight 736 ( English ) In: lostbirds.com . Retrieved November 9, 2009.
  14. ↑ Official USAF F-100 accident rate table. (PDF; 37 kB) (No longer available online.) United States Air Force , September 22, 2009, archived from the original on July 22, 2011 ; accessed on November 9, 2009 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.afsc.af.mil


Coordinates: 36 ° 0 ′  N , 115 ° 12 ′  W