Friday, Aug. 10, 1962

Diversity in Death

There was small comfort for air travelers in four Civil Aeronautics Board crash reports issued last week. They seemed mostly to indicate the diversity of ways in which people can be killed while flying. The CAB findings:

>> An Eastern Air Lines Electra crash on Oct. 4, 1960, just after take-off from Boston's Logan International Airport (62 dead, 10 survivors), was probably caused by starlings sucked into three of the aircraft's four Allison turboprop engines. The birds' bodies clogged the turbines so that power was insufficient to keep the Electra airborne. Two Federal Aviation Agency scientists had already raised an eerie possibility. Wrote they after studying sound patterns: "The Electra sound spectrum contains an audible chirp which appears identical in frequency and wave form to the chirp of field crickets. Field observations strongly indicate that the sound of the taxiing Electra exerts an attraction for starlings, and possibly other birds, particularly in the fall in the Northeast, when insects suddenly become less plentiful."

>> An Aeronaves de Mexico DC-8 crashed and burned after an aborted take-off from New York's Idlewild Airport on Jan. 19, 1961 (4 dead, 102 survivors), apparently primarily because Eastern Air Lines Pilot William B. Poe closed the throttles just after liftoff. Poe, on hand to check out the plane's Mexican crew, was misled by an evidently faulty airspeed indicator which made him think the aircraft was not picking up speed fast enough to sustain flight.

-- A Beechcraft Bonanza air taxi en route from New York's LaGuardia Airport to East Hampton, L.I., crashed as it was attempting to land after a door came open on take-off (four dead -including Mrs. Angier Biddle Duke, wife of the State Department chief of protocol). As a possible reason for the crash, CAB suggested that the roar of air rushing past the open door space may have panicked one of the three women passengers into interfering with the controls or the pilot.

>>: A Continental Air Lines Boeing 707 was blown up by dynamite in mid-air near the Iowa-Missouri border last May 22 (45 dead). Said CAB: "All the evidence leads logically to the conclusion that a dynamite device was placed in the used-towel bin of the right rear lavatory with the express intent to destroy the aircraft. "The Federal Bureau of Investigation reported that before the flight, Victim Thomas G. Doty, 34, who faced prosecution for armed robbery, bought some dynamite and $275,000 worth of life insurance payable to his wife.

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