American Airlines Flight 320 was a scheduled flight between Chicago Midway Airport and New York City's LaGuardia Airport. On February 3, 1959, the Lockheed L-188 Electra performing the flight crashed into the East River during its approach to LaGuardia Airport, killing 65 of the 73 people on board. Weather conditions in the area were poor, and as it descended, the aircraft passed through dense clouds and fog. As it approached the runway, it flew lower than the intended path and crashed into the icy river short of the runway. At the time of the crash, American Airlines had been operating the newly introduced Lockheed Electra in commercial service for only about two weeks, and the accident was the first involving the aircraft type.
After the crash, surviving flight crew members said they had been monitoring the aircraft's instruments, and right up to the moment of impact, the altimeter had been showing that they were flying a safe height above the water. However, eyewitnesses on the ground said that the aircraft seemed to be flying much lower than other planes normally flew during approaches. The Civil Aeronautics Board concluded that the crew made several mistakes that caused the crash. It identified the crew's inexperience flying the Lockheed Electra and the poor weather conditions as contributing factors. The Air Line Pilots Association disputed that finding, and said the accident was caused by faulty aircraft instruments and poor weather conditions, not by any mistakes made by the highly experienced flight crew. The accident led to proposals for new regulations requiring flight recorders on large passenger aircraft and to new construction at LaGuardia Airport to extend the runways, to improve the approach lighting systems, and to add an instrument landing system to the runway Flight 320 had been approaching.
Background Flight 320 was a regularly scheduled American Airlines flight between Chicago and New York City, using one of the airline's newly acquired Lockheed L-188 Electra turboprop aircraft. American had first started flying the Electra in commercial service less than two weeks earlier, and was operating six daily round-trip flights on its route between the two cities. The airline planned to assign Electras to additional routes as soon as Lockheed could complete further aircraft deliveries. The new planes, which carried seventy passengers, flew faster than the Douglas DC-7 aircraft American had been using on medium-distance routes and shortened the scheduled flying time between Chicago and New York by about half an hour.
On the evening of February 3, 1959, Flight 320 was scheduled to depart Chicago's Midway Airport at 9:00p.m. EST, but wind-driven snow delayed its departure. The aircraft took off fifty-four minutes behind schedule and was one of the last flights to depart before the airport closed because of the storm. It carried sixty-eight passengers and five crew members, and the trip was expected to take one hour and forty-two minutes. The flight proceeded uneventfully toward the New York City area, cruising at .
Accident At 11:34p.m., Flight 320 approached the New York City area. The LaGuardia Airport approach controller advised the pilots that conditions at the airport included overcast skies, a ceiling of , and visibility of . The controller instructed the pilots to fly north of the airport, and to prepare for a direct approach to runway 22 over the East River. At 11:55p.m., with the aircraft from the airport, LaGuardia tower controllers cleared Flight 320 to land on runway 22. The crew acknowledged the clearance with a simple acknowledgement of "320", and there were no further radio communications. Moments later, while traveling at , the aircraft struck the East River about short of the runway.
A worker on a nearby tugboat said that he saw the aircraft flying very low over the river before it struck the water with a loud noise. Another worker on the tugboat also saw the crash and described the aircraft as appearing to strike the river at a nose-down angle. A motorist approaching the Whitestone Bridge said that he saw the aircraft pass overhead only about above the ground. He did not notice if the landing gear was extended, but he said he could see the whole underside of the aircraft, and the lights in its windows. Surviving passengers and flight attendants, on the other hand, said that the descent before the impact was uneventful and routine. Residents in the surrounding area said they heard the Electra pass overhead and that it sounded lower than planes normally flying in the area.
The accident was the first crash involving the Lockheed L-188 Electra. It was the also first major accident involving an American Airlines aircraft since the crash of American Airlines Flight 327 on January 6, 1957.
Aftermath A privately owned tugboat from New England was operating near the crash site when its crew saw and heard the impact. The crew released the barges that they had been towing and headed to the crash site, becoming the first rescuers to arrive. They lit up the area with the tugboat's searchlight, and rescued all of the crash survivors, including one man who was pulled up from below the surface of the water. Two police helicopters and at least a dozen boats from the Coast Guard and the New York Police Department arrived within minutes. In the darkness and the fog, rescuers could hear survivors calling for help, but poor visibility and strong river currents made the rescue and recovery efforts difficult. Responders and residents in the area heard cries for help from locations further downstream.
Public safety agencies set up four rescue stations along the river to receive and evacuate survivors. Ambulances transporting injured victims to hospitals were slowed by icy road conditions. Survivors were taken to Flushing Hospital and Queens General Hospital. Two temporary morgues were set up on opposite sides of the river to receive recovered victims.
By 5:00a.m. the next morning, at least 9 survivors had been rescued, 22 bodies had been recovered, and 39 people were still missing. High winds and driving rain forced officials to suspend the rescue operation. One of the survivors who had been taken to a hospital later died from her injuries. The New York Red Cross supplied rare blood types for treatment of the victims of the crash. Recovered bodies were taken to Queens General Hospital for identification, with agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and 25 city detectives assisting in the process. The investigators used fingerprint records from immigration, personal identification, and military service files to help identify the victims. Autopsies of twenty victims found fatal chest and neck injuries, giving an indication of the force of the impact.
When the plane crashed, the fuselage broke into several pieces, but one section about long remained in one piece. Two hours after the crash, about of the aircraft's tail was the only part of the aircraft that still remained above the surface of the water. Search crews on boats and along the shoreline recovered aircraft debris, personal belongings, and mail.
In Washington, D.C., the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) dispatched two investigators shortly after being notified of the crash, and ordered the American Airlines' records to be secured. An additional team of 25 investigators was assembled and sent to New York the following day. The team was given the task of investigating all aspects of the flight, including the weather, flight operations, engines and propellers, flight instruments, and aircraft structures. Queens County District Attorney Frank O'Connor opened a separate inquiry into the effectiveness of the rescue response, telling reporters that more passengers might have been saved if there had been a system of rescue boats available to serve the city's two airports. The House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee also asked the head of the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) to brief the committee on the accident in a closed session. After the two and a half hour meeting, the committee formed a special House subcommittee to investigate both the crash and broader safety issues associated with the transition to jet and turboprop aircraft.
Days after the crash, newspapers reported that there was airport equipment that might have assisted the crew during the approach and could have prevented the crash. A representative of the Air Line Pilots Association said that a system of flashing approach lights, called an Electronic Flash Approach System, could have helped the pilot judge his altitude if one had been present. The association also called for a more comprehensive instrument landing system that would have provided horizontal and vertical guidance to flight crews landing on runway 22. The system then in use provided only horizontal guidance, although such a system was already installed for the same runway for aircraft approaching from the opposite direction. At the time, only two airports in the United States had instrument landing systems for approaches in both directions on the same runway. At a meeting on February 5, commissioners of the Port of New York Authority said that installing such equipment for such a system for runway 22 would be difficult because the approach lighting system structures would block the waterway used by ships traveling to docks in Queens.
Aircraft
The aircraft was a Lockheed L-188 Electra turbine propeller aircraft, serial number 1015, registered as tail number N6101A. This was one of the first Electras delivered to American Airlines, and was named "Flagship New York". Construction had been completed by the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation on November 27, 1958. At the time of the crash, the aircraft had flown for a total of 302 hours. It was powered by four Allison 501-D13 engines.
Promoted as an efficient, fast, and profitable aircraft, the Electra was the first turboprop aircraft to be produced in the United States. The first plane was delivered to Eastern Air Lines in October1958, and the airline began commercial Electra service on January 1, 1959. American Airlines received its first Electra in December1958 and its first commercial flight was twelve days before the crash.
Two other Electras crashed within a relatively short period after Flight 320 after suffering catastrophic structural failures, killing everyone aboard. Braniff Airways Flight 542 crashed in September1959, and Northwest Airlines Flight 710 crashed in March1960. An investigation by Lockheed identified the cause of those two accidents as defects involving the engine mounts and the structural design of the wings, and Electras were modified to correct them. However, the negative publicity surrounding the series of Electra accidents caused public concern about the safety of the aircraft, and only 174 were ever produced.
Passengers and crew Flight 320 carried 68 passengers and 5 crew members, all of whom were residents of the United States. Five passengers survived the crash, and the bodies of two of the victims were never recovered. The captain and one of the two flight attendants were among those killed. Among the passengers who died were Beulah Zachary, executive producer of the television series Kukla, Fran and Ollie, Robert Emerson, a research professor at the University of Illinois known for his work on photosynthesis, and Herbert Greenwald, a Chicago real estate developer.