35th Anniversary of Crash of Southern 242 (now part of Delta)
 

At about this time thirty-five years ago, a Southern DC-9's crew was struggling to keep the aircraft airborne after an encounter with a severe thunderstorm. They were unsuccessful.

Since that accident, aviation meteorology has made huge steps forward. The last thunderstorm-related crash of a major U.S. airline was 18 years ago!

More on the story here: http://meteorologicalmusings.blogspo...thern-242.html

I remember this clearly and it came right after Southern (soon to become Republic and then NW) started an advertising campaign bragging about it's safety record of not having any major accident in it's I believe at the time, 10 year history. It is my understanding that no airline has ever jinxed itself by calling attention to how long it has been since an accident since this incident. It was really horrific as the pilots struggled to keep the plane (a DC-9) in the air with its engines clogged with hail and shut down and the windshield blown out by the hail as well. I had not realized that it had been 35 years already.:(

They hit the same size hail that was falling in Texas yesterday... it seems like there is a lot of nasty WX up there in NW GA and NE AL... at least some people survived...

Thank you. I had never heard of this crash despite living in ATL my entire life. (Of course I was just 4 at the time of the crash). Here is more info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Souther...ays_Flight_242


Wikipedia says this crash was featured on an episode of Air Emergency which is a great show although I never caught the episode on 242.

I have seen them all and that is a good episode. Smithsonian Channel runs them from time to time.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_-sbueOY4A

Didn't they have a more famous crash in Huntington, WV circa Nov 1970?

as in we are Marshall?

Bob H

Yes it was a Southern Airways charter flight.

One of the surviving flight attendants, Sandy Purl, wrote a book about the accident titled: "Am I Alive?" I bought it on Amazon a few years back. It was quite interesting. She went on to fly for Republic and Northwest.

If I recall correctly, the Huntsville to Atlanta flight was the crew's twelfth and final flight of the day.

I know things were a lot different back then, but I couldn't imagine working twelve legs in one day.

I remember reading a chilling, complete account of this in an old airline magazine back about 30 years ago. Wow... Can't imagine being in that kind of situation!

True; worth noting though that AF 447 was probably thunderstorm related (but that's not a US airline obviously).

If my 35 year memory serves me right, the killer fault was reducing thrust/idling the engines to descend. Under power the turbans could safely ingest the water/ice etc., but not while in the idle state.

Well, if you start hauling ... through that kind of WX, you can bend metal pretty quick... they got in trouble because they attempted to shoot through a large and nasty squall line... their radar lied to them and at the end of the day, they should have gotten some altititude and flown around the whole mess, but they did not know what they were getting themselves into and I am sure they were ready to get home...

All true, but if thrust had been maintained the engines would have survived. (Assuming a 35 year memory is correct.) The semi successful landing showed the plane stayed in flyable condition.

Basically this accident had a lot of blame to go around and really pointed out a lot of problems with comercial aviation in the 70s. The onboard radar wasn't up to the task. There wasn't good meteorology at dispatch. Air traffic control wasn't any help either.

AF477 is a sad but ultimately appeared to be a case of co-pilot error.

True, but my point was if they were making 100 more knots, they may have found a wing in Cedertown and another one in Cartersville...