1960 New York mid-air collision

United Airlines Flight 826, Mainliner Will Rogers, registration N8013U,[5] was a DC-8-11 carrying 84 people from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago to Idlewild Airport (now John F. Kennedy International Airport) in Queens. The crew was Captain Robert Sawyer, First Officer Robert Fieberg, Flight Engineer Richard Pruitt, and four stewardesses.

Trans World Airlines Flight 266, Star of Sicily, registration N6907C,[6] was a Super Constellation carrying 44 people from Dayton and Columbus, Ohio, to LaGuardia Airport in Queens. The crew was Captain David Wollam, First Officer Dean Bowen, Flight Engineer LeRoy Rosenthal, and two stewardesses.[7] Star of Sicily's sister ship N6902C, Star of the Seine, was destroyed in another mid-air collision with a United Airlines flight in 1956.

At 10:21 A.M. Eastern Time, United 826 advised ARINC radio—which relayed the message to UAL maintenance—that one of its VOR receivers had stopped working. ATC, however, was not told that the flight had only one receiver, which made it more difficult for the pilots of flight 826 to identify the Preston intersection, beyond which it had not received clearance.

At 10:25 A.M. Eastern Time, air traffic control issued a revised clearance for the flight to shorten its route to the Preston holding point (near Laurence Harbor, New Jersey) by 12 miles (19 km). That clearance included holding instructions (a standard race-track holding pattern) for UAL flight 826 when it arrived at the Preston intersection. Flight 826 was expected to reduce its speed before reaching Preston, to a standard holding speed of 210 knots or less. However, the flight was estimated to be doing 301 knots when it collided with the TWA flight, several miles beyond that Preston clearance limit.

During the investigation, United claimed the Colts Neck VOR was unreliable (pilots testified on both sides of the issue).[8] ("Preston" was the point where airway V123 — the 050-radial off the Robbinsville VOR — crossed the Solberg 120-degree radial and the Colts Neck 346-degree radial.) However, the CAB final report found no problem with the Colts Neck VOR.

The prevailing conditions were light rain and fog (which had been preceded by snowfall).

According to the DC-8's FDR, the aircraft was 12 miles (19 km) off course and for 81 seconds, had descended at 3,600 feet per minute (18 m/s) while slowing from more than 400 Kts to 301 Kts, at the time of the collision.

One of the starboard engines on the DC-8 hit the Constellation just ahead of its wings, tearing apart that portion of the fuselage. The Constellation entered a dive, with debris continuing to fall as it disintegrated during its spiral to the ground.

The initial impact tore the engine from its pylon on the DC-8. Having lost one engine and a large part of the right-wing, the DC-8 remained airborne for another minute and a half.

The DC-8 crashed into the Park Slope section of Brooklyn at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Sterling Place (40°40′38″N 73°58′25″W), scattering wreckage and setting fire to ten brownstone apartment buildings, the Pillar of Fire Church, the McCaddin Funeral Home, a Chinese laundry, and a delicatessen. Six people on the ground were killed.[9][1]

The crash left the remains of the DC-8 pointed southeast towards a large open field at Prospect Park, blocks from its crash site. A student at the school who lived in one of the destroyed apartment buildings said his family survived because they happened to be in the only room of their apartment not destroyed. The crash left a trench covering most of the length of the middle of Sterling Place. Occupants of the school thought a bomb had gone off or that the building's boiler had exploded.

The TWA plane crashed onto the northwest corner of Miller Field, at 40.57°N 74.103°W / 40.57; -74.103 (1960 New York mid-air collision Constellation crash site), with some sections of the aircraft landing in New York Harbor. At least one passenger fell into a tree before the wreckage hit the ground.[8][1]

There was no radio contact with traffic controllers from either plane after the collision, although LaGuardia had begun tracking an incoming, fast-moving, unidentified plane from Preston toward the LaGuardia "Flatbush" outer marker.[10]

The likely cause of the accident was identified in a report by the US Civil Aeronautics Board.

United flight 826 proceeded beyond its clearance limit and the confines of the airspace allocated to the flight by Air Traffic Control. A contributing factor was the high rate of speed of the United DC-8 as it approached the Preston intersection, coupled with the change of clearance which reduced the en-route distance along Victor 123 by approximately 11 miles.[1]

The only person to initially survive the crash was an 11-year-old boy from Wilmette, Illinois. He was traveling on Flight 826 unaccompanied as part of his family's plans to spend Christmas in Yonkers with relatives. He was thrown from the plane into a snowbank where his burning clothing was extinguished. Although alive and conscious, he was badly burned and had inhaled burning fuel.[9] He died of pneumonia the next day.[11]

The events of the collision are documented in the 5th season 1 episode of The Weather Channel documentary Why Planes Crash.[12] The episode is titled "Collision Course" and was first aired in April 2013.[12]

• List of accidents and incidents involving commercial aircraft
• Jonas Kamlet

• Pillar of Fire: Recalling the Day the Sky Fell, December 16, 1960 by Nathaniel Altman, from the Park Slope Reader
• U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board Aircraft Accident Report
• Accident description TWA Super Constellation L-1049 N6907C
• Accident description United Airlines DC-8-11 N8013U
• Pre-crash photo of N6907C
• Death in the Air, Time, 26 December 1960.
• Newsreel film footage of crash
• Nelson, Libby. "The Boy Who Survived a 1960 Midair Crash" (Archive). The New York Times. 30 June 2009.
• "127 die as 2 airliners collide over the city; jet sets Brooklyn fire, killing 5 others; the second plane crashes on Staten Island" (Archive). The New York Times. Vol CX. No. 37,583. Saturday 17 December 1960.
• Park Slope Plane Crash, City Room (The New York Times local news blog), Sunday, December 12–Thursday, December 16, 2010 – A series of articles about the aviation disaster.
• CNN photo gallery of the crash
• Deadly Brooklyn Plane Crash, 1960 – slideshow by Life magazine
• Pillar of Fire – Interview with Dorothy M. Fletcher by Nathaniel Altman
• Fate or fluke? Air crash sole survivors by Barry Neild for CNN
• Jamieson, Wendell (24 March 2002). "The Day the Boy Fell From the Sky". The New York Times.
• "Park Slope Plane Crash". The New York Times. 12–16 December 2010. Retrieved 17 December 2010.
• "1960 New York City plane crash: A look back". – slideshow by New York Daily News