The Mid Air Collision That America Forgot About | 1960 New York Mid Air Collision

This is the story of the new york 1960 air crash. Mid air collisions are rare but when they happen they are deadly. we have made large strides in how we keep our aircraft separated in our skies. But despite that sometimes collisions still happen. But at the dawn of the jet age they were a lot more common. The crash of 1960 taught us a lot.

On the 16th of december 1960 a TWA Super constellation was on the ground at dayton ohio with 39 people on board flight 266 was a one stop flight to new york city with a stop in columbus ohio. At another end of the country united airlines flight 826 was on the ground at chicago. The dc8 would be making a non stop flight to new york international. At 9 am EST the Super constellation takes off from columbus ohio bound for new york. Soon it was in contact with the new york air route traffic control center or the ARTCC who picked the plane up on their radar. The controllers cleared the jet to the linden intersection. By the time the jet was at the linden intersection the approach control was setting the plane up for a landing on runway 4. With this in mind the jet was cleared to descend all the way to 5000 feet. Unbeknownst to the pilots of flight 266 united flight 826 ws in the air as well. They contacted new york ARTCC at 1012 and they were cleared from the allentown VOR to the robbinsville VOR and after that to the presion intersection. But as they navigated this rather congested bit of airspace they contacted the folks on the ground to let them know that their no 2 receiver was not working. This meant that one of the two VHF navigational receivers on the plane was out of commission. This caused a problem for the pilots of flight 826 a position fix was obtained by getting the intersection of two radials from two separate radio beacons. .This was usually done with two receivers but today they would have to do it with one. Meaning that their location fixes would not be as accurate. They would be flying into some bad visibility 51 air craft in the vicinity had reported that there were some thick clouds in the region, from 300 feet to 18000 feet in some places. Like some pilots were reporting the tops of the clouds at 31,000 feet others other pilots were reporting ground contact at 4000 to 5000 feet. The weather was very patchy in some places the clouds were thick an in some places it wasnt that thick. Before the era of onboard radars and things you had to be careful. At 1025 new york ARTCC gave flight 826 some good news they had gotten a new routing that would shorten their route by 11 miles. New york ARTCC w might have to put the constellation into a hold as idlewild approach control would take control of the plane as it was approaching the preston intersection. As the constellation passed thought 6000 feet the plane was handed off from new york ARTCC to the approach control at idlewild. Flight 826 hailed idlewild approach and they said “”united 826 approaching preston at 5000”. On the ground the controllers started to notice something weird there were two radar returns where there only should have been one the two blobs merged over miller army air field staten island new york. The two planes had collided and the constellation immediately went into a right hand turn and fell out of the sky like a stone. The other radar blob, flight 266 kept flying. For 8 and half miles the plane seemed to defy odds and kept flying. But eventually its luck caught up with it. The dc 8 crashed at the intersection of ,sterling place and seventh avenue in brooklyn new york. Large chunks of engines of the DC8 was found in the cabin of the constellation meaning that the collision was fully confirmed. It looked like the DC 8 had flown into the constellation from the right rearquater when the constellation was in a right hand turn for the hold and it looked like the left wing of the dc 8 sliced thorough the plane like it was nothing . There was no way that either plane would have survived this impact. It was up to the investigators to now figure out why the